Nov. 5: Cat Tien National Park



Ferry at Dong Nei River



This morning we boarded a tour bus for a 4 hour ride north to the Cat Tien National Park.  I am the trip leader for this “walk in the park” and we have 8 students and 2 Life Long Leaners in the group. The write up of the trip talks about doing two hikes, one 10K and the other a 6K, a night ride to see the nocturnal wildlife and notes the lodge we are staying in will be “quite rustic”.  Our bus ride ended at the bank of the Dong Nei River where the road also ended.   We crossed the river on a foot ferry and walked a couple of hundred kilometers to the camp.  The brochure was quite right – it was quite rustic, and we are in the middle of the jungle with heavy vine growth, bamboo and hot and humid weather.

We checked into our bungalow that was not quite up to Julie’s standard for cleanliness.  It did have an air conditioner, a cooling fan and mosquito netting for the bed.  The bathroom was a long open room with sit down toilet, a sink without a drain pipe and a shower head coming out of the wall.  The good news was it had drain in the corner at the opposite end of the room.  This worked well because when you took a shower, the water ran under the drain hole in the sink before it hits the drain and in doing that it clean up the floor along that side of the wall.  The other advantage of not having a drain pipe in the sink was that you could wash your hands and feet at the same time.

Once everyone had checked into their rooms, we took an evening cruise down the river to view the birds and other wild life in the area.  We saw several types of birds with lovely coloring, but only spotted one monkey.  Our guide told us that the monkey population was beginning to make a comeback after it was decimated by the locals who used them as food.

Dong Nei River Village



Village Gas Station



 After visiting a museum in the local village we headed back to our lodge via an open air truck along very rough roads.  We were scheduled to go on an evening tour looking for the nocturnal wildlife in the area, but about 2 hours before dark it started to rain and in this area the rain was not just a mist.  It was a tropical rain storm that floods over the roads and turns the trails into small streams.  Nobody in our group was interested in sitting in an open air truck looking for wildlife in these conditions.