Saturday, January 3, 2009

Night Hike

Let's travel back in time together. The last time we heard about the adventures of Ben and Hannah they were in the largest national park in Thailand looking for elephants...

Tom, our tracker/guide who had a large mysterious scar across his face, told us we'd have our best chance of finding elephants at night. There was only one problem -- Tom left all the flashlights except one back in Phetchaburi. So yeah, we were going to hike into the jungle with ONE flashlight. The last time I went on a night hike was back in Camp Airy in Thurmont, Maryland circa 1993. That trip left me with a scar on my arm and left Jeremy Bier with a lifelong fear of hiking. But that's a story for another time.

So we followed Tom down a pitch black road. The first thing that we saw was this sign:

Yeah, not exactly the thing you want to see when hiking at night. Hannah and I started to joke about this ridiculous little adventure we were on and I can only assume our giggles scared away all the big animals. Over the next hour all we saw was more elephant poop and the biggest millipede I've ever seen. The things was like a small snake.

After our fruitless adventure we got back to camp and stared at the spectacular stars for a little while. Hannah and I were the last ones to go to our tent and the waiting paid off. Out of the corner of my eye I saw an animal. PAY DIRT!!!!

It turned out to be a porcupine.

Finally Hannah and I went to our tents where we preceded to freeze our asses off for the next six hours until breakfast.
(PICTURE: Hannah and I in our tent)