Saturday, February 11, 2012

Elephants and Leeches

     They say time flies like an arrow and fruit flies like a banana.  Well  mosquitoes like Victor and leeches like me.  Or, a funny thing happened at the Elephant waterfalls.  Allow me to start at the beginning.  Our Saturday field trip this week was to Elephant waterfall near Hue...not the one near Dalat.  There were four Vietnamese friends, two staff and Victor and I.  To get over the mountains north of Da Nang one use to have to take the Hi Van pass.  Now there is the Hi Van tunnel (the longest in SE Asia) through the mountain.  We traveled about 1 1/2 hours to get there.  It was nice and cool on the other side of the mountain.  When we arrived we walked to the water, took some pictures, and started climbing toward the deep pools in the higher area.  It was a beautiful place with the only sound being the rush of the water.  There was swimming, diving, and dangling of feet.  Then we all met up for lunch.  At about the end of lunch the "eeking" began.  Someone spotted blood on my foot between my toes and when Xuan inspected she found a leech.....more "EEKING."  Xuan removed the leech, everything returned to "normal."  A little while later Victor said "hey man you are still bleeding."  More inspection, another leech....more "EEking."  Then about a half hour later Xuan found a leech between her toes.  This time there was eeking and chopping with a sharp rock.  It was a very interesting trip indeed, and below are the pictures.


                                                 Hi Van tunnel.

                                        Oh look......it's the light at the end of the tunnel.

                                             Now that is a country road!

                                                                  White water.

                                                                     The students.


           I can here the conversation now...."That rock looks like an elephant."  "No there is no trunk...."
               Concrete is in abundance in Viet Nam......there is a trunk now.
                               



      So that was our trip to the Elephant Waterfall.  It was hoot.  Lots of walking, climbing and a little bleeding for good measure.  Hey it is paradox in paradise ya know.  Soooooo next vacation visit beautiful Viet Nam
Xin Chao
Jim

1 comment:

  1. Leeches? Yuck! I hope I never have to experience leeches!

    It looks so beautiful, Jim!

    When you see Bernie, tell her I say hello!! :)

    ReplyDelete