First Days – Elephant Nature Park

The view from our window

Yay! SkyRoam works out here!

A van picked us up from our hotel and drove us about an hour and half north of Chiang Mai to The Elephant Sanctuary. When we arrived, we put our luggage in a holding area and took a short tour of the grounds. We went to lunch and then watched a video about the Sanctuary.

It not only rescues elephants, but cows, pigs, dogs and cats. They have over 40 elephants, 400 cats and 200 dogs. Most of the dogs and cats roam free and have assigned areas – really, there is a chart that shows what dogs are allowed on the platform for the week & occasionally a fight breaks out as the dogs attempt to enforce the rules – lol!  

After the video we were told we had a truck to unload. It was overflowing with pumpkins but there are 50 volunteers this week, so many hands made light work. It took us about 30 minutes to unload a couple of thousand pumpkins. They stock bananas, papaya, corn and more on a daily basis.

this truck was full to the brim when we started!

B passes the pumpkin

so much fruit and vegetables needed

About 3pm they took us to our rooms, which we were all very curious about. We had to walk with our luggage – say what? - down a dirt road, so we couldn't use the wheels. C, one of the guides, offered to carry ours for us – I gratefully allowed him. As groups were being dropped off, we noticed the rooms were cabins or huts, some downstairs,some upstairs...hmm, hoping ours is ground floor... Well we kept walking, dropping more folks off, walking – sure, let's give the old people the farthest cabin, which turns out to be upstairs! Lol! The walk from our cabin to the dining area is about 3 lengths of our 250 yard driveway – I get almost a quarter of my fitbit steps in just going to breakfast...lol  We were offered a downstairs room, after we had lugged everything to this farthest room and considered it, but no bathroom - so hmm, climb stairs or have a bathroom? we opted to climb.

the room and B as the Sheek 

in the room

outside the room

daily elephant parade

The room is nice though and seems to come with a friendly Siamese cat, who we have to kick out every time we leave the room...lol We have named her Siam...found out later her name is Titi.  Every afternoon about 4pmish, there is an elephant parade that passes by our window, as the elephants return from the river to bed down for the night. Our cabin has no a/c but 2 large oscillating fans are ok...the kitty likes the fans and moving air. Our clock says the temp is about 85* Fahrenheit, so warm but livable... Not as hot as our Texas house in summer when the a/c breaks...lol

Breakfast is at 7am – didn't know such an hour existed – and I managed to make it by 730am this morning. But almost everybody was awakened about 5am by the racket in the dog kennels, barking and excited to eat... I managed to go back to sleep a bit, because I knew we had to work in a few hours. Morning jobs are 8am-11am, lunch at 1130 then afternoon jobs from 1pm-4pmish... Dinner is at 6pm and the evening is free – B & I pretty much fall into bed by 830pm... Our job this morning was cleaning out the elephant barns – there must be about 12 of them because our group of 12 folks did about 6 barns of 3-5 large stalls each. Yep, B & I shoveled shit all morning and paid for the privillage to do it! LOL! It was actually fun and satisfying work, cleaning out a stall and realizing you helped to make it neat and tidy. Elephant poo is full of fiber and lightweight, so shovel loads are not heavy. However, tonight my shoulders don't quite believe that... B worked for about an hour or so and I did another hour and half and had to quit. It took the group about 45 minutes more to finish our task.

The afternoon was a treat for Group A and we did an elephant walkabout and no work. More about that later with some terrific elephant photos. Have a great day today and a better one tomorrow...