The wildlife spotting at Cat Tien National Park was less than advertised. The kinds of large mammals--wild water buffalo, large cats, elephants, primates and of course the Javanese Rhino--are just highly unlikely to be something you encounter on the typical guided tour that stays close to the park headquarters. In fact, one guide told me that no one had EVER seen the rhinos in person--that they've only been spotted via camera traps.Nevertheless, we had a lot of fun and did see a lot of smaller wildlife, including one very close call with a monocled cobra. We also spotted one real-life example of the mascot of this website, the Asian Civet Cat, as well as lots and lots of civet poop.
We used Sinhbalo Adventure Tours and again had a great experience with them. They driver and our guide--Huy--picked us up at our hotel early on Friday and then picked up another traveler--Hermann, a high school P.E. teacher from Austria. We drove about 4 hours to get to the park entrance. First you take a simple ferry boat across the Dong Nai River. We checked into our room, which was about the equivalent of a mountain lodge in a national park in the U.S., except you share it with more lizards. We had a delicious lunch in the canteen and then a siesta. My one complaint is that for all the trouble and expense I would rather have gotten underway on our first hike sooner than 2:30.
Gearing up for the hike includes putting on leech socks and leech repellent. The socks are similar to gaiters, made of cotton and worn inside your shoes and over your pants. Then you smear the repellent like a barrier around your calf. They were absolutely necessary--long pants alone won't cut it. Ilene and I and everyone one else we hiked with found at least half a dozen leeches on their clothing. The leeches I pictured beforehand I guess are aquatic leeches and didn't resemble these at all--at least not before they had a chance to fill with blood. They look like very tiny worms, and they stand upright waving one end in the air and they have an amazing ability to spring from that position. Anticipating them was creepy, but in the end they were harmless.
Huy joined us for the hike but handed us over to a ranger--Trung--who was very knowledgeable and friendly and did a great job of spotting various insects and identifying trees and bird cries and so on for us. I wasn't able to record the names of most of the trees. One large variety is called a Vietnamese Redwood. Much larger than those are a kind of tree where the roots stay near the surface and make spectacular ropey waves. That's the kind the two of us are standing in front of in the picture above. Another neat plant was taro, which are the very large green leaves pictured below. The coolest thing is the strangler vines. They set their roots into the top of a tall tree and then start sending the vines down and taking over. Sometimes you find a kind of woven basket of vines in the shape of the tree that used to be there before it died and decayed.
It was in the middle of the first hike that we encountered the cobra. We were walking in file, with Trung and Ilene ahead. They apparently stepped over it, because I first spotted the movement as I was stepping over it. I got a good look at it behind my heel and then me and Hermann, who was behind me, were both yelling "snake!" It was between black and dark grey and about as thick as the handle of a tennis racket. I got one glimpse of its head and then it was straightened out and moving really fast toward the brush. I kept trying to move my eyes ahead to see its head again but it moved so fast I only kept glimpsing near the tail. I estimated it about 1.5 meters and Hermann says 2 meters. Trung never saw it, but based on our descriptions, he says it was a cobra. When we spotted another much smaller and harmless snake later and hollered, Trung about jumped in a tree.
After dinner, we had the night safari. You pile in the back of a jeep rigged with benches, and a ranger drives quite recklessly down the paved roads while another ranger stands in back and shines a powerful spotlight into the trees and grass. When he sees a light reflecting back out of the eyes of something, he raps the hood of the truck, and the driver screeches to a halt. The animals mostly just watch warily unless we're too close, and then we have to look fast as they scamper. We saw a civet cat this way, one mouse deer, and a couple dozen sambar deer.
The next day we took a jeep to a drop-off point and from there took a 10km hike to the crocodile swamp and back. We spotted a couple interesting birds on the way and also while resting at the ranger station at the swamp. We encountered some macaques, which our guide spotted but we never did. We could only hear their cries and see the tree tops rustling.
We were back at the camp by lunch time, and after that and showering, we ferried back over to meet our driver. We had a good time getting to know our guides along the way. Huy and his wife had twin boys five months ago, and they hope to move to her parents' house in the provinces to open a pharmacy, which is her profession. Trung is a genuine conservationist who has worked 15 years in jobs like this. He is the one person we've met with some ind of academic expertise whose English was good enough that we could learn about it. He hitched a ride back to Saigon with us, because he had an English exam, which he needs to pass to get licensed to be a tour guide, which he would like to expand into. We dropped him off at a crossroads in the suburbs so he could have dinner first with some family and then we plunged into the city traffic for the last push and were home in time for an early dinner.
-Robert
