Don't got chasing waterfalls... but do ride elephants!

On Day 4 of our trip we had breakfast (spoiler alert: every morning we eat breakfast. Sorry. I never intended my blog to be about eating breakfast, but here we are.) And then we headed out to the waterfall that Mel and DJ had seen before us and recommended. It took about an hour to get to but it was a beautiful drive!

Sometimes I drive my husband crazy. Sometimes he drives me crazy. And when we’re on vacation, there are no exceptions to these facts. So. The first crazy moment of our trip was on day 4 when we reached the start of the trail and I insisted that we stop to put on bug spray. Please note: we are about to hike through a jungle. To a waterfall. This island is covered in mosquitos and I was pretty sure the jungle was a breeding place for the bloodsuckers. So I asked George to get the bug spray out of the backpack (which he is carrying). He mumbles something. We walk a few more yards and I can feel one bite my leg. “George! Please give me the bug spray.” He kind of ignores me again until I am very insistent. He finally stops, gets the bug spray out and then rants on and on for a minute or two about how I always take for-ev-er to get ready and it’s going to take us for-ev-er to get to the waterfall. Uhhhh--Pardon me for not wanting to be eaten alive or contract West Nile Virus. Right?

So he huffs a little bit (typical married stuff) and walks a few yards ahead of me throughout this hike.  But then we’re hiking, and hiking and hiking. He’s still ahead of me, and the trail gets a little narrower, we stop seeing people, there are more fallen trees, vines (which I’m sure are actually giant snakes hanging from trees… hey—I saw the jungle book) it gets muddier and scarier and the terrain becomes more difficult to climb. Finally George disappears from sight for a little while until I see him coming back down the mountain. He said he ran up really high and he thinks we’re getting further and further away from the waterfall, and he also thinks the trail ended. We made up and began the descent down this slippery mountain. Eventually we see another couple through the trees and find a clearing in the waterfall with a beautiful view. We dabbled in the water and took some pictures and just soaked in the scenery. We loved it.

So once we began hiking down we found a point in the trail not long after our bug spray spat where we should have gone right, but instead we went left. Lesson: Don’t argue when you’re hiking in the jungle. It will cloud your judgment and vision. We could have gotten very lost or eaten by bears. (Ok, maybe not bears. But you never know.)

We had lunch at the bottom  of the waterfall, and near the entrance to the elephant trekking! (YAY!) It was one of the best meals we had in Thailand! Mmmm!

Then we paid to ride our elephant. Her name was Aikooky (I made up the spelling) and the elephant mahout (ma-hoot) was ‘Jack’, like Captain Jack Sparrow. (His words, not mine). Kooky was 25 years old, and had one baby who also lived with her. She eats 300kilos of food a day (which is about 650lbs) and I’m not sure what to make of this fact. I just Googled how much elephants eat and discovered at the Smithsonian National Zoological Park  “Our elephants each eat between 125 and 175 pounds of food a day. The bulk of their diet is hay. They also eat fruits, vegetables, and a fortified pellet food. In the wild, where they must expend a great deal more energy to find food, elephants eat two to three times this amount of plant material, from grass to trees.”  (http://nationalzoo.si.edu/animals/asianelephants/elephantfaq.cfm) The elephants we saw were certainly not wild, so I don’t really know what to tell you, except she was big. And pooped a lot while we rode her, so we know she ate a bunch.

We had to climb up on a platform with stairs to get on the elephant’s back, and Jack sat on her neck, while we sat in a chair strapped around her. She didn’t seem to mind us being up there and even sniffed me with her trunk when I got on. She flapped her ears a few times and I was pretty sure we were going to fly away like Dumbo at any second. Except she was huge. But hey—so are C-130’s, and they fly.

We enjoyed our 30 minute walk through the jungle on Aikooky. Jack even slipped off the elephant and took some pictures of us (which OF COURSE is when the memory card became full…) and then he let George slide forward and sit on her neck. It was a cool experience. I was surprised by how rough her skin was, but also how gentle she and the others appeared.

Jack did carry an elephant hook but he never used it on her. I was really intrigued by how he balanced it between his legs and let the hook hang over the back of his shoulder. His shirt was torn from the frequency in which he did that. Here’s a picture of that:

After the elephant ride we went to a rum distillery Mel and DJ had bragged about. We tasted a couple of different rums that the family made there on their property. It looked like they had a teeny factory, a taste testing place and a house for them all on the same property. That’s the way to do it, I think. Anyways, the lady didn’t speak any English so we didn’t get as good of a lesson as our friends did, but we did learn to never mix rum with coke. Who knew?

We had dinner at the resort that night at the restaurant next to the pool that overlooked the beach. It was so lovely and romantic. Just like on the Bachelorette. : ) HA!