I was up and at the
centre for a 7am breakfast – of fried noodles and vegetables once
again – in preparation for my overnight trek into the forest. My
companions for the trek were to be three Belgians – a young couple
and another girl (Kat), who was travelling alone. Once we had
finished eating, we were all given a backpack containing a hammock, a
blanket and three litres of water. Our guide was a young local girl,
and she was joined by a guy of a similar age to act as general
offsider. After I had bought some batteries for my head torch from
the shop next door (the one at which I had enquired about batteries
for my head torch yesterday, receiving nought but a blank look and a
shake of the head), we all set off up the road towards the waterfall.
After walking for about a quarter of an hour, we turned off into some
pasture, where the forest had been cleared to make way for cattle.
Our path took us up a gentle hill but it felt like hard work as we
were out in the open with the sun beating down on us. But when we
stopped for a water break, we had a nice view over the surrounding
countryside.
Not long after, we
got out of the sun as we entered a patch of forest. This was clearly
a man-made forest, however, the trees planted in clear rows. They
were a type of Acacia, and many were in flower, filling the
air with a thick, sweet scent. Not long after we had entered the
forest, we were forced to step aside as a couple of motorbikes went
past, bumping along the path we were following. As we left the forest
and entered another grassy area, I looked up to see a wall of black
cloud blocking out the sky to our left. I turned to Kat and said,
'Looks like our good luck is about to end.' No sooner had the words
left my mouth than spots of rain began to fall around us, quickly
getting more frequent. We all quickly grabbed our raincoats and
ponchos from our backpacks and were soon trudging through the newly
appeared streams that were running down the path, the rain hammering
down on our heads. The downpour was reasonably brief, however, and by
the time we stepped under the rainforest canopy it was essentially
over. We walked along a wide path through thick forest, much of it
quite scrubby, but scattered about the undergrowth rose a few tall,
ancient trees, their upper branches festooned with epiphytes,
including some truly massive staghorn ferns. Again, we periodically had to step aside to let motorbikes pass by.
Around midday, we
stopped at a little shelter beside a clear stream for lunch. The
guide and offsider began trying to start a fire on which to cook,
using a machete to cut away the wet wood from some logs to get at the
dry stuff beneath and a piece cut from a strip of rubber as a
firelighter. After a few false starts they got it going and started
to prepare the meal. While they worked, we all sat around the stream.
I noticed a leech looping slowly up my jeans and when I pointed it
out, the others all leapt up and started to check themselves. The
little sunny patch we were in had attracted a number of yellow
butterflies, which stopped to suck up the salt from our shoes. There
was also another strange flying creature that kept flitting by –
flying in such a jerky, erratic, chaotic manner that it seemed to be
just a strange, blurring of the air. Eventually, it stopped on the
sand nearby and I discovered that it was a day-flying moth, with
transparent 'windows' in its wings and lovely long 'tails' on its
wings.
After our rice and
pork stir fry lunch, we set off again. Just as we began walking, I
felt a sharp pain on the inside of my right foot. Thanks to my time
working in the rainforest in north Queensland I knew instantly what
it was – a leech had bitten me and was now settling in feast on my
blood. I didn't want to delay the others, so I just walked on.
After a while, we
emerged from the rainforest and into a large open, sandy area, where
we stopped for a water break. A stream flowed through nearby, waters
turned a rich tea-brown by tannins leaching through the sandy soil.
When I went over to investigate, I discovered that growing along its
banks were numerous pitcher plants, belonging to at least three
different species. When I was young, I went through a period where I
was really into carnivorous plants, so this was a bit of a thrill for
me, as I had never seen pitcher plants growing in the wild before.
As we set off again,
another set of dark clouds released another load of rain on us. As we
walked through the downpour, I couldn't stop thinking about the fact
that I had forgotten to bring a spare set of dry clothes and although
my raincoat was keeping most of the rain off me, it certainly wasn't
keeping me dry. Again, this storm was a passing one, and as we walked
through more rainforest, it petered out. By now I was getting
increasingly frustrated. Our guide deserved the name only because she
knew the way from the village to our camp for the night and back
again. She was clearly not the wildlife guide that I had been
expecting. She made no attempt to reveal anything of the forest to
us, showed no interest in any sounds in the trees around us, and
found no animals nor interesting plants for us.
After a while, the
path started to take us downhill and before long, we walked out of
the forest and into an area filled with high grass. The path led us
down and past a very basic school building then across a bridge and
into a small village. Its inhabitants appeared to mostly make their
living by cultivating bananas, as that was all that seemed to be
growing in the open areas that they had cleared. As we walked along
the muddy road past their rudimentary wood and thatch huts, it
started to rain again, this time even more heavily than before, and
we stopped in a rudimentary shop to escape. We were joined under the
cover of the awning by one very sad-looking little chicken – like
many of the other chickens we had seen around the local villages, it
had lost most of its feathers and it looked as miserable as I was
beginning to feel.
When the rain
finally eased off a little we set off again, walking up a steep,
muddy, slippery hill and back into the forest. After a while, we
stopped and dumped our gear and walked down a very steep and slippery
path to a waterfall. This one was a bit more spectacular than the one
we had visited yesterday, the water shooting over it with a mighty
roar. After climbing back up, we walked through a bit more forest and
then, finally, we reached our final destination – a basic camp with
a few corrugated-iron-roofed huts made from lashed-together poles.
The offsider helped us to string up our hammocks, which came with a
built-in mosquito net, creating quite a comforting little cocoon. One
of the Belgians came back from the little toilet shed with a
surprising piece of news – inside was a proper ceramic toilet –
set over a hole in the ground and flushed with a bucket of water, but
a proper ceramic toilet nonetheless. I released my poor wizened feet from the confines of my new but now soaked Converse and sure enough, a leech bite was leaking anti-coagulent-laced blood from my right foot. Then it was time for dinner –
a noodle, egg and vegetable dish. Our guide had carried the raw eggs
the whole way here in a little plastic bag. After we had finished
eating we sat up talking by candlelight on the rather uncomfortable
floor of the hut while I picked grass seeds from my socks. And then I
climbed into my hammock in my wet t-shirt (and, thankfully, the dry
boardshorts I had brought so I could swim in the other waterfall
tomorrow), pulled my fluffy blanket over me, and did my best to find
a comfortable position in which to sleep.
(While I was away
getting rained on in the rainforest, Kate organised for the girls to
spend some time at the local school. The idea was that they would
stay for the whole four-hour afternoon session, but two hours later,
they arrived back at the bungalow. It transpired that they had been
so horrified by the chaos on the classroom – the teacher apparently
made little or no effort to control the children, who shouted and ran
around the room at will – that they had just got up, walked out and
made their way back to the bungalow.)
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