Awakening is again in the room 409 of Champasak Palace. What happened between the temple on the mountain of Champasak and my hotel in Pakse named after has been a long and never-ending dream. Such a real dream that waking up I still think I’m being cuddled by the waters pushing Vat Phou Boat, whereas it’s just the residual water drops coming from the sky after the night monsoon.
Leaving the boat, the Mekong, in order to get back to the mainland has been like being born, perhaps it was like an ancestral feeling such as leaving one’s mother’s womb, warm and watery, before being spitted out in the world, with the solid and rarefied conditioner air. But on the mainland today the jungle is waiting for us, not concrete, not traffic or noise that lasts only one hour, the time of leaving the hotel, getting on the van of Green Discovery friends, the other tour operator that will take care of the next four days of discoveries, and the ride until the Bolaven plateau.
While travelling we have time to get to know Home and Ham, the most perfect couple of guides I have ever known (starting from their names), the former technological, fluent English speaker, freshly updated Facebook page holder, the latter shy, smiling silently as a child and the flip flaps ready to overcome all obstacles of a jungle as if they were the last up to date trekking shoes model. On the edge of Stone Khelee Vongkot park our trekking in the forest starts. Equipment is first class, climbing gear, ropes, carabineers, pulleys and helmet, everything in place.
The only doubt is given by a small curved wood stick that Katia looks suspiciously and respectfully while Home ensures her “…it’s the brake, it’s the brake…”. After half an hour of walk among the famous cultivations of local coffee we enter the jungle. Cultivations disappear and the tangle of giant bamboos, ferns, the nation of tropical plants, the decaying underwood and the ground as a mine, but instead of precious stones you find the triumph of biodiversity.
At the sixth minute of jungle, maybe seventh, Home, opening the line, jumps from one side to the other of the path, stops us and says “…uau…it’s a Cobra…!”. “Fuck!” I answer “couldn’t we start with a monkey???” To tell the truth I think we were very lucky to have such a close encounter with a cobra since it is not so common; so; after having relaxed our paralyzed bodies, observing it in action, for the 5 minutes he grants us before sneaking away, is really fantastic. The path brings us towards a rocky wall overhanging under our feet. Behind a hidden wall on our right we hear a waterfall noise. There is a way to have a look at it.
If we want to go ahead in the path there is a way. If we want to reach the camping before night there is a way. It is always the same and Ham announces it to us, spends three of the eleven words he will utter in the next three days of total adventures: “…need a zip-line…”. On the top of a secular tree beside us there is a wooden platform. Attached to the trunk is a thick steel cable stretching out in the emptiness, in the humid mist of the jungle, right over the crowns of all trees climbing from the underlying emptiness towards the top of the wall.
Towards the emptiness we throw ourselves, our first zip line, the first jump in the emptiness attached to a pulley hanging from a cable. A feeling of lightness, more than flying I feel like swimming in the air, indeed I find myself singing Marlene Kunts tunes. The first throw is surely a stroke, a flame, lasts few seconds; at least it sounds so; what slides under my eyes let alone my feet is the whole world, universe and nature together. Trees sixty meters high under my feet, a waterfall beside me which I think I may skim and a little stream down there which few minutes ago looked like a furious bull. We put our feet in the other side’s platform and we find gravity again.
Adrenaline is still there, should not be reabsorbed and so again, another cable starting behind a hidden wall, another waterfall, other trees streaming under and beside. Repeatedly until the evening comes, until we go back down the whole cliff, until the night falls, until the last cable leads us directly home.
Kindly Traslated by “Alessandra Angius”
Day 1 – Day 2 – Day 3 – Day 4 – Day 5 – Day 6 – Day 7
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