Blog 4 - The jungle trek

We were given a list of things to bring with us, most of which we already have but had to go to the market as who brings a torch on holiday with them??I also needed a jumper of some kind as we will be sleeping outside and it supposed to get quite cold - between 0 and 5 degrees.

So far, most of the people we have met are only trekking for 2 days which had us thinking maybe we were over exerting ourselves as neither of us are very fit and 3 full days trekking may be a little bit much.

The bus turns up at 9am and we are off.There are 2 German boys, Markus and Sandro from Berlin, a French family who have been sailing around the world for the last 7 years abut their boys are now reaching 18 and need to go to university in France so are now on their way home, another French couple who only lasted the morning of the first day and an English girl called Alison from Nottingham.

The first activity was white water rafting.The group split between 3 rafts. Our raft had me, Simon and the German boys.It seems that the guy steering our raft was a joker as he asked me if I wanted to steer which I did for all of 5 minutes before he pushed me in.It wasn't long though before everyone else was very wet.

We stopped for lunch which was surprisingly really nice and then off on a 5k trek into the jungle.5K doesn't sound far but with the back pack on and predominately up hill at a super quick pace, it soon became very difficult.We get to the camp just before dark.The camp is basically wooden huts without doors next to a waterfall.Simon takes a quick dip in the waterfall but it is absolutely freezing so it really was very quick.

The first night went really well, it involved lots of beer, a bamboo bong, more weed for the equivalent of £10 then you could imagie, a camp fire andmagic.It was however really cold at night so we didn't sleep so well and the waterfall was so loud, it was ridiculous.Also the toilet was a hole in the floor and ha an enormous spider camped outside

Day 2 is basically trekking all day (approx 20k) to approximately 3600 meters above sea level with a stop at lunchtime to see Dr Opium, home made guns, more bamboo bongs but instead of camping next to a waterfall, we were in a village in the jungle.The people in this village were amazing.They survive very happily with very little.There were 17 families and only 3 had electricity from solar panels. The night again was not great as it was very cold and at 3am the roosters and pigs wok up running underneath our camp.

Day 3 and we trekked another 5k in the morning to the elephant camp where we could then ride the elephants into the jungle and through the river.This was great.

It really was a great few days, lots of laughs, some really interesting people but we were absolutely exhausted afterwards.A hot shower and a soft quiet bed were waiting for us back at the hote