Day 3 began with what we thought was a 15 minute walk to a nearby beach. It ended up being an hour long trek through the jungle. The sweat poured from our bodies as we walked the path that lead us into the jungle, up a steep hill, directly into the mosquitos lair, past a monitor lizard, through the back packers bungalows (meaning wooden boxes on stilts furnished with barely a mat on the floor) and finally to the beach. Before reaching the beach we began to get nervous as it was drawing near the time we had been told a boat would pick us up to take us to Krabi for our elephant trekking adventure. Upon reaching the beach I found a group of boat taxi guys and asked them how much they would charge to taek us back to our beach. They laughed and told me just to walk around the bend and we would be at our beach. Getting there would require us to walk through the water and boulders. So, we followed the boulders partially buried by the water that reached mid thigh, climbed up and over some of the large rocks, tried to keep balance with the waves doing their best to throw us off balance and finally we reached the beach close to our resort. Unfortunately, in the process, we lost Cheri's IPhone as it was in a pocket of her board shorts and drown.
Luckily, we got back to the hotel just in time to catch the boat to Krabi. We arrived to the location of our elephant trek and the elephants were eager and waiting for us. We immediately hopped on and headed out for our hour long trek. We started off with me in the lead seated comfortably on the bench strapped to the back of my elephant and Cheri and Nate sharing an elephant behind me. Almost immediately my elephant began searching for food. She ate vines growing along the jungle floor, tore branches off of young trees, whatever she could find went in her mouth. I looked over my shoulder and found that Cheri and Nate were having a similar experience. For an hour we trekked around the jungle perched atop our elephants as they wandered about happy not to be hauling logs. At one point my mahout (elephant driver) asked if I'd like to sit on the elephant's neck. This is my favorite part of elephant rides. I climbed on the neck and the mahout dismounted. What he did next started off as cute but soon became creepy. He began talking to the elephant and whispering sweet nothings to her. he pet her affectionately and gave her lots of kisses and hugs. It turned creepy when this went on, and on, and on and then started chewing on her ear! NO, I'm NOT kidding! I'm totally serious. He really went on and on and on. Finally, he pealed himself off her and we continued on our way. We turned around and began to make our way back when in front of my eye s slithered a big 'ole snake! I was so grateful to be so high off the ground. He slithered into the growth and disappeared.
We made our way back to the beginning without falling off (despite some close calls for both Cheri and I) got off of the elephants and then went to get bananas to thank the elephants for toting us around. We watched as one of the elephants walked into pool of water in the nearby stream and bathed. The experience was a fun one and, as fun things often do, it came to an end. It was time to head back to the pier and back to the resort.
At the pier we found there was just one other couple waiting for the boat and we needed 8
people for the boat to leave the pier. We waited over 30 minutes and then talked to the other couple to see if they were interested in pitching in some extra money so we could pay the captain to take us back. They agreed and off we went.
Mangoes and sticky rice was the perfect way to finish off the adventure.
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