Edit: After writing, I'm not sure this counts but it was a nice reason to write this:

I was hiking up a trail in Glacier National Park with my girlfriend when all of a sudden a deer emerged from the woods. It stopped ten feet in front of us and looked intently at us. Then it walked back down the hill, off of the trail a few feet, stopped and then starred at us again. It kept walking a bit and then looking at us as if to say, "well, are you coming or not?"

I followed.

The deer moved more quickly through the brush than I and I had to quicken my pace to a light jog. I was wearing Teva sandals which made this difficult. At one point I attempted to jump up and over a large log. The log buckled under the pressure of my foot and instantly, my right leg was knee deep in rotted wood. When I pulled my leg free a large shard of wood was stuck in my right inside foot under the ankle. Also, my ankle was sprained. I lay there in pain, bleeding. A lot.

I was too heavy for my girlfriend to help carry and the trail was too jagged and rocky for me to one-leg hop down. We decided to send her for help.

Why was it scary? Because laying there on the trail I thought to myself, "are bears like the sharks of the forest? Can they smell blood and if so, are the prone to attack stoned hikers?"

She returned about a half hour later with two rangers. They escorted me down and I ended up being the first ever patient at the newly built Glacier National Park emergency clinic.

My girlfriend was pre-med, considering surgery. We told the physicians assistant this at the clinic and he insisted that she watch him remove the shrapnel from my leg. She came over and watched and when he pulled it out..... "BOOM" she fainted.

She ended up going to culinary school instead.

The only times I can remember being really afraid while traveling were when I felt responsible for people I was with. Incidentally, like thenewgreen's, this one involves hiking.

In high school I was hiking in the Monteverde Cloud Forest Reserve with some other students and a teacher, on what was supposed to be an ecology field trip, but was really more of a cultural and international experience. On the way up, we'd stopped to take a dip in a natural pool fed by a little waterfall, just off of some rapids before getting serious about the hike, when suddenly a coral snake washed right into the middle of the pool. Fortunately, it was quickly swept downstream. When we got to the shelter at the top of the trail, we had a look at the medical supplies and of course, all the antivenin had expired. Anyway, we all decided it would be a good idea to keep an eye out for snakes.

The thing about Costa Rica is that everything is so damned green that it's hard to see anything for the first hour or so. Once the eyes adjust, one can pick out all kinds of activity; green ants moving round, green land crabs, green birds, green fruits, green insects, etc. Everything that isn't green, is brown and is camouflaged to look like leaf litter or bark, including some truly astounding moths the size of robins. I heard one of these things fly into a screen and it sounded like someone had thrown a tennis ball.

The next day, we are heading back down and we were all spread out along the trail. I was with, I think two other boys younger than me, kind of plodding along in that mind-numbed state that comes with really long hikes, the kind that's hard to shake and results in mistakes; earlier I'd slipped or stumbled down a slope and stopped myself with my hands (which you should never do in the jungle) instead of my feet, finding only the thorny trunk of some kind of tree, so my hands were bruised and nicked. Fortunately, that tree wasn't poisonous or anything.

At one point, we stopped to get a bite as we were all flagging. When we'd got our gear back on we started walking again until I stopped. I couldn't figure out why I'd stopped, nor explain it to my friends until I was just able to make out against the leaf litter, a fer-de-lance, or a pit viper, poised to strike. I'd say it was about 12 feet away, which sounds like a lot, but considering the lunge of a snake, it felt really, really close.

At that point, I think we were still about 6 miles from where we wanted to be and we only had very limited first-aid kits and of course, no antivenin. If one of us got bitten, then the other two would have to carry the third one down. I should mention that one of the others was a fairly . . . chubby boy and the other one was built like a popsicle stick and I was about 8 inches taller than both of them and probably 60-70 lbs. (~25-30 kg.) heavier than the thin one. We were far enough away and spread out enough that it was reasonable to assume that no help could be counted on to get there in time. Also, that snake's venom is well documented as causing necrosis if left untreated for long enough and some species have even been observed to spit venom.

Clearly, it had seen us and our tromping had agitated it, so we figured that the best thing to do was to stay still and hope for it to cool off, which was not guaranteed as they are known to be unpredictable and aggressive. Of course, in the meantime, I was looking around to make sure there were no other snakes nearby.

After what seemed like an hour, the snake finally moved off. For the rest of the hike down, we kept our eyes out for snakes and tried to make as much noise as we could to advertise our presence so that any nasties could give us a wide berth.

Other than snakes, Costa Rica and Monteverde are really, really cool.