Time for lunch. Goy guides us back to the pavilion where – wow! – we are at the end of a huge line for the buffet lunch. But there is plenty of…wait for it….vegetarian fare! (Yes, Maggi, you would have been in heaven!). Goy has told us that anything that looks like meatis actually soy based , so, depending upon your taste, avoid or add to your plate at will. As it turns out, there is tons and tons of food. All sorts of curries and veggies and noodles and rice. Plus awesome fruit (well, that should be expected – it looked great when we were feeding it to the elephants). None of us are going hungry, that’s for certain.
Hunger sated, thirst quenched, we head back out into the heat to wash the elephants. We get to get into the river with our elephant and douse her with buckets of water. I change into my newly purchased Havaiana flip flops (purchased specifically to get into the muddy river so I don’t ruin my good walking sandals) and off we go, with our buckets to our assigned space on the river and wait for our elephant. Well, of course, the elephants know the drill. They each get a basket of fruit to stand there while we wash them, so when they come down the hill from the fields, they just wander around looking for the baskets – which is pretty funny except we’re all sort of skipping back and forth trying to avoid their wandering.
Finally the fruit arrives, the elephants sort of calm down and the washing commences.
They are so dirty. They’ve already been in the mud cooling off, so they are caked. Goy keeps saying go on both sides, well, yeah, but then we are all getting drenched, so most of us stay (intelligently) on one side. Then the mahout gets involved, because apparently we aren’t doing a good enough job, and he douses one of the Spanish girls in mud and water that ricochets off the elephant. Priceless – but only because it wasn't me. 
Now the elephants who have finished their basket start coming to scarf off the other baskets. Oh god – soaking wet, muddy elephants moving fairly quickly around going for fruit. More screams and giggles and laughter as we run back and forth to avoid them.
At one point in time, Ed yells “look out,” and I turn around just in time to see this girl coming right at me. Yikes!
After the river excitement, we get a little reprieve next and have about 30 minutes to lounge on the viewing deck while another family of elephants comes over to be fed. They end up congregating below the viewing deck for a good while, scratching the mud off on the support pillars…
…before the food arrives and they start to eat….
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