Cuc Phuong National Park

Cuc Phuong is the oldest national park in Vietnam. Magnificent limestone mountains rise up majestically from the green, rice-terraces and traditional stilt houses of the Muong hill-tribe.
I visited this area Sat. Oct 11 with 5 other Wusc volunteers--3 young women with Students Without Borders, a volunteer from Thanh Hoa and a volunteer who lives in Ninh Binh with me. We rented a van and driver to take us around for the weekend.

Our first stop was the Endangered Primate Rescue Center. This program has around 140 primates in breeding Programs. This is a joint project with Germany and several other countries, not Canada. Our tour included an English speaking biologist/technician. He showed us stick spiders, big spiders, monkeys, and gibbons. We even saw a couple of monkeys in the trees outside the Rescue Center's fence.

Then it was back in the van for the 20 km drive into the Park. Rowena decided to play with the butterflies before we headed out on our 6 km hike to the 1000 year old tree.
The hike was a series of stone and concrete steps, mostly up. These steps get very slippery in the rainy season, so we were not skipping our way. We only saw a variety of spiders, no other animals. They were all smart enough to be asleep somewhere cooler. We made it to the 1000 year old tree, along with all the other tourists.

Imagine doing a hike in your high heels and dress clothes. Happens all the time here.
We decided to complete the circle hike instead of going back the same way. That may have been a mistake, as it was the road less travelled, and both down and up. It seemed alot farther than 3 km. But needless to say, we made it. After a lunch at the park we headed south. The Park offers accommodation in lovely stilt houses. We are thinking of that for a return visit. Then we can do an early morning walk and maybe see some animals.

From there we drove the 20 km into the park..There are several hiking trails available. We decided to hike to the 1000year old tree, a supposed 6 km return hike. It started well, as all hikes do, but the uphill steps, covered with slime and moss, made it slow going. It was beautiful in the park, lots of giant spiders, and beautiful butterflies. We started our hike around 10:30 so any animals were in