As an introduction to this wet, very windy tale, I should mention that a trifecta of experts (the hotel owner's wife, our driver and another expat traveler) had stated that from our house to the organic, self sustaining farm where we were spending the weekend was a 6 hr drive….which sounded reasonable because the actual distance is 275 km and generally, one adds about 2 hours to any web direction timing here. So (as I am sure you can anticipate where I am going with this) confident in the trifecta and my own web sleuthing, we set off at one – some people had to work and couldn't leave when they were suppose to….ahhemmm.
A whopping 8.5 hours later, we arrive – not to the farm, but to the staging area for the farm because the last 1.5 km was too rough to go by car – more on this in a moment.
Our delay had been caused partially by weather – the rains started to hit as soon as we made it through one of the national Tiger Reserve parks and partially by the condition of the road and of course the "hairpin" turns in the dark of night (It bears mentioning some one must have thought would be a good idea to number the "hairpin" turns because apparently there were 34 of them (signs said 1-34, 2-34 etc) however the actual signs stopped after 15…go figure). Anyway, the lack of sign postings of hairpins (or any road signs for that matter), the very wet, windy conditions on steep mountain roads combined with the general driving style here made all of us happy to arrive at the staging area in one piece.
The old army truck (thanks Klaus for the picture) that we hopped into put a smile back on all the boys faces – this was a life size tonka truck that was being driven through thick jungle on a 2 rut track in pick darkness…I honest think the only thing would have made the three of them happier is if they got to drive it. So in total, the last 1.5 km took an hour and we finally sat down to dinner at 10:30 pm.
So the weekend was spent basically inside because one of the craziest monsoons hit the hills with a vengeance. The farm tour, horseback riding, and hikes were put on hold because of the wind and rain (accept for a brief excursion which left Klaus and me soaked to the bone). We entertained ourselves with cards, taking pictures in the rain and reading. As you can see, this area is amazingly beautiful – even in the rain…
Any ideas of going outside after our initial excursion was permanently put on hold when the storm literally blew the tiles off of our roof and the hinges off of one of our bedroom windows at 6 am the last morning we were there – thank god we had a fireplace to keep us warm…
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