Saturday, October 28, 2006


The Shangrila Lodge is a very nice place to stay. It has an incredible view and the rooms had more luxury then I would have expected from a jungle lodge, including private bathrooms with hot water. After a good breakfast we headed out with our rubber boots. Fortunately the rain had stopped. Again our path through the jungle was a little stream. There were no big waterfalls this time but canyons and caves. The canyons were so narrow at times that you had to squeeze yourself through them. At one point in one of these canyons it seemed that there was no going further since the only way was straight up about 2 meters. Our guide obviously didn’t think it was a problem but I didn’t see how we could possible get up there. Our guide showed us a technique to climb straight up in the narrow canyon, pressing our back against one side of the canyon, our legs and hands to the other. I was surprised that I could go up like that, but even more that people much older and less adventurous were able to do so as well. Although you can still walk in primary rain forest, there are not many animals you see. Most of them have been hunted down and those remaining are very careful not to cross paths with humans. Still we got to see many insects, beautiful butterflies, many bats in the caves and some tracks of bigger animals living in the forest. We got back to the lodge in time for lunch. Finally the sun came out now and after some relaxing on the hammock deck of the lodge we climbed down the steep cliff to go tubing down the river. As the things we did before, it was just as much adventure as getting to know the rainforest. We not only went canyoning on our walks, now we also went river rafting in tubes. These two days have certainly been very exiting and nobody got bored. After returning from the tubing we had some more hammock time and soon after enjoying a nice sunset and a dinner we went to bed listening to the music our guides were playing at night.
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