January 25, 2007
Vang Vieng:The Epic Quest
The day after our kayaking adventure, Quin and I decided to go on a manquest. As in, a quest that men do, not one in search thereof. Our quest took us up the same riverbed and through the cave of days previous, and then the adventure began. Quin had a topo map and a compass and a place he wanted to reach, to summit the mountain looming above us. As always I was in for the adventure.
The bouldering got tougher after the cave but still progress was much faster than with the girls. I yelled in frightful warning as I watched Quin step on both sides of a 5 foot long bright green snake with a triangle head. I might not have noticed it had it not struck at Quin's leg and frantically slithered into the jungle. We found out later that this was a very poisonous snake. No harm was done and we continued up the riverbed. Ten minutes later Quin was falling four feet down off a boulder, landing on his hind quarters. He had put his hand in a crevice to climb up and had rested it directly on another snake. Again, although he injured his pride a bit in the fall, no damage was done. Quin was quite jumpy at a shake of a stick for about 15 minutes. Its funny to hear a tough Aussie curse.
I guess it was about three in the afternoon that we decided to leave the riverbed and make our way through the jungle. This made our going much slower. We had just found some needed water in a stream. Our poor planning had not prepared for enough of anything, really. We then decided that the summit is up, so that was the way we must go. Up.
Every now and then we would find what seemed like a trail, which would disappear quickly into dense jungle. Quin would look at the map and compass, consult me, an onward we would go. We had to punch our way through the most dense and impenetrable jungle growth imaginable. Sometimes the slope would be so steep we needed rope (which we didn't have). Some of the climbs were so crumbly that every handhold needed to spare ones life from a deadly fall would crumble and landslide below us. Large rocks would pull straight out of the side of the earth as we clambered to higher elevations. At one point, I was stretching desperately for a foothold across a precarious gap when our third snake sighting slithered onto my only footing option. Needless to say I fell. Stupid snake.
We never really started getting worried until it was past five and the sun was beginning to set. We were going straight up the side of the mountain, punching through bamboo, stinging nettles, briars and stickers, wrestling with the growth, taking two steps and wrestling again beating it down, stomping it, moving up. The cline was probably near 60 degrees. We looked at each other and the map and realized that our goal was closer than going back, and we plodded on towards the unattainable summit, figuring we would come to a ridge eventually.
We finally crested the ridge at sunset. We plodded around a bit until finally finding a trail that seemed to run the saddle between peaks and ventured up the path a few minutes until it hit us. We would be stuck on top of this mountain after dark and were expected back in one hour. We had passed a Hmong campsite with fire pit and len-to frame and seriously considered a night up there. Male stubbornness took over, as well as realizing it would be below 10 degrees Celsius at night and we had nothing warm, no food and no water. We made a quick search before the sunlight was completely gone and found a nice but incredibly steep trail going down the mountain on the other side. We happily trekked for hours down the steep descent of trail past another much needed trickle of water and then eventually entered a slash and burn clearing beneath the mountain's jungle. Here the cursing stated.
Past a nice open descent of the slope beneath the jungle we entered farm land and the crop was Elephant Reeds. These reeds hung completely over the trail and had razor sharp sides that sliced at our faces and bodies as we passed through. Without exaggeration, it took us two hours to descend rapidly through this madness. In the dark, it was the thing of nightmares. Quin, being quite a bit taller than I, had a much worse time with the reeds and was continually slicing his face and eyes. At the same time his headlamp kept going out from a previous moisture issue. Its funny to hear a tough Aussie curse.
Finally, past the reeds we came to an amazing valley surrounded by mountains on all sides. The map showed that there should be a pass we could go through and get to the river near the point we had started our kayak adventure. After going the wrong way several times we finally found a small trail climbing a bit but then passing through about a ten-meter gap in the mountains and descending once more until we reached the river.
At this point, we had not had a meal since lunch and water was in short supply as it had been most of the day. The soles of my shoes had fallen off. I had hot spots all over my feet, my gashed knee (from kayaking) was throbbing worse than it had all day. We were both wearing dozens of scratches, cuts and punctures from all the brambles and foliage we had pushed through. Quin was murderously irritated after the reeds and headlight issues, and now we had to cross a 30 meter swiftly flowing rocky river in the dark in bare feet while keeping our small daypacks including cameras, dry. And once we did, we were home free. That is, after another 10 kilometers by road back to the town.
Gingerly and laboriously we made it across the river, found a trail, crossed a few dark rice paddies, found an unlit dirt road, followed it a few kilometers, pausing to wave a nervous hello to the Laotian man on the bike with the big rifle, and got to the main paved road. We waited for a ride of some sort to come by. Having no luck there, we walked a few more kilometers to a village where we found four young Laotians drinking beer and listening to music. We ingratiated ourselves to them, got a few sips of suds and then bought a ride on the back of a moped for the remaining 8km into town.
Back in town we counted our money, gobbled down a pizza and beer and limped the kilometer back to our guesthouse. Our ladies were waiting, a bit lubricated by gin and tonics, but happy to see us alive. It was midnight by the time we had returned. We never did get to the summit of that damned mountain.
