Trek - Day 3 and 4 - The Tough Get Going!

Waking up after a great night sleep in the hammocks, we all packed up our bags ready for trek day 4! Breakfast was yet again toast and jam with omelette, weird combination but it works- and its a million times better than, yes you guessed it, rice! Before we set off on our main trek we went on a 3 km stroll through the jungle to the largest limestone waterfall in Thailand. It was humungous and full of power from previous flooding! After a mini photo sesh we returned for our rice lunch ...YUM, then departed for our 9km trek through the muddy jungle terrain. To our surprise the sun graced us with its presence. At first we were all excited, but soon realised the sweat and burn lines were far from ideal. As we saw rice fields and bamboo huts emerging, we knew we were approaching the remote village which is only accessible by foot. When we arrived we set up our mosquito nets in the school hall, as on the previous night we had all been eaten alive by mosquito’s. We had all cooled down from our day of trekking, so we had to brace ourselves for the freezing cold bucket shower!- but it had to be done as lets face it, we smelt bad. (Ed. I can confirm that statement !) Next was dinner....more rice! But our card games soon lifted the mood, the pineapple and hot chocolate was a life saver as we knew the approaching day of trekking would be hell. (Ed. I’m sure there was some Black Magic going on that night too ) The next morning we woke up extra early to get a good head start as we knew it would be a long and very tough day of trekking! It wasn’t to disappoint!!! We had our regular jam smothered toast for our breakfast to prepare ourselves. 15km of boiling sun, heavy bags, blistered feet and mountainous jungle terrain proved incredibly difficult for us all. After 8 hours of trekking we proved just how tough us Royal lot are! Although we had a very tiring day we all stayed cheerful and positive- especially when lunchtime came as we ate noodles out of handmade bamboo bowls and chopsticks by the riverside. It revived us all for the gruelling afternoon, including climbing up rocky slopes, crossing single bamboo bridges and facing a life threatening black and silver cobra! Quote from Cliff: “The hardest jungle trek day ever on World challenge”. When we finally reached where we were staying we were rewarded with coke, yumyums and fresh sweetcorn- it definitely hit the spot! We then chilled and rested for the evening and had a lovely BBQ dinner. We were all so hyped for the elephant trekking the next day so we got an early night in the hope that time would go quicker if we were asleep! Sophie Duckworth & Gini Misselbrook