Jason in the jungle

8th of April 2008.
This was the first morning of my life where i woke up and thought to myself, 'i'm going to the jungle today' but it was certainly so, it was a fact.

We drove to the visitors centre and chief Adolf waved us off. It was about 8km away through a massive palm oil plantation and i was very excited. In my giddyness i tried to remember everything Ray Mears had taught me.

Joseph, our guide, pointed to a rickety suspension bridge spanning a wide river and informed us that was the entrance. My stomach did a dance like a butterfly. As we crossed the shaky constuction over the Manu river, vertigo tickled my mind in a sadistic way. It seemed sturdy enough but the length of the bridge coupled with the space in between the slats revealing the jaggy, coarse rocks below were enough to make my mind jitter.

Ww made it across and we were now in Korup National Park, a primary rainforest that has stood far longer than the time us crazy humans have been on the Earth. It's big at 1260km2 and it straddles the border between Cameroon and Nigeria. Its many endemic species and rich bio-diversity persuaded WWF to lobby for its establishment as a national park in 1986.

After growing up hooked on David Attenborough documentaries i was so excited to be in a place such as this, Joseph told us that Attenborough himself had been here filming in the past, which i thought was very cool. He has not been the only celebrity to grace the forest, we came across a plack that told us 'Prince Charles trecked this far in 1989' We were 200m in for gods sake! I wonder if he got someone to carry him back.

The track was a well-beaten one so there was no need for machetes to chop vines from our path, knotted tree roots and meandering streams were our only obstacles. It was so humid and i felt like i was evolving gills as we trunched along the forest floor. Grand, humungous trees were everywhere and small, spindly ones climbed them in an advantagous way in the search for light, there were mushrooms of vibrant colour on every piece of rotting wood, a thin slice of light shone on an exotic butterfly and high above birds called to eachother in a beautifully melodic manner. I was in the jungle. But then the sweats came, wow we were all drenched within an hour, it was crazy.

Our destination for the evening was Chimapnazee camp, it was 9.7km through the jungle and at times i thought unreachable, as i felt i may evaporate at any moment. We came across the aptly named 'Big Boulder' which was the remnants of a billion years of volcanic activity and erosian, it was an absolute monster!! We climbed up on top of it and there were trees growing all over it, which really confused my sense of reality.

We reached chimpanzee camp in just under four hours, i felt like we'd stumbled onto the set of lost, there were other people living here from the smithsonian society researching rare, endemic flowers (there have been many plants found here that have been used for promising malaria and HIV/AIDS treatment). We walked into the deserted camp of wooden huts perched on conctrete pillars. The feeling of fatigue was on me and there was Edith Piaf playing on a tinny radio, it was without doubt the most surreal moment of my life.

There was a beautiful little bathing spot in a little stream next to the camp. I stripped from my sweaty clothes and left them to dry in the baking hot sun and went down and floated in the cool water. There were echoes of birds and crickets all around me as i floated on my back amongst the tiny wee fish and gazed up at the canopy, i could've fallen asleep, i've never felt such a strong sense of peace as i did at that moment, it was perfect.

After a bit of rest Joseph said he'd take us up to the look-out point, it was only 1.8km away but it was a pretty vertical climb and absolutely exhausting to reach. So worth it though as the boulder was at quite a high point of elevation and it presented us with an awe-inspiring view of the lush, green canopy. I stared at it for an hour and felt the tranquility of a man in deep meditation. It was heart-breakingly beautiful, i coul've stayed there forever.

We returned back to camp somewhat refreshed and we cooked our spaghetti and munched our apples. The food was delicious and i felt very happy. Hopefully we would be lucky enough to see forest elephants and monkeys tomorrow, a very nice thought to go to sleep on.