I Survived, and it was Amazing!!

Ok so it was by a great miracle that I didn't read all of the trip advisor stuff on the Internet before going on the Gibbon Experience because there's a good chance I would not have gone. Turns out, there are warnings everywhere about all of the spiders. And not just spiders, but tarantulas!

So there I was, sitting in the back of a Jeep on the way to our treehouse in the middle of the jungle (where we will stay for three days) and the topic of spiders comes up and some guy tells a story about how he heard of some girl who went on this and one night was wondering why her pillow was fuzzy and it turned out to be a tarantula. "#%^*^%! Seriously?? Get me out of this truck!" is all I can think. So I pray that this guy is just pulling my leg and tell myself "they didn't say anything about this on the website...I'm sure it's ok.." all the way to the treehouse where it was confirmed that yes, there are oodles of stories all over the internet about how many spiders there are here and how this really isn't the place for arachnophobes. "#%^~+% what was I thinking coming here??" Thank god I had such a wonderful group of people who helped me through this experience because people, I did not sleep a wink the first night I was so terrified. And we even had mosquito sheets that I was sure these tarantulas were going to crawl through and eat me! My lovely flat mates calmed me down, walked me to the bathroom in the dark and kept me from leaping out of the treehouse when the one tarantula we did see materialized (it wasn't as big as a pillow but was about 3 inches wide and hairy and had front claw like a crab). Thank god for their support because I (along with a few others I might add) were up on chairs screaming as shrieking the moment we saw it. I would have gladly jumped the hundreds of meters down to get away from that thing. Thankfully though, that was the only spider we saw, and not only did I make it through this "experience" but I actually had an amazing time! I was so lucky to have the greatest group of people (8 of them from Switzerland, Germany and France) and the best treehouse out of them all. It was huge, only one year old and had four levels, one that you zipped into that had a bathroom with a shower overlooking the jungle (which I used twice!), a second level with a kitchen (though we never had to cook, the guides brought us hot food and prepared everything), a big dining room table, and one set of beds (mine and Rita's - the best view in the treehouse!) and then two more levels with beds. This thing was like a real life treehouse out of Hook! When we were going to bed I wanted to yell "Goodnight never never land!" lol.

The food was amazing, the zipping was so much fun and the scenery was beautiful. The bamboo in the jungle was so big it felt like we were in "Honey I Shrunk the Kids", it was amazing! And we even saw Gibbons the first day! and this experience was made even better by the amazing group of people I met who were so much fun :) awesome, awesome time. So worth it. Even though I saw a tarantula lol.