Our trek today would only be 6km to the hut where we would sleep. We didn't leave the cave until about 11.30am and spent the morning just chilling. It didn't rain last night as far as we knew so hopefully it wouldn't be as bad as yesterday with regards to the mud.
We left the cave and luckily I wasn't aching like yesterday, the rest in the cave had done me the world of good. I did however get bitten by quite a few leeches. I hate leeches! There was one on my knee, I had no idea how the hell it got there but I took Shafiq's advice and kept waiting for the bastard (I named them bastard because I didn't know who there fathers were!) to fall off. Shafiq originally said they would stay for thirty seconds and then fall off. This was definitely not thirty seconds so I kept asking Shafiq "Shafiq, when is this little fucker going to fall off?" "Shafiq, you said thirty seconds". "Shafiq, you said it will fall off when it's full, how big does it get before it is full". He was clearly not amused but it made it even funnier for me because he didn't have an answer and wouldn't just say I don't know. Eventually it fell off! Until it fell off I didnt trust Shafiq. The leech letting go by itself took me and Shafiq to a whole new level of trust!
Shafiq told us that we would be stopping at a river for a swim. The river was almost three quarters of the way through the journey and was also where we had stopped to have lunch. There were other people there when we arrived so we layed our mat out and cooked lunch first. Lunch consisted of noodles and chicken curry. We were running low on water though. We had one bottle left to last us the rest of today and tomorrow morning. We had gone through ELEVEN 2 litre bottles!!! Shafiq had told us that there was a shop where we were going next where we could buy drinks so we drank the remainder of the water we had. After lunch Shafiq got in the water - he looked like he was having a ball soaking his whole body. We had cooled down by this point and were reluctant to get in but eventually I gave in and climbed in. It was so cold but sooo refreshing. After having walked so far and being covered in mud and sweat that I hadn't been able to wash off in the small stream, this water felt amazing. The river had quite a strong current but the view was amazing. All around was just pure jungle and upstream the sun shone through the trees casting a beautiful gleam on the trees and the water. This was by far the highlight of the trek so far.
After the swim we continued trekking for maybe an hour more until we reached an old abandoned-looking hut on high stilts. The hut was made for watching animals so had no electricity or windows - just open holes. There was however a toilet - it looked disgusting but I figured nature hadn't called properly yet, and I would prefer it to call here than in the jungle.
The group that were there when we stopped for lunch were also staying at the hut and had arrived already. They had made themselves comfortable and hung all their dirty clothes on the lines to dry - they clearly hadn't rinsed their clothes though because there were thousands of massive wasp-looking things that had landed on their clothes. According to Shafiq they were sweat bees and licked at the salt. Yuk.
We asked Shafiq where the shop was and he hysterically laughed whilst saying it was 8km away! We had no water and at that moment I wanted to kill him. He said you haven't believed anything I have said so far so why do you believe me when I say there's a shop. We had moved one step forward earlier with regards to trust and now we had moved a thousand steps back. The girls and I then walked unamused to nearest stream to wash and fill up our empty bottles with water to boil. I no longer liked Shafiq.
The bathe in the stream, again a little stream, was nice and so refreshing. We got back to the hut and Shafiq said he would boil the water for us and said that when we get back to the office he would buy us a cornetto icecream and a coke.
Shafiq cooked dinner - mackerel and rice, but I didn't feel like eating. My stomach felt dodgy and I could still feel the food from lunch sitting awkwardly there. Although we were in the perfect place for watching animals I wasn't feeling too good so when it started thundering and lightening I decided I would try and go to sleep. The room we were sleeping in had nothing but 6 bunk beds with no mattresses on and a bench near the biggest rectangular shaped open window for animal watching. I had unfortunately got a top bunk - I wouldn't have minded but the floor of the room was wet which led me to assume that the roof leaked, and also unlike other bunk beds, there was no guard around the bed so one too many rolls over would see me on the floor!
I had slept for maybe an hour with an occasional drop of water on my head, when I woke dizzy and feverish and my stomach was feeling awful. I ran to the toilet and exorcist vomited everywhere. Frida and Malin were really sweet and came to see if I was ok and gave me some tissue. I climbed back into bed and laid down feeling like I was going to die. And then cramps started in my stomach - I was awake most of the night clearing my system. There was no water either for me to drink! :-(
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