Day 6: Buses, Boats and Hiking

It's Monday now and time to get up early and head to the jungle/rain forest.  We decide to partake of the breakfast buffet at the hotel which had a big international spread and would be our last western food for the next couple of days.



We had to go pay for our cabin room and get directions before heading out.  That seemed to take forever.  Then we went to the bus stop, or what we assumed to be the bus stop.  We were basically the only white people and/or tourists there.  A lady with some plastic bags sat next to mom and they started moving (I think it was shrimp or some sort of seafood that was maybe still alive). We were waiting forever for the "red" bus.  The afternoon storm came and I joked "okay now our bus will probably come".  Two minutes later a yellow bus with a red sign in the window came our way.  A guy shouted "Bako! Bako!" which is the name of the park.  Guess he figured that'd be the only place we were headed ;).  Correct.  It was a very old bus.  Mom and I shared a broken seat that miraculously held us and Curtis shared with a local right behind us.

Bus stop, ours thankfully was bigger or we would have been soaked. 

A different boat, but essentially this was what we had to ride from the final bus stop to the actual park. Very exclusive ;).

It was low tide, so the boats couldn't go all the way in.  We got off the boat in knee-deep water and hiked it up the rest of the way.  It was a pretty neat way to enter the park.  

Our cabin wasn't ready for check-in so we dropped off our bags and headed out for a 1 hour trek (that turned into like 3 or 4!).  Above is a map of all the trails in the park.  There are tons of pics between me and mom, so I'll post them in another slide show when I wrap-up day 2 at the park.    

We sufficiently wore ourselves out, drank lots of water, played cards, had some local chicken and rice for dinner and headed back for an early bed time.  The cabin was a bit rustic, so short of joining the night hike (which we were too tired and sore to do), there wasn't much else but get ready for an early morning.

Day 6: Complete