Jungle Camp Day 3: Jungle Trekking

We woke up after our second and last night in Elephant Hills to a beautiful day, with dramatic looking clouds covering the mountains.

We only had half a day left in this paradise, and we were given a choice as to how to spend it: either stay at the camp and relax, or go on a trek through the jungle. Claudio was slightly nervous about the prospect of being near massive spiders while trekking, and I can't say that appealed to me much either. But we definitely wanted to make the most of our last day (who knows when or if we'll be in a place like this again?), so opted for the trekking activity.

This activity actually took place right next to the camp itself - after making the short crossing over the river in canoes, we were already deep in the rainforest.

Thankfully, we only saw one massive spider during the trek, which was a good distance away from us and stayed still! Other than that, we didn't see any wildlife, but there was a fallen tree on our path, and our guide showed us a video of a young male elephant coming down the path a few nights earlier and knocking it over. To be honest, we were surprised that he could fit down the narrow path!

Overall, the trek was a nice and not too challenging couple of hours walking through beautiful tropical forests. We saw some fascinating sights, including vines that looked straight out of Tarzan...

...wild mushrooms...

...bananas...

...and a big hollow tree that we could stand inside!

Eventually, we arrived at a hut in the middle of the forest, which was no more than a small shelter. Here we prepared a lunch from scratch, cooked over an open fire, that was up there with the best food we had during our entire trip. The dishes we made were coconut milk soup (with chicken for meat eaters, and without for vegetarians like me), scrambled eggs with Thai spices, and barbecue pork/tofu with a spicy sauce, followed by fresh pineapple for dessert. (When we checked out of the camp later, we were given a sheet of paper with all the recipes, so we can have a go at making them at home!)

After trekking back to camp, we had a couple of hours to pack our suitcases and complete check out. I just had to take a photo of the view from outside our tent before leaving, because when are we ever going to wake up to a view like this again?

We then had a look round the souvenir shop, where we bought a little elephant for our mantelpiece and some delicious Thai ice cream.

At around 14:00, it was time for us to take our transfer to Khao Lak, and thus our time in the jungle came to an end. Although it was the shortest of the three parts of our honeymoon, we packed a lot into the 48 hours we were there. It's impossible to pick a favourite out of the three destinations we spent time in - they were all incredible in different ways - but I feel like our time at Elephant Hills was such a unique experience that we'll remember forever. From meeting elephants and seeing monkeys and snakes on our first day, to taking in the amazing scenery of Cheow Lan Lake and stand-up paddleboarding on our second day, and then cooking in the middle of the jungle on our last day, we made so many special memories.

However, we still had a little over half our honeymoon left, and more special memories yet to make. We spent the final eight nights of our holiday at the beach, and while it was by far the most relaxing part of our trip, we couldn't resist fitting in a couple of more adventurous days! So a few more posts will be landing here soon about everything we got up to in Khao Lak and beyond...