We saw some pretty cool critters on our hike...
The hike down was a lot of steps and jungle.
But this amazing beach at the bottom made it totally worth it!
We snorkeled around, swam, had lunch and watched the kids play. Then we hiked into the jungle on the beach to try to find ruins of an old latte stone village. The ruins are said to have both historical and spiritual significance here on the island. You can read more about the history of Haputo here. We were only told that near the far end of the beach you hike inland through the jungle, past and through a field of taro plants and there you will find the latte stones. So inland we went and we didn't see much. I was leading the pack and finally we saw a large field of taro plants. They were about as tall as me, much taller than the kids, with huge leaves the size of Colin. I continued to lead the way, pushing leaves aside and crawling through them until we finally came to a single latte stone.
Then, just a few feet from that latte stone, deep in the jungle and far from the beach, we saw this GIGANTIC huntsman spider resting on a taro leaf. This thing was enormous! I mean look at the size of that spider in reference to the size of the leaf, and keep in mind that leaf is the size of Colin!
I immediately thought back to the million and one taro leaves I had just touched as I lead us to the middle of the jungle, how many giant mutant spiders did I almost touch on the way here?! Then I looked around and realized the million and one leaves I would have to crawl through to get back out of the jungle and to the beach. Shit. We made it out of the jungle and back to the beach in half the time it took to us to get back in there. I hope I never see another huntsman spider as long as I live!
Back on the beach we walked around some while the tide was low. I found a blue starfish, which are all over the beaches here. I love seeing them, they are so pretty!
Finally it was time to hike back up the hill before it got dark. On our way up we came across a monitor lizard basking in the sun. We almost got the full Guam wildlife experience today! We saw wild chickens and a wild pig on the road leading to the beach. Hiking down we saw coconut crabs and lizards, on the beach we saw the popular black butterflies and banana spiders, a blue starfish in the water, a huntsman spider in the woods and then topped it off with a monitor lizard. Only thing we missed were geckos (HATE them, SO glad we didn't see any, I think that spider was less evil than a gecko, in my mind anyway!) and a brown tree snake.
The rest of the Haputo Beach pictures are here:
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