13th was the day we set out for our 3 day jungle trek. 10 of us crammed in the back of one of those ‘local busses’ that was really just a ute with a canopy on the back and a bench seat down either side. When JB and I got in there were two others already there. First up was the Canadian (NOT American!) Josh who was here because his travelling partners (3 girls - lucky bastard) decided to do cooking courses and he wanted something with a bit more spice. Then there was el presidente Jacob, I call him the President because the pommy bastard had an uncanny knack of winning at Arsehole (card game) and getting to wear the “President’s hat”.
The civilised lads among us were then outnumbered when two more poms got on, these two were Danny & Mark (the arsehole). So named because (obviously) he ended up wearing the ‘Arsehole’s hat’ almost as much as Jake got to be el presidente. In fact these two hats we speak of were each their own hats, the two of them just won (or lost) so much that their hat’s just kind of morphed into titles and got passed around to the winner (or loser) as required.
A bit of a drive and in piled a couple Hebrew speaking lads by the names of Miki & Ivan. Miki was a quiet sort of dude that didn’t have too much to say (in English at least), Ivan however was the Jay to his silent Bob - well ok, not to quite that extent but there was a bit of a yin yang thing happening there.
Lastly were the German duo Daniel & Petra (supergirl). Daniel I think got a bit ripped off here as Petra gained the title supergirl after deciding to wear their one big backpack containing gear for both of them for a while. Of course Daniel had it on the rest of the time but never really got any kudos for it. Matter of fact I seem to recall us giving him some shit for letting Petra carry it up the steep parts while he took care of it on the easier sections. This wasn’t warranted at all of course, but hey, you gotta give a bit of shit at times…
One more stop had us a little worried as we already numbered 10. The space was tight and we didn’t really want any more people crammed in there with us. It was all ok though as it was simply a stop to let an old gent with “tourist police” written on his shirt have a bit of a yarn to us. Seems he wanted to let us know that everything was on record and he knew who we were, where we were going, what our itinerary was and when we were expected back. He also went on to re-assure us that our guide (the rather unique Tong (or Tung, never was quite certain of the pronunciation) was certified as he’d done a cooking course. Now personally I would have been a lot more re-assured to hear about other skills such as navigation, bush survival, first aide….but no, seems cooking was the important bit. This was great material though for a series of jokes the entire three days all centering around how a cooking course seemed to be the only qualification needed to lead a trekking expedition.
An hour or two of bumping along in the back of the ute and a quick stop to a local market for some last minute essentials and we were at the start of the trek. This was the elephant ride stage and we were herded up large bamboo structures with little platforms on to get on to the elephants. This was pretty cool and JB & I seemed to luck out with one of the faster beasts of the pack. We were about last in the line of elephants heading out but our guy seemed intent on getting up the front of the pack - he must have been a tuk tuk driver in a previous life.
Then, after maybe 45min to an hour on the back of the beast we hopped off for a quick stumble through the jungle to the river crossing area. This was a pretty cool cage/flying fox setup that we loaded into two at a time and just simply whizzed across the top of the river on:
Then the pain began.
My problem was that I’d assumed that these jungle treks were geared to the average overweight lazy western tourist type. So me being fairly comfortable that my level of fitness is higher than average decided to load up on camera gear, lots of camera gear, heavy camera gear.
That night around the fire I asked Tong if he ever had people that simply couldn’t make it up the mountain. He replied with:
*giggle* “Yes yes yes, sometimes they big and fat” *puffs out cheeks and curves hands out to show girth* “And we start warm up trek and they stop and say “cannot do - want money back” but I no give” *more giggling* “They say “but travel agent said I can do” and I say “Well you should know, jungle trek not like the shopping!!” “
Bloody oath it’s not like the shopping…
Anyways after a VERY painful couple of hrs we got to where we were going to stay for the night - one of the hill tribe villages. The night was passed by our rather intoxicated host giggling about fat tourists, playing match stick games and lamenting that out of the 10 of us not a one could play the guitar.
