Along the trail in the morning Griffin spotted a plant, with bright orange fruiting bodies. I had to check it out, but it was off the trail by about 15 feet. No worries, I put down my pack and my poles and trugged my way up the hill side through the lush and wet vegetation. Due to spider webs and rather large spiders I took a photo from about 5 feet away and came back down to the trail.
A couple hours later we stopped to get some photographs and Griff asked me if I was bleeding. Thinking “of course not” I scoffed, and then looked down where my pack’s waist strap had been and saw, yes, I was bleeding. I lifted my shirt to see a hole in my side that was bleeding freely. Immediately I realized my folly of going into the wet foliage - leeches. Sure enough I looked down at my shoes and there were more. I had to have Griffin pull the one off my ankle as I could not bear it. All that came to mind was Madonna’s Like a Virgin, reconstructed to say “Leeched for the very first time!”. Ah and so it was.
For lunch we ate in Syange, near a neat bridge spanning the rapids below. Sadly, the way trash is disposed of here is to be dumped into the river - plastic bottles, cans, wrappers, everything.
There were many landslides that had taken over the trail, some small enough to walk over, and some so large the entire trail had to be re-routed 1000’ uphill. At the last landslide we would come to for the night the trail split, one went straight as if a slide had never occured, and the other went up high into the hills only to descend to the next village. We took the “locals” trail along the landslide. It was interesting, steep, unstable, and at several points we had to climb on all fours under a hanging rock. But it was more direct and more fun.
That night we stayed at a lodge with a view of a wonderful waterfall, which we fell asleep to the sound of in very cozy beds.
That night we stayed at a lodge with a view of a wonderful waterfall, which we fell asleep to the sound of in very cozy beds.