Alas it wasn’t to be! Yet again the weather thwarted our attempts to go caving. Instead we returned to Elijio Panti jungle training part deux.
Returning to Elijio Pant saw us reacquainted with Jungle guide extraordinaire and all round good egg, Antonio. During this week we started learning how to follow, clear and make trails in preparation for our Navigation assessments which consists of the seemingly simple task of walking in through the jungle, creating a 200m x 200m square, marking it for everyone else to follow and returning to the start point. We soon learned it wasn't to be such a simple exercise after all and after our first afternoon of furious hacking through a mere 50m were much better acquainted with the jungle flora the we ever expected to be truly learning the reason the “bastard tree” was given such a name. After a couple of days of practice the day of reckoning approached. Navigation assessment. An unfortunate altercation with aforementioned “bastard tree” meant that a Spike had decided to find a new home deep within Ralph's fore arm and caused his assessment to be postponed, leaving Pete and Myles to do battle with the forest. A superb piece of navigating saw Pete return home in a scintillating time of 57mins and only 6m wide of his starting mark. An unfortunate counting error saw Myles extend his 3rd leg to 300m leaving him rather wide of the original point. Ralph and Myles both gained passes the following day.
After Navigation the team relocate to a location further into the national park to a place called “5 ladies waterfall camp.” This was to be the site of our river crossing training and assessment also an afternoon of soaking up the sun and general mincing around next to a a stunning waterfall. Successful assessments for Ralph, Pete, and Myles in River rescue were followed by valiant river crossing assessments.
Amongst all the hard work the jungle evenings have seen the introduction of a game known as “boys name, girls name” aka “stop”. In which people must name things from a variety of categories beginning with a chosen letter. This has led to some wild attempts to gain more points by Expedition Leader Colin in particular, claiming Dansak as a colour (we all know that this is a curry and not a shade of emulsion).
After leaving Elijio Panti we returned to Barton Creek for a night of stunning home cooking. And we are now anticipating our night of caving......... Again!. Fingers crossed.
