Lest the picture above misleads you into believing that my camping trip was a walk in the park, allow me to say that it was only partly so. The photo was shot in a park (a real scenic one if I may add) on our way into the jungle where the real challenge was. With our backpacks on our back, my friends and I maneuvered steep slopes, traversed fallen branches and swung from one tree to another a'la Tarzan. The last bit was a creative addition of mine, but the journey to our checkpoint was daunting enough to warrant the use of two hands and to have something dangling from your neck was a big no-no. So, upon entering the forest, I kept cammie in a waterproof bag (doublespeak for plain ordinary plastic bag) and did not take it out until we had reached the waterfall.

Plenty of good fun at the waterfall; Pond scum, leeches, jaggy rocks and whatnot notwithstanding, we swam and splashed in the icy cold water and had a better-than-your-usual-masseur massage under the falling jet of water. We couldn't get enough of water that the moment we got back to our campsite, we jumped headlong once again into a man-made pond there. We had a rafting competition of sort between groups which was kind of lop-sided and not exactly fair as one of the rafts was unbalanced. My team, lucky us, went on that particular raft and it capsized in our frenzy to outpedal the other team. Fun, nontheless.

Among the other highlights of the trip would be the rappel from a tree 3-4 storeys high and the half hour alone in the jungle in the middle of the night. Rappeling from the tree was the coolest ride ever, beating the best roller-coaster ride hands down. Though, getting to the top of the tree was a tad unnerving. The time all alone in the jungle wasn't as great as I thought it would be. For one thing, music was blaring out loud from a bar near the camp site and it kind of spoiled the mood. And it was sleep-inducingly boring.

I didn't take that many photos on this trip. My creative juices just wasn't flowing and I felt limited by cammie, an Olympus C-730 UZ. I'm so ready for a dSLR; I have my eyes on Nikon D70. Trouble is, it costs just as much as a Centrino-based laptop with all the bells and whistles. I'm going to get Odds&Ends online store up and running soon so that I could finance the purchase. At the meantime, please help out by clicking on the related ads on your left. BUT, please don't generate fraudulant clicks (doublespeak for don't click if you're not the least interested).