Once we got the the waterfall park, we were back in the tourist zone. Elephant rides, large truck rides, ATVs, zip lines, and water slides. They have destroyed a natural park and made it into a tourist frenzy. Right when we walked in there was a place where you could feed bananas to some elephants. It was so cool to see them chowing down and I just had to feed her a couple. I felt the trunk of the elephant as I fed her and it was so coarse, like a tough leather shell.
Before we started to make the trek to the waterfall all these guides came up to us and said, "it too far to walk, you should ride elephant or take truck." We kept on walking. I was extremely disappointed to find out that the road leading to the waterfall was paved! I just shook my head in disgust, who wants to walk to a natural waterfall on a paved road? Where's the fun in that? Once we got close to the waterfall, we did have to make a small trek to get there. Before we got there, there was a natural swimming pool, so we jumped right in. The water was ice cold, so refreshing after the long walk under a scorching sun. While the pool was slammed with tourists, it was refreshing. I can only imagine how terrible it would be during the tourist high season.
After cooling off, we walked up to see the actual waterfall; it was off a beaten trail so I don't think many people realized it was there, many people just got stuck in the small waterfall that made the pool. Fine with me, we almost had the waterfall to ourselves. The waterfall was 262 feet tall, pretty tall, but not as much water as I was hoping for. We spent a good amount of time climbing the area and walking some small trails to check out our surroundings. When we walked back down, we decided to hangout with some of the elephants that we resting and eating. I played with one of them, petting her and watching her eat. Her entire skin was so tough and the hair on her head was really strong, and kind or prickly. You could see the blood on another one of the elephants were they had beaten her with these sticks that had a sharp hook on the end of it. It was pretty sad, you could see the pain in her eyes. While it is sad to see, I tried to look at it in a different perspective. These animals are massive creatures with thick skin; when they are beaten with a stick, it would be like someone tapping us on the arm, saying "go that way." The spikes are used to protect the tourists. When an elephant gets scared or rattled and starts a stampede, there is nothing that can stop them, so the guides use the spikes to stab the elephant when they start to get out of control to protect themselves and the tourists. Not sure if that is true, but it helps to lighten the mood.
Once we finished our journey at the park, we took the moped further south to see what else we could find. We stumbled across a small secluded beach with a handful of people one it. We took the time to walk up and down part of the beach before we decided to head in and get some rest.
Afterwards, we rallied with our UK friend and headed to this all you can eat BBQ joint where you cook your own food. There was a smorgasbord of options: chicken, pork, shrimp, liver, duck, chicken wings, French fries, veggies, noodles, and some random mystery meats. We spent about 3 hours cooking and eating food. After the Brit and German stopped, I continued to eat for about a hour. I was so hungry! The other two just kept laughing, as I was fulfilling the stereotype of an "all-you-can-eat" American; whatever, I was hungry. Two rounds of ice cream and I full mango later, I had to call it quits; I looked fully pregnant.
We headed back to our hostel, fell right into a food coma, and slept the night away.
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