In the morning, I am not one of those sleepy guys who lurch like Zombies until they get their coffee. So, I didn’t need a cute spider in my slipper to get awake or so.
It was a peaceful one, who looked for another place to stay so I could use those shoes.
It is hard to stay at an (Eastern) beach and not to take photos with sun and water, at least the sunrise was cancelled again.
At 7:15 I left to visit the Phraya Nakhon Cave, a ride of 40min. For the first time on this trip, I mounted the gopro at the helmet for cycling (I once did it in Bulgaria to film the sunrise during swimming). For reaching the cave, you have to climb up and down one hill, then you reach a beach that is otherwise only accessible by boat and then you climb a second hill and finally go down to the cave that actually is not completely a cave as it is open, but that doesn’t reduce the effect at all, in fact, the light enlarges the effect (I read and can imagine how direct sunlight at a certain daytime enlightens the scenery!)
One funny thing was a kind of graffiti at a wall
and first I thought a stupid guy had done that. But then I read it was made by a king and so the tag of an idiot quickly turns into a legacy of a noble man. When there is written “His Majesty King Bhumibol Adulyadej visited (…) on June B.E, 2501”, than it is not science fiction but Thai calendar and it shoud be 1958 if I calculated right.
And to make the cave more noble, on a sign they claim that it is named after the discoverer,
who was of course a king 200 years before and of course mankind had waited with discovering this little hole some thousands of years, so that a king who normally is occupied with other things than discovering caves had to come along and discover this cave. Additionally he did that because he was looking for a shelter during a storm and therefor climbed up and down one hill, ran across a beach climbed up and down a second hill and in the last second, after 30min climbing because of fleeing the daring rain, he found that cave with heavenward holes. They didn’t write if his servant who had forgotten the umbrella was beheaded or not.
I took a photo of a kind of bridge on the “roof” of the cave
and then read on the chart the name “Dead bridge” and somewhere else the explanation that many animals fell into the cave when they tried to cross that bridge.
What I also liked, were the man-made stalagmites for the impatient (1cm ~ 100 years)
My t-shirt was completely wet from sweating, but I hurried to get back because I wanted to visit the Sai cave, that I had missed yesterday, too, before going to Kui Buri Nat. Park. It was about 12km from cave to cave.
A last photo from the way back:
The way to the Sai cave was shorter but still exhausting, because sometimes you had to make big steps and it was also a steep climb of 20min. This cave was nearly dark, and I used a bike light to find my way. Some of the photos show a special effect by that.
I wonder what had happened here:
After this cave, I went back to Sam Phraya Beach to make a short swim before going to Kui Buri National Park. Pat had organized the transport to and the guided tour in the Park. With a pickup van,
we went to the first of 4 view points and saw around 10 elephants. People were busy with enormous zoom lenses
and I went up a building with my ridiculous small camera to make the best out of it.
In the end, all of us will have tons of photos of elephants standing in a grassland and doing what elephant must do most of the time, eating. I load up four of them, the others are not much different. To get more variants, you must wait and select between myriads of photos to find those with graceful trunk posture or cute mother-child interaction. Do you now have such a image in your mind? So, why should I sit for hours in the jungle to repeat it?
One of the rangers now has to work there, because in the last season the elephants came to her plantation and destroyed everything…
The other viewpoints were “empty” but still viewpoints ?
A ranger sitting in the grass with laptop, tablet and other equipment tried to find elephants in the area.
On the way, we saw 3 deer, but they were hidden in the bush and with direct sunlight in the eyes it was hard to get a picture. At least one is acceptable.
One the way back, we made a stop at the first point, because one elephant was much closer this time.
But when we were out of the car and in a position to take a photo, he was in a position to make no photo, except you have a botanical focus, because you saw trees and knew the elephant is behind.
In exchange, a beautiful cow appeared on the scene, for my last photo.
On my way back, I again tried to “catch” a monitor lizard, they are so shy…
