Small wonders - Cuc Phuong

During our trip in Viet Nam, of course we planned to vist Sa Pa, known for his hill tribes, as well. But... things didn't go as planned.
The day before we intended to take the train out of Hanoi a typhoon ravaged the North. Landslides, deaths and touristst helicoptered out of there made it obvious we couldn't go there.

Spider and prey

We needed an alternative. We decided on Cuc Phuong: a National Park south of Hanoi. Due to the use of agent orange most of Viet Nam's jungle was destroyed.*  Luckily jungle is a resilient thing and it grew back.

Reproduction in progress

The animal population takes longer to reestablish, specially the mammals. This is caused by two major reasons: The larger the animal the slower the reproduction rate (generally speaking). Another reasn in ths specific country is the poor population. If you're hungry any animal is edible, and that happened on a large scale.

Spot the lizard...

Fortunatly there are several animal rescue centers and breeding programs. And for us visitors it is a good place to appriciate the smaller wonders of the animal spectrum.

Although.... it seems like some of the insects have taken on gigantic proportions... ! May be trying to compensate for the lack of mammals?

Ridiculously big stick insect

In the end we had a great two days in Cuc Phoung. The jungle visit was impressive, so were the rescue centers, and there are also some interesting archeologically interesting caves to visit. This is appareatly one of the oldest places of human settlement.
But again... watch the creep crawlies when visiting!

Bats in a archeological cave

*) Agent orange is a herbicite. The US army spayed it with planes in copious amounts during the Vietnam war to defoliate the leafy jungle, thus destroying North Vietnames soldiers's hiding places and ambushes. Needless to say it was toxic for humans and animals too.