If you have a "Things I Must Do in My Lifetime" list, visiting a rainforest should be near the top. When you're marveling at 200-year-old, 100-foot-tall strangler fig trees as butterflies streaked with impossible colors flutter past, you can't help but see that your place in the grand scheme of things isn't quite as grand as you thought. It's then that you understand that the rainforest existed long before the evolution of man, and--with a lot of help--will continue long after we're gone. Happily, one of the best ways to preserve it is tourism, which brings in much-needed dollars and thus reduces the allure of logging. It's what we in the trade call a two-fer: You get to gleefully follow jaguar tracks through the jungle and revel in the fact that you're helping these natural wonders endure.

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