The swimming felt great. The creek was clean and cool and the current swift. Tuai told us to watch out for leeches but there weren't any in that fast flowing water.

We felt crippled hiking around in our boots but we were even worse without them. We walked gingerly through the shallow waters and on the river bank. We felt so silly since none of the rest of them slowed in the least yet for us each step had to be carefully calculated.

I slipped trying to climb down the rocks beside the falls and bounced a couple times on my way into the water. Badul found this hilarious and brought it up a few times over the next couple days. He didn't speak English but his hand signals and laughing communicated just fine. Fortunately I was mostly OK, although I hit my elbow and heel pretty hard and later my elbow bled.

The lower pool was one of the prettiest places I have ever been swimming in my life. It was as nice as the Seven Sacred Pools on Maui in Hawaii. (Joan: Nicer! If you can rank such things).

Badul and Johnny started to throw rocks into a couple small caves in the cliff face opposite the pool and scores of bats flew out. They kept throwing rocks and bats kept coming out. Eventually one flew out and came towards us flying in a slow straight line. The rest flew in the crazy unpredictable manner bats have so I figured this one had been hit. Johnny chased it to where it landed in some weeds and found it. He gave it to Badul who had a blast playing with it, seeing how far he could stretch its wings before something broke and how long he could hold it under water without drowning it. (Joan: I kept thinking of a Grimm's fairy tale where a little girl is tortured for having pulled the wings off of flies).

The older guys eventually set down the fish guns and went to the upper pool with the net. The had baited the fishing rod, cast it into one of the pools and left it on the bank under some rocks.

Badul got one of the masks and gave me the other and we went looking for fish. We actually found a couple under a ledge. I got pretty close to it so I could almost imagine how the fish gun could work.

Johnny came back from the netting and started making a fire. We helped him collect some wood. He also collected several huge banana leaves. We didn't know why. After a while Sooyau and Colony returned. They had about eight or 10 fish. Most of them were about six inches long but a couple for at least ten inches.

The put a stick through the largest fish and cooked it over the fire like a hot dog. The rest of the fish they sliced open, salted and wrapped in the banana leaves. They put the rolled up packets on the fire. None of the fish were filleted.

We used some more banana leaves for plates. When the fish were done Sooyau set them in the middle of us and we just grabbed what we wanted. (Joan: flashbacks of Quetico). They had brought a couple plastic containers of rice and a container of salt.

We tried to separate the meat of the fish from the bones and the skin with our hands. We dipped the pieces in the salt then ate them. I think they ate everything except the bones. The nice thing about eating while sitting outside on a bunch of rocks is that you can just drop the parts you don't want among the rocks no one notices.

After lunch we all just sat around for a while. Someone caught a pretty good sized crab that probably came out looking for the scraps I didn't eat.

Badul was still smiling. He showed me his great little homemade slingshot. The Y-shaped branch was perfectly symmetrical. I could never find a piece like that when I was a kid. He used a chain of rubber bands where each link of the chain was made of six rubber bands. It was a pretty powerful device.

What a great hike that was. It reminded me so much of our canoe trips back home, except this time I was the guest. It turned out I was even closer to the mark than I thought. I figured these guys did this sort of thing all the time. They don't. Colony and Johnny were essentially playing hooky from school and Sooyau took the day off from his shop. He also has large fields of various fruits and vegetables to take care of and he's still working on his house.

He really wanted to take us on that hike but he also really wanted an excuse to go himself just as I love to take guests to my favorite places. It's nice to know that in Borneo some people do about the same things for fun that I do.

The night before we left, after I'd had a lot of rice wine I put my arm around Sooyau told him that I wanted to take him on a canoe trip in America someday. He would love it.

Next: Dog Bite

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