The landscape slowly changed into more pristine forest as the trees grew into giant monoliths along the river and the sound of human noise faded. The northern district of Laos is famous for its large diversity of butterflies and we found ourselves paddling to the forest floor several times to glance at gatherings of colorful individuals dancing closely with each other in the rays of sunlight passing through the dense carpet of leaves.
Nam Ou had widened up and grown deeper compared to yesterday, and although sections of the river provided fun and wavy waters, the river didn’t provide any anxious provoking rapids or sharp bends that required going to land and scouting ahead. The calm waters of the river provided easy access to the forest and undisturbed fishing spots, which these three local guys seemed to take advantage of.
Our water budget included the idea of supplementing our water jugs with rain water. According to the weather forecasts for this time of the year in Laos, there should be daily rain showers in the afternoons and during the night. We had brought rain-collectors to be mounted on the corners of our tarp with the hope of gathering water during our night sleep – but so far, we hadn’t seen any serious rain. During this day we did get our first tiny shower, but this type of brief and light rain wouldn’t be able to fill any of our water containers the slightest.
Six hours after we departed Utai, we decided to set camp while there was still plenty of light. This would allow us to set up the camp in less of a rush than our first night, and hopefully get a bit time to enjoy the jungle before darkness fell. On a larger riverbank we pulled up our rafts and started clearing branches on the hillside to make room for our hammocks. The temperatures drop dramatically once the sun set, and in the hope of being able to sit out a little longer before creeping into our hammocks we tried starting a fire– but after a few failed attempts to get the humid wood to catch fire, we abandoned the project. Perhaps we should indeed practice this discipline a little more for our next trip…
Along with our soviet war map we identified our current position using the build-in GPS coordinates from my Nikon 1AW camera. This proved very useful in terms of determining our position in an area with essentially no landmarks coupled with a 60-year-old map. I would never head out to an expedition like this without a device that locate one’s position. In case we would get lost or have to trek through the jungle to evacuate from the river, knowing our position will be a life saver.
Our dinner menu of dried fish, rice and mango was altered last minute, as I discovered that the dried fish we had purchased three days earlier were now full of living maggots. Perhaps cooking these would have been an option but we didn’t really feel like venturing down this path just yet. We had hoped that bringing dried fish from the local market would be a way of preserving a level of protein intake, but now this option didn’t seem very viable… Instead we cooked an energizing meal of rice, mango and a few nuts on our Trangia using the diesel fuel we had purchased in Phongsali.