Board Thread:Watercooler 2.0/@comment-6198648-20130228045108/@comment-6209322-20130703182026

Well, I'm afraid I spent most of my time in the villages, so my knowledge of flora and fauna are limited to them for the most part. That caveat enacted:

Cockroches have got to be the number one insect I saw in the towns, followed closely by spiders (big-ass spiders, hairy and not hairy). They hid everywhere they could got into, and we had to spray the corners of our matresses with insecticide constantly. My brother forgot to do that one night, and the next morning when he lifted his matress to put it away, at least twenty roches scurried off in ever direction. He freaked and stepped on one with his sandal. It's guts shot out ten feet in the direction he stepped on it, and one of the locals told him he needed to wash his sandal well because the guts were actually mostly comprised of eggs, and if he didn't get all the eggs out, he might bring them back with him on the plane. The spiders were mostly just scary to look at, and no one in our group got bit that I remember. But we did have this pool down there that had been built by the local municiple government (it was actually pretty nicely constructed, but it was outside), and we used it to cool off in sometimes when the days were especially hat. One time, there was a spider that was an inch if it was a millimeter, and it was just walking on the water like it was Jesus. We called it the Jesus Spider (like, the mexican pronunciation Hey-Soose) actually.

However, there were tons of ants at the one jungle-type place we visited, the site of a massivley tragic volcano that errupted in the 80's. There, among the ruins, I saw a ton of redish-colored ants. I was told they were leaf-cutters, but whatever they were, they were abotu as big as carpenter ants and as plentiful as poor RPers on Nationstates. They were like rushing water flowing over the rocks and roots. Other than that, I really don't remember too many other types of bug in the valley. In the moutain, we saw a giant beetle and other innocuous bugs, but nothing scary. I don't remember any frogs or lizards really.

There were lots of chickens in villages, both in the mountain and in the valley. I was told by locals that the chickens helped keep the snake population under control, and it must have worked, because I never saw any. Other than a few domestic goats, don't remember seeing any other large animals about. There was one place on the road between the mountain and the valley that had a sort of interactive aviary... by that I mean, they had birds in spacious cages and one of the workers would pull one or two of the more well-behaved ones out and let them sit on your should if you wanted.

You've no doubt read about the steriotypical fruit vendors hawking the bus stops? That's true, 100%. Oh, I almost forgot to tell you the coolest fruit we had down there. I don't know what it's actually called, but they refered to it as "Elephant Booger Fruit". It was orangish-yellow on the outside, and grey on the inside. It had hundreds of seeds, each enveloped by a protective slimey mucus-like film, much like passionfruit seeds. They looked like frod eggs, wuite frankly.

The only other thing that really comes to mind at the moment was a plant we came across during the same mountain hike we met the large beetle. It was a plant much like the Lamb's Ear, and the locals said that, because of the altitude and the nature of the plant, it was probably 50 years old, even though it didn't look that big.

Well, that's all that I can think of that's interesting... if you ask me some questions about it, maybe that'll trigger more memories!