We get up pretty early for a huge breakfast..we’re talking a whole watermelone, 3/4 loaf of bread + a huge dish of something else…my foot is so sore (I can hear my Mum saying “why do you play those silly games?”) so i strap it up tight and hope for not too many hills.
So we set off…what’s worse than hills for a sore ankle…crossing a river with round, slippery rocks. We cross this river not once…but probably 20 times…i seriously lost count. We’d cross, walk along the bank a bit and then have to cross again. It’s still raining a bit so all the tracks are also really slippery.
We walk/cross the river for a few hours and then go cross-country till we reach a hut for lunch. Lots of food AGAIN..and then we’re off. This strech is quite trecherous…really narrow footing and very slippery. By now the guides have worked out my ankle is sore so on a lot of the stupidly slippery stuff they help me across.
We reach a flat patch and they say we are almost at the end. So now i work on the theory that the sooner i finish the sooner i can not walk on my foot. So I decide it’s time to walk through the pain..and go into fast walking mode…so i’m off with my foot throbbing..knowig that it’ll be the end soon. I reach the road..yay…and then we wait at the driver’s house an hour while he has lunch..doh!
Then it’s an hour ride in the back of the ute back to Chiang Doa Nest. 1/2 way we say goodbye to our fantasic guides. We get to the nest and are greeted by the host who offers us towels, soap and shampoo so we can have a shower. We’re sweaty, muddy and wet with sopping shoes so I feel like hugging her. So we have a nice hot shower (boy did that feel good) and then sit down at her restaurant for some coffee and grab some food while we wait for our ride back to Chiang Mai.
We say goodbye to our gracious host and thank her for a great trek (it was really good even though i did my ankle in and we walked through rain for 3 days). The good thing about it raining was we didn’t have to walk through 40 degree heat..always a plus. Then it’s close to a 2 hr ride in the back of a covered ute to our hotel. Then it’s sleep time…so good to be in a bed etc after 3 days.