There were quite a lot of kids around, and dogs. They ran around chasing each other on the red & brown colored rock hard dirt.
Here’s one of the dogs guarding the shoes of the villagers, and a photo of one of the enormous flowers from the tree that grew just outside our hut. They were almost as big as handballs.
This is the view from the platform just outside our hut. It was all built on poles as the hill was so steep. Not bad at all :-)
Manuel, a guy from the trek group and me went to have a look around the village while the others were catching their breath, and a couple of beers. It was really cool to experience this, it is hard to convey what it feels like to walk around this village with this great view, sun, and around 25 degrees.
After a while the sun set in the horizon behind the hills, and it got dark in matter of minutes. The colors were amazing, and the sounds from the animals intensified as it got darker.
Our guide and some villagers prepared dinner for us in our bamboo hut and afterwards we built a fire out on the platform in front of it.
You could easily see the stars out there as there was no light that disturbed. We had a couple of beers while our multi talanted guide got out his guitar and sang some songs. In the end one of the village cats fell asleep on my legs, and it was just a perfect wrap up of that day.
Later on a couple of guys from another trekking group joined us around the camp fire, they came from Kalininggrad, pretty cool to have the opportunity to meet someone from there. It was interesting to hear about the life over there in the Russian enclave, cut off from the rest of the country.
After a pretty cold night under damp blankets in the hut, I woke up just in time to watch the sunrise. Amazing, don’t you think?
Just after this we went walking over to the other side of the hill where you could see the milky fog that filled the bottom of the valley slowly drift by.
I found the two cats who visited us in the evening before sleeping on the fireplace, apparently looking to soak up the last heat from the fire. Meanwhile, at this hour the roosters and the chickens had waken up most of the village.
When I came back from the morning walkabout in the village we had a pretty good breakfast preparing us with some energy for the trek down the mountain.
We went trekking again, this time downhill, which was a bit of a challenge to my poor old shoes which had the sole practically completely blank, providing something close to zero friction towards the dry soil.
After skidding and sliding down the steep slippery mountain in my coq sportif’s (which weren’t all that sportif anymore), we arrived at a waterfall. Here we took a dip in the pool created in front of it to get rid of the dust and sweat accumulated during the trek.
A shot down stream in the waterfall. It was easy to get good shots in the water thanks to the waterproof Xperia Active! :-)
This is what a natural shower looks like. Manuel to the left tried it out first, to the right you can see me with my hand sticking out.
After drying we went on following the stream down to a where it grew a bit bigger.
Time for some rafting!
We dressed up trying to look our best in life jackets and cool helmets. Honestly I think the helmets wore us as protection rather than the other way around. Anyways, we took off determined to be the first boat reaching the goal.
Armed with plastic paddles and snacks we managed to get down to the base camp, where we started the trek, in style. It wasn’t that crazy a ride, but it was definitly worth it. Especially as it was all included in the 2-day package which ended on 1.100 bath with meals included, a ridiculosly low price if you ask me.
After an “all you can eat” Pad Thai feast at the camp we boarded the truck and went back to Chiang Mai. Tired, but happy! :-)
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