In search of the cloud leopard

Luang Namtha is the town closest to the Nam Ha Protected Area. This is supposed to be about as close as Laos gets to a national park I think. And the Internet has described the area as a decent one for wild life, including guar and a possible cloud leopard. 

On the minivan ride up there I was incredibly happy that I had a seat belt. Not for any unsafe happenings, but because I was in the back of the van on one of the bouncier pot-hole-filled roads I've been on. The seat belt kept me in place and saved my head from hitting the ceiling. Most of the roads in Laos are windy and bumpy. I didn't know buses could bottom out on potholes until I came to Laos. And this one was the bumpiest of them all. 

Weird little caterpillars. They all liked to share the same few leaves.

I arrived in Luang Namtha in the evening and walked to check into my hotel. A cute little bungalow. The owners family was all in town and they were celebrating the birth of his new baby girl. So after several shots of Myanmar beer and some simple English/sign language conversations they brought me some food they wanted me to try. I don't remember what it was called, but it was basically a really salty, thick tomato paste with meat in it over cold rice noodles. They also had me try some soup that was incredibly spicy. When I gestures at how hot my mouth was they laughed and poured me more beer. Then the owner informed us that we did not need to stay if we needed to go to town. But we had to drink one more shot of beer each, so after downing our beer shots Cheyenne and I headed to town to try to arrange some trekking for the next few days.

Big bamboo!

The trekking companies will put up boards with the treks they have scheduled. Joining a trek is much cheaper than signing up for your own, because the additional people bring the cost down. Luckily, one of the first signs we saw was for a three day jungle trek in the Nam Ha Protected Area. Sweet. Mission accomplished. 

Sunshine nappin'

So we stopped in at a restaurant with wifi to get some more food and surf the Internet. It turns out that this restaurant hires people from the nearby villages AND it also does western food right. We went there a couple times before we headed home. On one of those occasions I had a real french-press coffee. And on the other I had pizza. Pizza that was good by American standards. Hallelujah. I ended up talking to the owners and apparently they make runs over to Thailand and return with kilos on kilos of mozzarella cheese.

The next morning we began our hike with a couple from Spain who are living in Manchester and four guys from France. One of them had just completed his one year working visa in New Zealand. It was incredible to pick is brain. It sounded like he worked incredibly hard but was able to save up a decent amount of money to use for traveling around NZ and Asia. 

Beautiful countryside

The next few days of trekking were more difficult than I thought. It was a lot of steep ups and downs on a lot of dry leaves. It led to a little bit of accidental surfing down some of them. It was very weird knowing that it was February, but the ground was covered in dry leaves and the air smelled like fall. My internal clock has no idea what's going on anymore.

Making bamboo paper

Playing marbles

Pigs everywhere!

Our guides were great. One was definitely much chattier than the other. He shared with us information about jungle plants and other tries he'd been on. He really liked to say things like "okay we keep going uphill for two more hours!" and then giggle maniacally after a second. He also showed us the red ants he likes to eat. I can confirm that they taste like lemon just like he said. While he wold sit there and eat several, one was enough for me. Among other things, I wasn't thrilled with putting a live biting bug in my mouth. Ant bites on my ankles aren't much fun. I don't want them on my tongue.

We ate our food off of palm leaves cut in the jungle and got to toast sticky rice over an open fire. Crunchy salty sticky rice tastes sort of like popcorn and is so good!

Steaming sticky rice in a thing that looked like an upside down hat.

We slept one night in a bamboo hut in the jungle and the next night we got to stay in a big hut in a village of about 100 people. I'm not sure how the genetics works for a population like that. There are villages quite close, so hopefully with marriages and such, people move between the villages somewhat frequently. We arrived when a lot of the mid-aged people were out working I believe, because for most of the time I was there I only saw children of varying ages and some older women caring for the young ones. Oh and pigs. Tons of pigs.

Dinner time!

Over the course of the night we polished off an extraordinary amount of Lao Lao. This is a rice whiskey that's strong enough to light on fire and is cheaper than coca cola across Laos. How I managed to wake the next morning without a hangover I will never know. They were passing out small Lao Lao shots as fast as they could pour em. One of the French boys and the Spanish girl had apparently gotten into a drinking competition after I went to bed, so I got to use part of their breakfast to try to make friends with some pigs. It took them a bit of the hike to perk up again. 

Snapping pics of a little girl in the village!

We didn't get to see any wildlife, definitely no leopards. It's the dry season so even the birds aren't down low in the trees. In addition, a decent chunk of the Protected Area has been sold to a Chinese company and turned into a rubber tree farm.

Making a broom

After hiking, we decided to take a chill day to clean ourselves, our clothes and our packs. Cheyenne and I got ourselves a private room and exploded our stuff all over it. The amount of dirt that came out of my big bag was amazing. Four months and four countries of dirt to be precise. Once our bags dried and we packed all our freshly laundered clothes in it, we headed back down the bumpy road to Luang Prabang to catch a boat up the Mekong to Thailand.

The village