Saturday 15 August 2015

Day 293: Not a happy chappy

I awoke at dawn, having slept quite fitfully – although I was rarely awake for long. Lying quietly in my hammock, waiting for the others to awaken, I finally found a comfortable way to lie, but couldn't get back to sleep thanks to the very heavy rain pounding on the corrugated-iron roof above. After tea and noodles for breakfast we all packed up and walked down towards the village, spotting a couple of large bright-orange squirrels on the way. After we had passed through the village, the guide stopped us and offered us a choice – we could either take the easy way home or the hard way. We asked her what the difference was but her English wasn't quite up to the job. We kept pushing, however, and she eventually told us that if we went back via the 'hard way', we would see 'a tree'. Unsurprisingly, given these options, we decided to take the easy way, but after we had been walking for a while, it occurred to us that the hard way had been through the forest, while the easy way was along the road. And so the second day of our overnight trek took us along a flat dirt road past cleared fields – not exactly what I had hoped for when I signed up and paid my hard-earned cash.















When we reached the turn-off to the waterfall, which was to be our last stop on the trek, I said that I was going on alone. My completely saturated new Converse shoes were doing horrible things to my little toes and I was properly fuming at missing having missed out on seeing more forest, so I just wanted the 'trek' to be over. And I was in luck – not long after I left the others, our offsider pulled up on a motorbike and offered me a lift back into the village. Once there, I dropped the rucksack at the centre and trudged back to the bungalow, where I had a quick rinse. 


In the afternoon, we all had a bit of an explore around the village and then walked back to the visitor centre. We had been less than impressed by the dinner on offer at the centre, so earlier in the day, Kate had enquired about eating at the little restaurant where we'd had beers with Ramesh the night before last. The woman there said that we could eat for $2 per person (it's $3 at the centre) as long as we gave her some notice, so Kate walked up there with Zoe and did so. The woman offered Zoe the opportunity to help prepare the meal, so she stayed behind while Kate returned to the centre. Then, as we walked back to the bungalow, the woman from the restaurant appeared on a bike with Zoe on the back – they were on their way to the market to buy the ingredient's for tonight's dinner - and Sarah opted to join them.

When dinner time came around, Kate and I walked to the restaurant with Kat, where we found the girls playing with the restaurant owner's young daughter. The food that they had helped to cook was absolutely delicious, a really tasty pork and coconut milk curry and a lovely stir fry – a far cry from the characterless dishes served up at the visitor centre. Unfortunately, we had forgotten to bring torches with us, so when dinner was done, we had to walk back to the bungalow in the dark. We were worried about stepping in the cow pats that dotted the road, but it was actually the rocks that emerged from it that should have concerned us - Sarah manage to stub her big toe quite badly on one of them. Back at the bungalow, we found a big Tokay gecko climbing around in the rafters – the others had got rather a large shock this morning as it announced its presence very loudly from somewhere in the ceiling. 



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