The Most PAINFUL Sting In The World! Traveling Colombia

This week, join us as we discover the excitement to be found in the hills of Medellin, Colombia! That's right, we're in South America and we have stumbled across the most painful insect known to man. The tarantula hawk wasp has the most painful sting in the animal kingdom, scoring a whopping four points on the Schmidt Pain Index! What we don't mention in this week's travel blog is how we stumbled upon this terrifying insect. It's too good of a story to pass up, so I'll fill you in now! Picture this: the two of us out in the forests of Santa Elena, Medellin. High in the foothills of the Andes at 2500 meters/8400 feet. So not only are we jet lagged from our flight across the Atlantic, but also a bit head achy and short of breath from the altitude. Sea level to cloud forest is quite the shock! But despite our tired bodies asking us for a nap, we decided to push through our sluggish states and stretch our legs to see what the eucalyptus forest had to offer us. A few miles in, a metallic blue insect with red wings caught our eye. We had no idea what this was, and no cell service to inquire, so we did what any curious hiker might do and tried to get closer to our curious specimen. Perhaps we could scoop it up on a stray leaf or fallen branch and have a good inspection. Lucky for us, this South American insect is not interested in eating gringos for lunch, and only has it's sights set on huge venomous spiders. The blasted things kept flying away from us! And in our naivety, we kept running closer. And closer. And closer. Chasing them around like a toddler at their first soccer game who's just spotted a colorful butterfly. By the time we got home, we'd nearly forgotten about the thing, and it would probably have been better if we did! Now every time we go out walking into the thick cloud forests of Medellin, we're hyper aware of these little guys. And as is the case with nearly all insects, they couldn't care less about us. They're not aggressive, and do everything in their little bug bodied power to avoid us big stomping humans. Funnily enough, a few days later we went out hiking with some locals, and as we passed by an area that was particularly inundated with what we now knew to be * The Most Painful Insect In the World * , we pointed them out and told them what we had learned, and they were completely shocked to hear that these lovely blue wasps had such a terrifying reputation, and also completely unconcerned. They'd been living their whole lives in the foothills of the Andes and had never once heard of anyone being stung by these beautiful creatures. So now you know for when you too decide to travel to Colombia! Yes these guys have a scary reputation, but if you don't bother them, they won't bother you! Or as you see in this video.. even if you bother them, they still won't bother you! I'm not sure what you need to do to get stung by one of these, but we're not interested in finding out. Stick around to see what we get up to in the next weeks as we put out some different travel adventure blogs than what you're used to from us! The Andes mountains have so much to offer us, and Medellin is just our first stop as we make our way around Colombia.