The deeper they went into the jungle, the more mesmerizing it was. Birds flew through the trees; insects, ants and lizards scurried everywhere. Up in the tree branches groups of tiny, cute monkeys with big, inquisitive eyes looked down at Molly and Jonathan. Jonathan gasped as he spotted a pair of toucans fly by high in the tree tops, and Molly pointed out the bright blue and red of a macaw.
Dragonflies and butterflies of all sizes and colors flew everywhere. Molly and Jonathan would cheer every time an elusive Blue Morpho butterfly appeared and flashed its shimmering blue wings as it flew past, taunting them with a glimpse of its beauty. Try as he might, Jonathan could not get a photograph of the blue iridescent wings. Plants, trees and vines clambered to survive in the dense forest, and flowers flashed bright red and orange amongst the green.
They kept to the riverside trail as much as they could, but there was much to watch out for, especially the vines on the ground that they both kept tripping over. The ground got so muddy at one point that they hacked down a couple of young saplings with the machete to make walking sticks.
Jonathan was being seriously pestered by mosquitoes. The insistent buzz around his ears had become more than annoying, and now distracted him from where he walked. He had put on repellent, but they seemed immune to it. Molly, too, was getting attacked and asked Jonathan if they could stop for a while. She put down her backpack and walked up to a nearby termites’ nest, a huge bulbous bulge on a low tree branch. She carefully brushed back the outer layer of the nest to reveal the tiny termites as they scampered around.
She placed her hand on the open part of the nest and it was covered with termites in seconds. She then rubbed her hands together to squash the insects and started to rub her hands over her face, neck and any exposed parts of skin.
“Someone showed me this once. You’ll be amazed how effective it is against mosquitoes.”
“I’ll try anything once,” he said dubiously, as he too spread mashed insects over his face, neck and hands.
They continued walking, and it was getting hot. It wasn’t until about 20 minutes later that Jonathan realized there were no mosquitoes around him. The termite repellent had worked.
“Shame about having to squash the termites, but they certainly do the trick.”
Jonathan noticed that Molly constantly puffed on her mapacho cigarettes.
“Why all the smoking Molly?”
“They always used to say the smoke kept the snakes away.”
“Oh,” was all he managed to reply.