Our trek pt. 2

Since we left at dawn, and were hiking in the bottom of a very deep canyon, we managed to do almost the entire day's hike in the shade--a vast improvement over the sweaty first day. We hiked a relatively gentle incline for several hours, followed by two hours of quite steep ascent to our second day's destination. About 5 minutes out from the small town a 13-year old girl ran out to meet us. She told us her name was Lucy, asked all about us, and told us that she had a hostel, which she enthusiastically walked us to. The rooms--indeed the whole village--is perched on a steep slope a few hundred feet above the river (high up one of the valleys, about an hour's walk from a waterfall).

Here are a few shots of our 2nd night's rooms:





The town itself is larger than this small cluster of houses. The rest of the town is uphill from where we stayed. All together, there were maybe 10-15 families.

Here's a shot of Jen helping Lucy's younger brother tie his shoe.


Almost against our will, we succumbed to a nap in the afternoon, and walked without our pack to the waterfall and back. Through pure dumb luck I also managed to beat Jen for the first time in gin rummy.

Our room was somewhat less solidly built than that of our first night, and the tarp they stretched under the thatching of the roof flapped in the wind off and on through the night. It woke us up, but was kind of exciting and fun (I thought) nonetheless.