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The Darkness of the Jungle Night

IT IS commonly said that a jungle sleeps during the day, but comes to life at night.

It was starting to get dark when I returned to the lodge. The boats were finishing up in the lake amongst the seemingly impossible large coverage of weed. We had dinner in the dining hut. Now as this was an eco-lodge, there was no electricity. The only lighting we had was from our head torches. The building was otherwise totally dark. Therefore I didn’t know what we had for dinner, except to say that it tasted very nice. Sadly I couldn’t see it though. It was a bit hard serving ourselves from the table in the darkness, but somehow we managed. We sat in small groups around the table and ate.

I sat with one of the couples in my group, who told me about their dream of moving over to London in about a year’s time to work there. He will work as a veterinary surgeon, and she will work as a paralegal mainly in commercial property. From there they will be able to explore different parts of Europe each week as all the countries are so close to each other there. They had done this trip to see whether marriage was suitable for them as they had been together for a few years now. I really liked their idea of moving to London. After all they weren’t committed to owning a property. I was.

I (partially) own my house, and that has set me up very well financially. It sure beats renting. But there is one distinct advantage of renting though. You are not so tied down, and you can move at will around the world if you want to.

This conjured up the idea that I could perhaps travel the world. I could base myself in one city for six months to a year, spend the weekends exploring nearby countries, then after my contract is up, I can move onto another city in another part of the world. I had considered that idea before, but this was the first time I started seriously thinking about it.

After dinner, we assembled outside. It was by now totally dark. One of the guys from Denmark picked up a guitar and played a few chords as we waited in the darkness illuminated only by our head torches.

Our guide Siamet eventually arrived and led us back down the trail towards the boat. After five minutes we veered off the track to the left. Apparently we were going to look for animals in the forest.

Single file we crept through the dense jungle, expecting to see different types of monkey and other nocturnal wildlife. The vines were thick and some were dangerously prickly. We stepped over logs and avoided the pools of mud along our route. We also kept an eye out for fire ants, but didn’t see any.

After several minutes it became apparent that the jungle was very quiet tonight. The deafening chorus of animal noises I had expected was non-existent. Siamet kept on hearing things and would cut further into the jungle but not find anything.

After half an hour of cautious walking through the foliage we had only seen a few insects, a gecko, and a large centipede. We didn’t even see any fire ants. It was obvious the animals were all going to be elusive tonight. We decided to turn back to the huts.

I returned to the hut and took out my tripod and video camera. I headed back to the dining area, and then walked a couple of minutes out into the jungle back along the track we had just come by. I set up the tripod and started recording for sound.

I had expected that being alone there would have been a lot of noise of jungle animals, but even without the group it was surprisingly quiet tonight. It was a dark moonless night, and felt quite eerie out here alone in this strange forest. What if there were large predators that had spotted me and had assessed me to be a good meal? I have heard that a jungle goes very quiet when a predator is in the area.

Fortunately nothing did come and grab me, so I eventually turned off the recorder and returned to the main area then to my hut. I climbed up and crawled into the room under the mosquito net where I quickly got changed and took my toiletries to go to the bathroom.

I went back outside to put on my sandals when I suddenly noticed movement. I shone my head light onto them and discovered to my horror they were swarming with fire ants. I picked them up and slapped them together until all the ants were off them. Then I sprayed plenty of insect repellent onto them. Still worried there were ants on them, I put my boots back on tying the boot laces up in the darkness before walking through the dark forest towards the bathroom.

Being an eco-camp, the bathroom was relatively crude. The new white tiled shower cubicles had a large blue plastic drum full of water and a plastic scoop on top. I filled the scoop with water and started washing myself in the almost complete darkness. Fortunately the water was quite warm thanks to the hot climate. I used the biodegradable soap that they supplied. Perhaps I could use a system like this in my garden should I get a grey water system happening.

Finally I was washed clean and fortunately no dangerous animals had come and attacked me. I returned to the hut and took my boots inside the mosquito net, made sure it was secure, then pulled the thin blanket over me and quickly fell asleep.

The forest usually is most active at night, but tonight’s moonlessness made this an eerily silent exception.

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