A beautiful minibus collected us and off we set for the jungle! We didn't realize how far it was, anyway an hour and a bit later, we arrived at the elephant camp. We had to wait for more elephants to come back before our group could go. So we wiled the time away, watching a lone one get taken down to the meager river , for a cool down. Th strainer scoops buckets of water and splashes her and then she starts sucking in water and spraying herself too!
We watched a colony of red fire ants scurrying up and down elephant ear plants, and after Douglas had been bitten, we stayed clear of any of them reaching us!!! Douglas had a horrible headache from the bite of one! And he never, ever gets headaches! :(
Eventually, we were up, and after climbing up the stand , we clambered onto the back of our elephant! There are piles and piles of padding underneath the seat... Our " safety belt" is a rope with tubing around it, tied on one side...like that was supposed to keep me from falling out!!! Anyways, I am really excited, and have been for a while...I want to ride an elephant! So with the trainer coming in from behind, we set off at a very sedated pace... We ambled along the side of a river, saw another lone elephant taking a break...passed a date plantation....a rubber tree plantation...( they slice a rhombus shape out of the bark , about a cm. deep and then at the bottom point they insert a v -shaped spout, that is hammered into the area and a cup is positioned underneath the spout to collect the rubber sap! ) and on we stroll! I am loving it, he has been so good and listened, and stopped when he was told to, went when he was supposed to. We started getting more and more into a jungle type setting, denser foliage, a a stream that we walked in...was just waiting for him to suck up water and squirt it at me... Wouldn't have been pretty!
We got to the half way mark and were given a bit of a break. We walked down to a beautiful waterfall, with a pond of clear water , fishes swimming about...no time for a swim though, even though I would have clearly loved to have jumped in!! I know I keep mentioning this, but it is crazy hot here!!! Onward we go, back onto the elephant and we set off back to camp. About 15 min into a return trip, we run into some more Trekkers coming our way, and a narrow path for just one elephant. Now at this point, I have been invited to climb off my seat and sit on the elephants neck...how cool is that?! So I am sitting very precariously on his neck, with nothing to hold onto, besides Douglas legs behind me. I am suppose to have my hands on his head which I was doing up until this point!
So here we are heading for a head on collision with another elephant. The trainer is yelling for him to stop, and he isn't interested in the least! To our right is a 3 foot embankment the the trainer is now trying to get him to climb up...no go!!! Why? Because he knows 3 meters down the lane, there is a nice little slope for him to climb up easily. The trainer is mad and starts prodding and poking...NOT a good scene at all... Now our elephant, with a name no one can pronounce, is MAD!!! SUPER MAD!!! And off he takes at a run, trumpeting and where am I ?! clinging to Douglas's legs behind me for dear life!!! Do you know how loud a trumpeting elephant is when you are right up there?LOUD, scary, terrifyingly, LOUD!!! My heart in my mouth, shaking like a leaf. I am ready to walk the remainder of the way!!! His ears are flat against his head, pinning my legs in the process!! Another 15 min and we are back in camp...my legs are weak and I am still shaking! Lol...funnier now that I am on solid ground! Not so at the time!!! ( news paper article the following day, an elephant in another camp had lost it, grabbed the person sitting on its neck with its trunk and thrown him against a rock cliff!!! Before charging away! ) thank heavens I read that afterwards!! Still fed it bananas on our return..only because I had promised my niece and nephew I would!!!
Off to lunch at a restaurant owned by a silver medalist in the 2004 Olympic boxer.. I forget his name... Anyway he has his gym there for training... Delicious Thai lunch... We got our rice wrapped in banana leaves and had been cooked in bamboo poles...not sure how that works, but it does!
And we are off to the river. To get there we have to pass through a mountain at a Buddhist temple/school/shrine. So there is incense being burnt , shrines, you name it. The mountain is beautiful, you walk through and on the other side it opens up to a river, where our rafters are ready to transport us down the river. We are each given a bag of fish food and into the rafts we go... The fish swarm around the rafts looking for food... You through food at them and they jump out the water at you!
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