It's been a while...

But ONLY BECAUSE we haven't had access to (decent) internet for the last few days! But we'll get to that... Last I left you we were in Pakse sitting out a rainstorm in the internet cafe... well not much happened that day! Basically a giant nap after our night bus during a rainy afternoon, then a delicious Indian dinner. Oh but WAIT. We also booked a tour for 2 days in Pakse that involved ziplining, hiking, climbing, and staying in treehouses!! Amazing! On a whim, we booked it for the day following our arrival, figuring it would be much more exciting than the town! We started our journey at 8 in the morning, leaving Pakse for the Bolaven Plateau with 6 other people in our tour. The first day, we hiked (nice and easy) for a few hours, stopping for lunch at a waterfall! We had a Lao lunch of sticky rice formed into balls and dipped in various dishes... pretty tasty! After lunch we traveled the rest of the way to the treehouses over 8 ziplines! After 1 or 2 ziplines down, it began to DOWNpour. Fashioning a makeshift bag cover out of my giant emergency poncho I managed to keep my things mostly dry - myself, not so much. I'd say my raincoat is more water resistant than waterproof. Regardless of the rain, ziplining was awesome! We arrived at our treetop camp around 4pm - time to change into semi-dry clothes, hang everything else on a drying line, and snatch a spot by the fire. Strategically placed shoes and clothes were the decorations for the night. Dinner, served at the main platform, was fresh veggie rolls (amazing), chicken, steamed rice and veggies. Devoured. Everyone tucked in pretty early to their zipline-only accessible treehouses (outfitted with running water?) in preparation for the next day! Keeping warm, we slept in ALL our clothes, raincoats included. Slept GREAT in the outdoors! Next day we hopped over to the main building for some delicious breakfast in front of the waterfall in the SUN!! Yay! Our morning activity was a little but of a walk down into the canyon from where we were staying for a couple ziplines, then a visit to a waterfall. However, after everyone experienced the 450m long (endless!) zipline, we all opted to do it again; you can swim in a waterfall ANY day!! Morning was sweet. A quick trek back up to the main house (sweating) brought us to lunchtime after a quick rinse in the (closeby) waterfall! So good! Wanted to permanently keep my face in it.. After fuelling up we had an afternoon of serious vertical ahead of us... trekking up (like 60 degrees - using your hands) for about an hour (by then we were convinced it was raining again but NOPE that is sweat dripping off my nose), we reached the u-bolt climbing wall that would get us up to the top of the waterfall!! Some serious vertical here too - coolest views! Just don't look straight down!! Short pit stop at the top of the waterfall and we had some more hiking to do - a little more hands and feet hiking, then some more chill normal walking back to the village where we were picked up. A ride back to Pakse left us seriously stoked for a shower (and need to do laundry again asap) - we were not that adventurous and hit up the delicious Indian food place again, sharing dinner and stories with an Irish couple we met on the trip!! So, our view of Pakse was very limited but activities around it were AWESOME! We didn't stick around for more - gotta get moving! Next stop - 4000 Islands!