Getting to the park involves a bus ride through some amazing mountain and scenery, precarious roads with vertigo inducing drops off to the side and jungle stretching off to the horizon below. At one of the drinks and rest stops we made had a toilet balanced on the hillside 15 feet below the road... Debbie being the more intrepid toilet stopper made that trip whilst I took photos (of the view, not the toilet), I nearly typed a review of the toilet here but whilst people who have made similar trips may understand the obsession we developed with the availability and standard of toilets other readers may just think us strange so we shall move on...
The national park itself is huge but the most visited part is reached by taking a 3 hour boat trip up through the jungle itself and you stay in a village on one side of the river whilst the treks through the park etc are on the other side and reached by river taxi, we intended to stay two nights in the park and so quickly found some beds in a hostel for £2 a night each (shoestringers remember!) and caught a boat across to the jungle.
On our first walk into the jungle we saw a troop of monkeys, a giant colourful pigeon, some jungle peacocks and what we thought was wear and tear to the pathway (broken planks and fallen trees etc.) but what we later found out was evidence of a bull elephant that was seen near the park whilst we were there, it was the first time an elephant had been seen near the tourist area for years apparently but the jungle is so thick that they can be feet away and you'd never know they were there. 
That evening we went on a guided night walk in the jungle, whilst initially cavalier about the warnings to keep our hands away from trees etc. we learnt to keep our distance when our guide pointed out some huge spiders sitting on the trees... we also saw stick insects, cockroaches, scorpions, a bright green viper and some termites which we helpfully located by standing on them... they bite. We spent 20 minutes watching a salt lick from a hide but it was a full moon and so the animals stayed away so we headed back to our accommodation... but our night animal experiences were not over...
As we lay in our bunks that night talking about what we'd seen and the jungle walks we had planned for the next day we realised we had a couple of insect visitors, nothing unusual for the jungle... and then we noticed a few more... and then a few more... our room was infested with 100's of bed bugs that were now marching intently across the bed covers... yuck.
We wandered out into the night looking for alternative places to stay but this is the jungle and there are not a great number of holiday inns or places with 24 hour receptions ... we managed to find the chap in charge of where we were staying (who didn't seem surprised by the problem) and he put us in another room but we weren't expecting to sleep much, it was 2am already and we were revising our plans to allow us to head back to a city in the morning, we did manage to get some sleep but not before our night was further disturbed.
Whilst lying awake and obsessively switching our torches on to check for more bugs we heard a growling noise and crunching of bone from the bins outside the house next door... Deb wanted me to see what it was but I mumbled sleepily about it being a dog and tried to go back to sleep...well the noises persisted and sounded more aggressive (from outside although Debbie was getting more insistent too as she hadn't seen any dogs in the village) and so eventually I was persuaded to get up and look outside the window... where we saw a mother and baby tapir who had come out of the jungle to get at the food in the bins, tapir are not common in the park and were on the list of creatures you might be lucky enough to see if you trekked deep into the park... and there they were 6 feet from our window and completely unaware of our presence.
The tapir meant we didn't high-tail it out of there in the morning, we went on a walk through the jungle by ourselves again and went up a treetop cable walk, Deb spotted a monitor lizard and in the trees had a giant squirrel (about 3 feet long) nearly jump on her head and I was buzzed by a flying lizard, despite the bed bugs we had a great time and had seen far more wildlife than we had hoped for but the tapir had been the hi-light, we caught the afternoon bus to avoid the possibility of bed bugs again though.
As we lay in our bunks that night talking about what we'd seen and the jungle walks we had planned for the next day we realised we had a couple of insect visitors, nothing unusual for the jungle... and then we noticed a few more... and then a few more... our room was infested with 100's of bed bugs that were now marching intently across the bed covers... yuck.
We wandered out into the night looking for alternative places to stay but this is the jungle and there are not a great number of holiday inns or places with 24 hour receptions ... we managed to find the chap in charge of where we were staying (who didn't seem surprised by the problem) and he put us in another room but we weren't expecting to sleep much, it was 2am already and we were revising our plans to allow us to head back to a city in the morning, we did manage to get some sleep but not before our night was further disturbed.
Whilst lying awake and obsessively switching our torches on to check for more bugs we heard a growling noise and crunching of bone from the bins outside the house next door... Deb wanted me to see what it was but I mumbled sleepily about it being a dog and tried to go back to sleep...well the noises persisted and sounded more aggressive (from outside although Debbie was getting more insistent too as she hadn't seen any dogs in the village) and so eventually I was persuaded to get up and look outside the window... where we saw a mother and baby tapir who had come out of the jungle to get at the food in the bins, tapir are not common in the park and were on the list of creatures you might be lucky enough to see if you trekked deep into the park... and there they were 6 feet from our window and completely unaware of our presence.
The tapir meant we didn't high-tail it out of there in the morning, we went on a walk through the jungle by ourselves again and went up a treetop cable walk, Deb spotted a monitor lizard and in the trees had a giant squirrel (about 3 feet long) nearly jump on her head and I was buzzed by a flying lizard, despite the bed bugs we had a great time and had seen far more wildlife than we had hoped for but the tapir had been the hi-light, we caught the afternoon bus to avoid the possibility of bed bugs again though.
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