19th April 2007
Finally got around to elephant treking this afternoon. We were picked up at the Organic coffee shop by a taxi after lunch and it was about a 40 min drive to the treking place in the North jungle of the island. This place is so lush with huge palm and plants everywhere especially as we got further into the middle of the jungle area. We must have used half a bottle of citronella spray and had doubled our daily dose of vitamins as although we had been told that the areas that the elephant camp were in are regularly sprayed for mosquitos we were not taking any chances.
When we arrived it was to a very primitive looking place and amazingly elephants everywhere, about 20. No cages or fences here! It was quite a shock at first to have one of these huge beasts walk past you only a foot away. We were given some bottles of water to drink and some freshly cut pineapple, which we all agreed tasted better than any pineapple we had ever eaten. Then it was up a ladder to a rickety looking platform to climb onto the elephants for a ride. What an experience!! Lovely trek through the jungle. We saw banana plants, grapefruit trees, rubber trees and more including the popular durian tree. For some reason it is extremely popular here. One French writer described the smell of the fruit once it is opened as 'the smell of the putrefying flesh of a dead animal'!! We have to agree, it's disgusting!! After an hours trek we returned back to feed the elephants from a huge bucket of bananas.
This was, we all agreed, the best thing we had done so far, even if we did arrive back looking like we had crawled through the jungle backwards!!!
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