Jungle Trekking on our Tropical Island

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We got talking to an Australian couple, Moi and Dave, in the restaurant one night and soon realised we had a lot in common and ended up going for dinner most nights together.

A few nights later, over a beer, the four of us made the decision to get up bright and early next day and do the jungle trek over to the other side of the island before the temperature rose too high.



Next day after drenching ourselves in mosquito repellent and equipping ourselves with huge bottles of water, we set off. The trail was not so difficult to begin with, dry and not too steep but we quickly came to the jungle proper, fortunately the path was well marked with a rope that came in very useful when we got to the steep paths.



An hour and a half later we found ourselves on a tiny beach. We stripped off our sweat drenched clothes (nice!) and jumped in the sea with our snorkels. Within a few minutes I spotted my first shark of this trip. It was only small but definitely a shark, Stan and Moi saw it too a while later. The cove was filled with canyons, underwater archways and steep drop offs and made for an interesting snorkel.



The path back supposedly followed the dry riverbed, however the riverbed was strewn with huge tree trunks smouldering away from a recent fire, as the breeze picked up flames would appear again. We searched around for a way to get us past the burning bit and hoped the path would improve. After some scrambling around we managed to by-passed the fire and set off along the riverbed, it wasn’t dry at all, more like a mosquito-ridden pool that made the going tough, even with the rope to help scramble up the banking we ended up with wet feet and a collection of scrapes and bruises. Still it was fun and something to laugh about later that evening!

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