"Tell us about your summer vacation plans or experiences."

Greetings esteem friends, i want to use this platform to share with you all my experience from my past summer vacation which i embarked on. Without much delay i thank the organiser of the forum @robin42 for giving me this great opportunity.

The life changing experience of mine occurred on August 2018, in which, i and my colleague in the same department, schooling in University of Uyo, Nigeria, were fully involved.
The suggestion to embark on that vacation/field trip was brought up by few friends and my colleagues unanimously agreed to it. I keep recalling their reply "let's do it,why not".
From the moment the suggestion was agreed upon, a committee was set up to make enquiries for the possible place we should go. To my utmost suprise, maybe because i was doubtful such plan will succeed. But speedily, locations was suggested, one was within the same State we were schooling at and the second was a distant State.

The later was selected which was at Cross River Forest reserve. Yes, i know what you are thinking. Why are there having their vacation at such a place. Well, the aim of selecting such place was to first enjoy ourselves while touring around such a reserve environment, secondly, during our leisure we can record and compute informations on indigenous and endangered species of plants found there for reference purposes in our educational field. Hmmm, killing two birds with one stone!

The date for the vacation/field trip was set, after so much preparations, things was catered for materially, financially and otherwise.
The day for the vacation came swiftly, i was fully ready with my backpack stuffed with everything i can think of needed for the trip. At exactly 7:00am we departed from bus station where the bus we booked was. The journey was blessed with a brief prayer after which our director of social took it upon himself to me sure that the journey was eventful and fun, jokes and other form of comedy was entertained. After 12 hours journey with three breaks along the way for either refuel, meals and other necessity.
We arrived at the campsite in the evening where some personals await our arrival prior the reservation made, due to the long journey, we retired to our rooms early.

The next day in camp, we were given orientation and guidelines regarding the national forest reserve by the forest rangers and there volunteered to be our tour guide inside the forest. I wish you all were part of this trip so that you could feel the trails we felt inside the forest. The forest ranger who was our tour guide, purposefully withheld some information from us about how dangerous the forest was, only to inform us later knowing we can't go back to the camp anymore. We almost died of fright because of some wild animals we saw along the way.

You will think that this was the scariest event until the next day we went for 2km hike on a mountain,the enthusiasm we had during the beginning died off on our way back because we were tired and the only shortcut back to camp was a rope bridge suspended more than 100m above the ground. The shortcut became our greatest mistake because we had difficulty making those afraid of height to cross the bridge,you should see the way there screamed. That night we had bonfire night with music and dance.

The fourth day, we went on site seeing on the closest community to the national forest reserve in the morning and later in the afternoon, visited a resort which has a ranch at the apex of the mountain. I wished you saw the climate of the place, it was cold,foggy, quiet and serene. After lounging there for a day with my colleagues,we wished we could stay longer but the vacation came to a close after five days. We departed the next day from campsite at 8:00am and arrived back in our city by 9:32pm safely.

I thank you all for reading and letting me entertain you with this wonderful experience of mine, remain blessed. Using this medium i invite @eveetim @bessie2023 and @fortwis09 to take part in this contest.