Look to the Hills

These are the Central Highlands of Vietnam. Here, coffee and rubber are grown in carefully-planted groves that cover every hill. Here, mountain-dwelling villagers tend these orchards, collect latex, dry coffee beans in their front yards, and live ever-so simply.  Here, children walk or ride their bikes to and from school and young people (who isn't young here?) get around villages and towns on Honda motor bikes by the hundreds of thousands.  These are the kinds of hills, we are sure, that might have inspired many a Psalm. This particular region of this beautiful country has been our primary place of toil for seven of the past nine days of cycling. We are now following the historic Ho Chi Minh Trail, the mountain forest supply route on which US B-52s dropped more ordinance in the 1960s than all theaters combined in WWII.  We'll grind our way up and sail down these hills for at least one more full day before heading east toward the Vietnam Sea (South China Sea) coast and Da Nang.