Watching plants grow.

The jungle grows quickly, and the life and death cycle makes for a lot of debris on the jungle floor.  Leaf Cutter ants were abundant and you could see them carrying large pieces of leaves or flowers, some of which were removed directly from the tree and plants around us, taking them to wherever their home lay.  Where there is death, rot and decay, there is also life. An abundant amount of life. I saw more butterflies in Costa Rica than during my entire life to date, including a large blue butterfly that seemed to follow us throughout a nature walk;  chattering monkeys, one who, at first, looked as if he were smiling but, we learned, was demonstrating a sign of aggression; we noted the tourists he chased down the path, all  running at a very fast pace. The birds of prey and birds of a less aggressive nature came together in a large cloud of wings, catching the heat and circling, soaring so high that they were dots in the sky;  way too many dogs (many running in packs and clearly hungry) and bugs.  The big bugs, while scary looking, were not that difficult for me to deal with.  But it was the mosquitoes.  Deet saved the day, and the night, but there was an anxiety that I could not shake off during my entire trip of being bitten by a disease infected mosquito.  It so happened that we were in the one area of Costa Rica, the Limon region, that Dengue Fever caused a number deaths from the year before, as well as a record number of malaria infections in the same year.   
What caught me off guard was how loud the jungle is, all day and all night, reminding me of Manhattan, New York, which, like the jungle, never sleeps. This is one time I wish I had had my video camera just to tape the sound, just the sound, because the cacophony of the jungle has a musical quality that takes time to hear.