Defying the weather forecast
It was raining like crazy in French Guyana a couple of days before deciding to engage in this trail. We were advised several times not to do it under these weather conditions, because much probably we would need to "swim" and some tree trunks could be blocking the path.
Well, by the image you can already see that we did it anyway 😆
For the ones who are not familiar with the word "carbet" in french, it is basically a wooden shelter originally made by the indigenous people of the region. The sign basically points to the trail that leads to the "carbet", place that we would be sleeping a couple of hours from there.
Some parts of the trail were indeed flooded, as you can see in the image above, but fortunately there was no need to "swim", and the weather was very kind with us all through the trail.Â
The Molokoi has a total of 18 km, and people usually do it in two days. One of the approaches, is to take the biggest part of the trail the first day (11 km), sleep in the "carbet", and do the rest (7 km) the second day. The first half can take approximately 5 to 6 hours, of course it always depend on your rhythm. The second day can be easily done in 3 hours. This first approach starts near a national road (RN2) and ends in the amazing village of Cacao (keep reading to know more about it 🙃).
Astonishing nature
The animals in general are not so easy to find, they really know how to hide from humans, and apart from a lot of exotic sounds, I wasn't able to see anything clear, just some birds and a glimpse of a mammal, that didn't give me enough time to classify it.
But insects, there were tones of them...
From several butterflies, centipedes (I actually had one in my arm at some point), caterpillars, spiders and countless of other insects that I'm incapable of naming them.
From all of the amazing insects, the ones that won the prize of teamwork are definitely the ants.
I spent a couple of minutes watching them carrying leaves, from one place to another, and the smallest ants, not strong enough, were actually attached to the leaves in a clever way to not allow the big ones to carry more than they should. An amazing force distribution, that shows a lot of intelligence from these tiny insects.
Chilling in the carbet
After 5, 6 hours we finally arrived to the "carbet". First thing was to drop our stuff and run to the river that was passing near by. A shower there just felt like a gift from the gods. I would say that this first half of the trail was quite intense, and the only thing you want afterwards is to immerse your body in fresh water 😌.
The "carbet" has 3 different wooden shelters, one that serves as a common space to eat, drink, have laughs together, tell stories that only the rainforest can hear. And two other places to handle the hammocks. These two shelters have place for 18 - 20 hammocks, so one good rule of this trail is to go very early in the morning to be lucky enough to find a spot.Â
There is also a funny WC, that I will leave the curious to find out by themselves 😆
After spending an amazing night there, we woke up quite early to able to arrive in time for the market in Cacao. We packed our stuff, one last shower in the river, and ups... a small friend decided to show up.
One last effort
The second part of the trail started quite intense, because you need to climb a lot in the first hour. With the plus that the mud attached to the feet, make you gain some extra weight, and the roots can be quite tricky.
The nature was equally gorgeous, and when you least expect you find these amazing, huge and wise trees, that know too much about the ways of the jungle. Feel free to gently hug them in the path, we spend a lot of time disconnected from them, but in the end we are no more, no less.
Hello Cacao
At some point the trail gradually starts to be more and more urban, we start to see people and finally we arrive to the end.
Unfortunately I don't have any pictures of Cacao to show you, but it's basically a village of Hmong farmers that settled in French Guyana during the Vietnam war.
The village has 3 main attractions, the street food market, the delicious soup next to the artisan market and the insects museum, all three really worth to check out!
"All we ever needed was a forest, somewhere to produce vegetables. We built everything from scratch, all our houses, our farms, everything, until it became our new home."Â - Hmong farmer
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/world/asia-pacific/3498056.stm