I didn’t have a good nights sleep last night as I hoped so wish I could have had a lay-in today but I was on bag duty this morning so had to get up on time to open up the truck for people who were trekking to see the chimps in the morning. Once I’m awake I can’t usually get back to sleep so I relaxed and enjoyed the scenery while waiting for breakfast before going on a walk through the tea plantation with the rest of the group.
The walk through the tea plantation was really informative. The guide worked at the campsite and started by telling us all about the process of growing tea before taking us to meet some tea workers and explaining what they do every day. We were then taught some phrases in the local language before taking us through a small village on the way to the lake. The phrases such as “how are you?” came in quite handy as all the kids knew in English was “what is your name? My name is…“ and “we know English”. They were really friendly and we were able to get some really good photos and interact with them a lot.
We visited the shores of the lake and saw the boats that are used for fishing before saying bye (kalee kalee) to the kids and setting off back up the hill and into the plantation again. The last stop on the walk was a tea nursery where they grow all of the baby tea plants before planting them in the fields and we were explained the processes involved before returning to the camp site.
This afternoon the majority of us, except for the 4 early birds, went into the national park to visit the chimps. We were given a short introductory talk before being taken to our starting point where we had to battle to get into the woodland for a little while. While trekking we saw all sorts of animals, from hornbills to red tailed monkeys before finally seeing some chimps. Unfortunately in the afternoon they decided not to come down to the ground like they did in the morning, so if you have a choice make sure you trek in the morning. We did see a few of them including babies though, and they were eating figs, throwing them at us and then trying to pee on us which meant we all had to play an interesting game of dodge.
We returned to the campsite after about 3 hours in the forest, collected our laundry and then relaxed with a nice dinner of chops, veg, beans, sausages and chapatti before heading to bed.
