Horner travels ... Of all the pages in a book, the best stories are found between the pages of a passport...

Awoke bright and early, after a comfortable and deep slepp to be welcomed by a foot high (small exaggeration) stack of crepes served with thin skinned local sweet lady fingers, dark chocolate sauce, lime and sugar. We were also served tea as they had no coffee. San was there on time, as promised, and we continued our trek. Today only 14kms compared to the 17 k's yesterday. It started out well as we continued our trek, this time on much narrower tracks suitable only for pigs, chooks and skinny humans although the buffalo had left a lot of evidence of somehow passing through also. At first we wove around the homes of locals - able to enjoy seeing how they live with little privacy. San took us into one that he had lived in for a while although he said it wasn't a relative - his Mum was single as his Dad had passed away when he was young. Inside was a welcoming elderly woman with a young girl and a toddler - their Mum must have been out working. The kitchen was basic on a dirt floor (as was all th house) incorporating bamboo for every use possible including shelves. It was quite dark with all sorts of foods drying inside as well as equipment for pounding and grinding. She did ask for us to buy something as we left which we did although there was nothing interesting to get - she just had a few second hand purses and some belts. The walk continued through lush vegetation with interesting sites such as gates to keep the buffolo out (made of bamboo), a rice 'husker' in a hut (made of bamboo and using water from the stream below it) as well as ome beautiful people - now the red dao minority although it was very quiet until we reached a small school which had little money. We put a contribution in their donation box and gave one class some Aussie pencils then  walked around checking out the rooms with their unicef bags and school materials. The snotty nosed, kids in rags were giggly, coy and cute. After dragging ourselves away, we stumbled down a very slippery steep decline - San was helping the children all the time as Nim kept her feet on the ground and slid half the way. After this we arrived at a waterhole which was lovely but ruined by the construction of a new road being built while we were there. Adrian, San and the kids had a dip although our family kept their heads above water as we were below a village! After this was a hot exposed walk in the heat of the day around the winding dusty new road until we took a side path through more forest which again was very steep. After a few rest stops and reaching the top we changed to walking the edges of the maze of ruice fields up to a small village on a main road where we taken to a cafe for pho- local soup and a plate of fruit. The trip was over as more groups of trekkers from other directions were also downloaded in the cafe. After a rest a fancy 4WD picked us up and carefully drove us around another windy road, across streams to Sapa - if it were the rainy season I think we would have been blocked off. The enjoyable trip was over - we saw the vietnam we were looking forward too and despite being cloudy and rarely being able to see how high we were, it was special. Adrian talked to San about climbing Mt Fansipann - the highest mountain in Vietnam at over 3148 metres and organised it for the next day! You'd think they'd both need a rest. Back to Cat Cat Twighlight for a restful and deserved sleep as everyone - including me-did well! The kids were brilliant - they hardly complained as they loved the visual feast over the two days.