More Culture, aren't we good!

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Today was another special day, up and out by 8.30 this time and in the car for the long journey to the Cuc Phong national park. Here we had a big bowl of noodle soup for breakfast and then walked the short distance to the Endangered Primate Rescue Centre for a half hour tour of the facilities, unfortunately they were also full so we brought Mark back out with us! The tour was great, their mission is to hold the primates until they can be released back into the wild. We spent a good portion of the tour watching one particular gibbon who put of a very impressive acrobatic show for us.

Next up we headed deeper into the national park to see the 'Caves of the Prehistoric Man'. Cue more climbing up some very steep and slippy steps. The caves were spectacular and luckily we had Mark's torch and the light from my camera! The caves extended far back into the mountain and at the very top opened up onto the top of the forest. Dale decided, quite wisely really, to not climb the trickier portions of the caves but we showed him the photos! Mark and I had a good old explore and disturbed a few thousand bats but made it safely back to Dale.

Tired from the climbing and the early start the driver took us to the last destination of the day, the "Thousand year old Tree', he chuckled as he told us just where it was though. A gentle 3km hike away. What he neglected to mention was that it was 3km vertically! Or so it seemed. After a little while in the jungle we started to feel, and look no doubt, like prehistoric men ourselves. The heat was pretty intense and we all enjoyed the millions of bugs trying to eat us, lay eggs on us and generally enter any open orifice they could find! Sweaty and tired we finally found the tree and it was incredible. An absolutely massive tree split in many parts and in its own little clearing. There is however a very short amount of time that can be spent successfully studying a tree so we headed on to get back to civilization. The funny thing is the path back also appeared to be vertical. We reassured ourselves that what goes up must eventually go down again but apparently that is not true in this part of the world! Days later we stumbled out of the forest, dazed and confused, to a very welcome beer and another large bowl of noodles and meat!

Feeling as if every bug had taken a piece of us we then piled back into the car and headed back to our hotel. We ate another great meal, this time rabbit was the order of the day and then waited for our bus to arrive to take us to our next destination!

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