My first trip to the camp...

I wasn't supposed to be back until next Friday but thankfully logistical problems (a lack of food) meant that I've been able to come back for the weekend, I was even considerate enough to bring a leech with me. Actually it would appear that I like to take them with me wherever I go as in the space of 7 days I averaged 5 a day. Bastards....

The trip to camp itself isn't actually too bad. Firstly there's an hour car ride North from Lubuk Sikaping to Sontang (a small village where everyone seems to dry their grains/nuts on the road which shows more faith in the local drivers than I would have at home. After that it's a 3 hour hike up a gentle slope alongside a decent sized river, although there are some moments where trees have been felled to leaved the sort of assault course more suited to army personnel than geologists. The last 20 minutes of the walk are basically spent in the river itself which is great as my waterproof hiking boots keep that water firmly inside once it comes in over the top (which it always will seeing as the river flows waist high). This picture is a good indication of what the end of the hike is like:

The keen botanists amongst you might be able to make out cocoa plants, nutmeg trees and some other cash crops. Technically they shouldn't be here as it's a protected forest (even though we've been given a mining license...) however they seem to have quite happily chopped down a fair number of trees to clear some space for themselves. Naturally I assumed that the Government would crack down on this sort of behaviour however as it turns out it was the Government itself which built the tarmac path you walk on for the first 30 minutes. Apparently it wanted to win votes in the area and they assumed a 2 mile path through a protected forest was the way to go about it...

After the nice saunter uphill I finally made it to our camp:

Those beds you can see are made from rice bags stretched between wooden poles, like a really shit hammock. The little room on the right is the kitchen where all manners of ricely goodness were made. In fact every meal is rice based, even the odd one which has noodles. Breakfast this morning was a special delight: 1 bowl of rice covered in a cold fish sauce (I ignored the only English speaker when he tasted his and said "tastes like chicken" before laughing manically) with little bits of fish in (also not likely to make it any more chicken-y. I opted for a cup of tea instead.

After we'd all arrived (2 geologists, 1 cook, 9 field technicians) they realised that 10 "beds" wasn't going to quite be enough so built a new hut from scratch:

1 hour later...

It was pretty impressive to watch (I made no attempt to get involved just in case anyone was wondering).

The other integral parts of the camp were the toilet:

and the washroom:

I may have just done a 180 degree turn between taking these two photos to be fair...

I'll do another post tomorrow about the work itself but for now have some more stats. Sadly as I've been with the same people I have no new height related ones (well, not many at least) so instead have a set that I just compiled during my trip:

30-40 leeches picked up

9 rockfalls caused (it's very steep round there)

0 people killed as a result...yet.

1 waterfall fallen off

1 waterfall fall survived (it was only about 4m high).

11 times I've slipped down a hill on my arse unwillingly

50+ times I've stopped myself from falling by grabbing a nearby tree.

12 times that tree has had spikes on it's trunk.

Uncountable: The number of times someone has ducked under something low only to look round and admire my attempts to follow. Apparently this is particularly amusing...