Coming to Ca Mau with a long journey on a swaying car, I felt like I had reached the end of the world. In fact, the distance of more than 300km if running from Ho Chi Minh City is nothing, it can travel for about 4 hours if in the North.
However, here, travel time must be doubled, because the speed rarely exceeds 50km/h and the road rises every hundred meters because it crosses the canal, so it must be raised high for the boat to pass. The feeling of driving slowly and slowly is very uncomfortable, but when I saw the driver's face, I felt uneasy because I was used to the roadside and the saying "Ca Mau can't be rushed".
Finally, the urban area at the head of this Fatherland is brightly lit in the sky and night, but that light is not from a few bamboo lanterns shining in the dark space of the mangrove and eucalyptus forests of Nam Can in the past, but from thousands of high-pressure lights. Ca Mau is rising to become an unbelievably strongly developed urban area.
However, the concerns about U Minh forest are still there, and it has been "inflated" many times through the words of Mr. Vo Thanh Dung, Specialist of the Department of Ecotourism & Environmental Education of U Minh Ha National Park, who was sent to welcome and give us instructions on this business trip.
"The top is mosquito, the bottom is squeezing, just shake a few grains of rain to squeeze the cow out to fight for blood like pouring banh xeo", Mr. Dung said in the eyes of many people, gradually losing the excitement. "But be assured, tomorrow morning before going into the forest, I will give everyone spray and mosquito repellent."
How can we rest assured when the images have become "literary events" right from the time we read the book "Southern Forest Land", with mosquito clouds covering the whole sun, with the sound of mosquitoes complaining like a fan blowing, with the story of U Minh mosquitoes burning the whole cow to death...
But then, I was afraid, the sun kept rising, the work still had to be done. Early in the morning, I was present at the gate of U Minh Ha National Park. Go early so that when entering the core area, the sun is at its strongest, limiting the activity of rat droppings.
O legendary U Minh, the mysterious U Minh has just appeared here. Reading the religious book, I found that U Minh was only used in a dark, hazy place to imprison sinful souls. The U Minh gioi of the Geopark of King Bo Tat is also a gloomy place but is a place for rescue.
The name U Minh forest of Ca Mau also comes from the two U Minh areas because of the hazy nature of the flooded forest, with mangrove, fish sauce, and bamboo forests (with mangrove forests) and cajuput forests (with freshwater forests). Those forest canopy are so dense that the sunlight is unlikely to penetrate them, combined with steam and misty moisture, creating a U Minh air mass on the ground.
It is also strange that the word Minh originally means brightness but has turned into fog, darkness from U Minh. Because the bright Minh word consists of 2 Japanese words - Nguyet, when the sun and moon are both shining, what is brighter? However, the word Minh in U Minh is made up of 2 words Minh, so there are 2 lunar days.
It is these 4 quintessence that remove each other's light, becoming dark in the morning. Now I understand the teaching of the ancients: "People are unlearned, enlightened like traveling", meaning "People without studying, the path of life is as foggy as walking at night".
However, at the gate of U Minh Ha National Park, everything is very bright. "This is the edge of the garden, Mr. Dung, it has not yet entered the buffer zone, then it has gone through the buffer zone to the core of the garden," Mr. Dung explained. We then got on a bus on a concrete road leading from the garden gate through a vast banana garden forest.
Banana land belongs to the buffer zone, leased to the people for many purposes: People have livelihoods, gardens have revenue, and bananas are the top type of forest fire protection plant, as if it is the natural barrier layer of the core area. From the sharing of this young man from Ca Mau, interesting information about U Minh Ha National Park appeared.
Although it has existed since the time of its establishment, it was not until June 25, 2009 that U Minh Ha National Park was recognized by UNESCO as one of the three core areas of Mui Ca Mau World Biosphere Reserve. The garden includes a core area of 8,527.8 hectares and a buffer zone of about 25,000 hectares.
In the garden, there is a sub-zone for Conserving the ecological system of cajuput forest on muddy coal land of about 2,593.7 hectares and a sub-zone for restoration and sustainable use of the flooded ecosystem of 5,190.5 hectares.
However, the unique thing about U Minh Ha National Park is that this is a mangrove forest with an ecosystem of cajuputii forests (Melaleuca cajuputii) formed under flooded conditions, inundated with iron ores, on mud, and is a typical tree of the Mekong Delta.
U Minh Ha National Park is completely opposite to Nam Can mangrove forest. The plant and animal system in U Minh Ha National Park is freshwater, brackish water, and is also a place of residence for many species of birds and animals of scientific and rare value listed in the Vietnam Red Book, in particular, many species of birds that are endangered and threatened with extinction in the world are recorded here.
Mr. Dung proudly talked about the value of U Minh Ha National Park, the biodiversity and the function of preserving geological resources. In the garden, for plants alone, there are 76 species belonging to 65 families and 36 families, of which cajuput is an advantageous plant. There are 23 species of animals, 91 species of birds, 36 species of reptiles, 11 species of amphibians, 37 species of fish, including many types of native fish and specialties such as catfish, snakehead fish, butterfly moth...
The car runs endlessly through the banana forest, turn over a road running along the fireproof canal, and then over a small bridge. From here, we officially entered the core area of U Minh Ha National Park. Mr. Dung winked: "We have applied mosquito repellent and splashed it off a few of you, because we are about to experience a specialty: Boating through coffee water". (continued)
