Trekking through the green jungle 🌴

Good morning to Germany,

Last night I was too exhausted to even write a sentence 😩!

We were picked up from the hotel again at 7:15 am. There were 6 of us on this tour and the group was great. We were transported in a jeep. We sat in the back on the loading area! I thought to myself, hm, maybe they want to give us a certain jungle feeling! After a little over 1 hour of driving, we were dropped off in some mountain village. We were equipped with plenty of water because it was extremely hot again! Just right for me 😩!

Two guides led us. One guide went ahead and the second guide stayed at the back of the group. We went deeper and deeper into the jungle through a small trail 🙈. Luckily, I was wearing long pants, otherwise I would have started crying after 3 minutes. You can't imagine, there was no wide path where you could hike comfortably. 😩NO, the path was maybe as wide as a hand 🙈! I had all kinds of plants on my body and face 😶. Then, suddenly, we stopped and the guide said, "Oh, look a big spider!!!!!!!!!!!! 😩😩😩☠️😩😩😩☠️! Luckily, Karin from the group was just as afraid of spiders as I was!!! Yes, I'm getting chills again, those spiders were so disgustingly big 🙈. I immediately asked myself, why am I doing this shit😩, sorry, but that was my first thought! Then we continued and we had to crawl almost the entire way because there was a spider's web above us. 🙉

Then the guide saw a thick liana and we could play Tarzan on it! That was pretty cool. After that, we walked on a wider path towards a waterfall, and after a short time, we could already hear it 😬! Suddenly, the guide stopped and in front of us was a female elephant with her baby! No one else was around. The guide made some noises to scare them away! But the elephants 🐘 didn't intend to give way! The female elephant also flapped her ears and the guide said, okay, this is the moment when we have to turn around quickly and take a different path 🙃! Before we turned around, I asked him if he could be so kind and take a photo of me 😬. But he should be careful 😜! And he did it 👍!

Wow, now we had to walk all the way back up, which we had previously walked downhill. It was exhausting in the heat! Suddenly, we went straight through the jungle! Suddenly, I was quite upset about the female elephant with her baby! Straight through the jungle 😩without a designated path and it was quite steep downhill. Did I mention that the downhill passages were super slippery? 🙁 Yes, and suddenly both of my sneakers slipped and I fell on my back like a ladybug 😬. Hm, actually I didn't want to get up anymore. If this had happened to me in a park in Germany, I would have laughed and eventually stood up! But there in the jungle, I didn't feel like laughing and I certainly didn't want to lie there!!!!! So within 2 seconds, I was back on my feet and shook my body vigorously. As I continued walking, I tried not to think about whether something was crawling on me 😩.

Since we had deviated from our original path, we had to go through a small village with elephants and there was elephant poop everywhere, and I fell on the ground again! Daniela said to me, 'Oh Anke, you were lucky'! 'Why?' There was a big pile of poop next to me. I didn't really care! I wanted to go to the rice fields and I was fed up with the jungle 🙁! Finally, we reached the waterfall, where we all went swimming and had lunch there. We had fried rice wrapped in banana leaves. It was really great. 😊

After lunch, we finally headed towards the rice fields and the village. Unfortunately, we walked through them very quickly, but it still looked beautiful and I was slowly getting in a better mood 😊. A guide gave Daniela and me a flower, and we were supposed to put it in our hair 😬! Done! Then we crossed the rice fields and suddenly we were back in the jungle 🙈! I just thought, this can't and shouldn't be happening! Will this nightmare ever end🙁. Somehow, the tour description was completely different! But there was no other choice, I had to go through it. Then, another spider appeared, this time with its web very close above us. I was walking last in front of the guide and I just thought, what a shit🙁! Shortly after, I wanted to take a photo and turned my head to the side and saw something dark from the corner of my eye! It even touched me! I screamed and turned around frantically and screamed even more because I felt something on my face! Then, the flower fell to the ground, and I knew what had touched me! 😩! It calmed me down a lot that it wasn't a spider, but still my mood was down again!

The guide and Daniela found it all very funny, they couldn't stop laughing. It's nice that I could contribute to their amusement 😜!

Then we walked a bit more through the jungle to the next waterfall. There, we were separated from the group because we were the only ones who did the bamboo rafting. The guide said it would take another 15 minutes to walk to the rafting site 😬. Yes, you go ahead, I got a terrible headache. We stopped several times to take pictures of the surroundings 😶. No more stress in the last 15 minutes!

Finally, we reached the riverbank and our raft was ready. The ride was absolutely amazing. The raft was about 3 meters long and consisted of 9 thick bamboo poles. We sat in the middle on these poles, and the captain of the raft stood at the very front. He guided the raft through the river with a long pole. We got wet at every rapid we passed. We had to duck our heads several times because long branches hung over the river. After a 35-minute ride, the tour was over. That was a nice ending!

When we arrived at the hotel late in the evening, I just wanted to shower and go to bed 🙁! I haven't been this exhausted in a long time🙉! When I lay in bed and closed my eyes, all I saw were spiders!

My conclusion - never, never, never, ever go on a tour through any jungle!!!!!!!!!

Best regards from Anke

PS: Daniela would never say 'never' 😜

Best regards from her too 😊