The Gibbon Experience
Wow. This is seriously one of the coolest adventures I’ve ever done in my life. We hiked through the jungle and zip lined to our home in a treehouse for two nights! But let me start at the beginning…
At 8 in the morning we went to the Gibbon Experience Office in Huay Xai along with about a dozen other adventuresome travellers, mostly from around Europe orAustrailia on this day. We signed a waiver and warched a 10 minute safety video, little did we know that was the largest chunk of instruction we would get at one time over the next couple of days. When we left, we knew that we would have to take a two hour ride just to get to the wildlife preserve where we would begin our hike. What we didn’t know was that this ride would be in the back of a pickup truck bed with bench seats in back. The first hour was down the highway at 55mph, the second hour was sludging through rivers, mud pits and tretourously slippery hill climbs. Our knuckles
We’re white from holding on but it sure was exciting!
When we stopped we were split into smaller groups depending on how many nights we were staying and began our long hike. The first portion took us through some fields being harvested by hand by some Laos farmers. Then to an extremely muddy path,where much to the amusement of everybody else, I lost my footing, planted my left foot ankle deep into some thick mud, then lost my shoe trying to pull my foot out, which then led to me planting my sock in the mud! I think I may be buying some new shoes and socks at our next destination.
At our halfway point we were fitted with zip lining harnesses and split into two groups of 6 or 8 for who would stay in which treehouse.The four of us were paired up with a great couple from Colorado, Carrie and Keith, who we got to live with and know quite well over the next couple of days.
Then hike to the treehouse was just a small sampling of what type of hiking was to come over he next couple of days. Two things in particular are of note: first of all, the hike was beautiful. We ascended and descended steep ridges of dense jungle and forest, which took us through palms, vine covered trees and groves of bamboo forest. The second important thing to note is that the hike was really really hard. I mean totally grueling. I feel like I’m a pretty decent hiker, but some of these hills were equivalent to climbing 68 flights of stairs. By he time I reached the top of some (and there were multiple) I was drenched in sweat and panting like a dog in July. Anybody thinking of doing this excursion should be well aware that you need to be in pretty good physical shape or you will suffer the consequences.
The zip lines were another matter. These were unbelievable! I’ve zip lined three other places before and this place has the highest and longest zip lines I’ve been on, and it’s not even their main draw to come visit the place. Flying a half mile through the air, through a dense forest and then flying through he trees to be 300 feet over a valley is breathtaking. By U.S. standards this operation would never in a million years pass safety inspection. Not because of the equipment though, I thought that the harnesses and cables were top notch and I felt completely safe at all times. Rather, they take more of a stance of “your safety is our concern, but your responsibility”, meaning that they showed us how to put our harness on and off, how to safely hook onto and off of the line, and how to glide across, and then we were on our own. We “usually” had a guide along with us, but he was mostly there to tell us which path to take, the ziplining was up to us.
Our last stop was a short zip line which took us to our home for the next two nights, a three level tree house built at least 100 feet up into a tree, which had views of the surrounding valley. Our treehouse has running water which came from a tank hidden high up a nearby hill, a toilet which piped itself to somewhere out of site by the base of the tree, a rainwater shower, and even electric lightbulbs powered by a solar battery.
After resting a few hours (at which time Mark and Heather did some more zip-lining on their own) , a person, who I would best describe as a zip-line delivery man, zipped into our treehouse and dropped off our dinner. All of our meals over the next couple days we found to be very good. They were usually pretty simple ( they did have to carry it in on a zip-line after all) and consisted of a meat item, a steamed vegetable or two, maybe some sautéed vegetables, sometimes mushrooms or cabbage and always lots of sticky rice and fruits. We were quite happy with it and usually had leftovers.
If you come on this trek, I would recommend you pack lots of dry clothes, as I sweated through all of mine, some toilet paper (we hade none), a small travel towel ( we were short two) and maybe a portable pillow (the beds are very hard and a bit dirty). The most important thing is to liken this trek to a backpacking and camping trip, where you sleep in a tent and pee in the woods, and not a catered guided tour where you are cleaned up after and catered to. If you prepare yourself mentally this way you will not be disappointed.
We went to bed shortly after dark, around 7:00, mostly because we ran out of things to do. With no light, and no campfire, the next best thing was to crawl under our mosquito net and listen to the (loud) buzz of the crickets.
The next morning we had high hopes to see some Gibbon monkeys. At dawn our guide zip-lined in and led us on an early morning walk to see what we could. We didn’t end up seeing anything, but we did hear them. In the mornings, Gibbons are known to sing. Their voice is a high pitched, two note call that resonates for miles. Not too different from a coyote howl, yet very different at the same time. We could hear a couple or more Gibbons singing back and forth across the valley.
After breakfast we took a tour with our guide through a pretty large portion of their trails, zip-lines and other tree-houses. We were happy to find out that our tree-house, house #1, is way bigger and better than the others. The Taj Mahal Tree-House if you will. The others were amazing in their own ways, and many had better views, but all were smaller and had a longer hike to them. The hike this day nearly killed us (aside from Mark who bounded like a gazelle ahead or us), but it was amazing, and we finished, drenched in sweat, with that feeling of accomplishment you get when you know you’ve pushed yourself hard and know the payoff was well worth it. There were many more ziplines this day, my favorite being the one you need to stand on a tiny platform outside the wall of a treehouse and jump off to launch yourself over the forest canopy…very scary.
The second night we had another good dinner back in our tree and played some cards before again succumbing to the dark, boredom, fatigue and misquotes before crawling into bet around 7:00
This last video is not mine. I found it on YouTube and this guy has a wide angle helmet cam which does a good job of conveying the feeling of what it was like to zipline through the jungle