Cuc Phuong National Park

The calls of the primates ring out just as a new day begins. They carry across the limestone cliffs and rouse a whole stretch of old forest. The singing of primates is one of the signs used to measure how close a forest still is to its original state. And in this forest, that sound can still be heard.

That forest is Cúc Phương.

On July 7, 1962, this stretch of forest was set aside for special protection. From that day on, Vietnam had its first national park.

The park lies within the Tam Điệp mountain range and covers more than 22,400 hectares. It spreads across land belonging to three provinces, which today are Ninh Binh, Phú Thọ and Thanh Hóa. Most of it is primary forest growing on limestone mountains. This is evergreen tropical rainforest, and in any season the slopes are covered in an unbroken blanket of green.

Anyone who stands quietly under the canopy for a while soon understands why this place is so full of sound. Cúc Phương is home to more than 300 species of birds. It shelters more than 100 species of mammals and nearly 2,000 species of insects. Its plants and mosses number more than 2,000 species, and more than 400 of those are medicinal. Every rustle in the leaves could be a creature you have never met.

The animal chosen as the symbol of the park is the voọc mông trắng, the white-rumped langur. It is a very rare langur, with black fur and a white rump. Close to the park gate stands the Endangered Primate Rescue Center. It was the first place on the Indochinese Peninsula devoted only to rescuing primates. At Cúc Phương, the white-rumped langur became one of four primate species to breed in captivity for the first time anywhere in the world. Many of the animals at the center were once traded illegally. They are cared for with great devotion, and some are raised until the day they are strong enough to return to the forest.

It is not only primates. Cúc Phương also has the first and only center in Vietnam devoted solely to rescuing and conserving turtles. Since it opened, it has rescued thousands of turtles and released hundreds of them back into the wild. Next to it is a conservation program for carnivores and pangolins. Here, two species of Asian pangolin have been raised successfully on an artificial diet.

The Cúc Phương Museum, founded in 1973, is where the forest keeps its treasures. Inside are more than 13,000 specimens of plants and fungi. There are thousands of insect specimens too, along with specimens of mammals and birds, fossils, and archaeological finds. Each specimen is a small piece of the forest, kept for those who come later.

In the museum lies the skeleton of a prehistoric person, curled up with knees drawn in, as if sleeping a very long sleep. That person has lain this way for more than 7,500 years. In 2000, Cúc Phương also yielded a fossil thought to come from an ancient reptile. It lived about 200 to 230 million years ago.

The skeleton came from a cave called Động Người Xưa, whose name means the Cave of the Ancient People. The cave sits halfway up a limestone mountain. Its mouth is about 10 meters wide and about 20 meters high. The Mường people of the area call it hang Đắng. The Mường are an ethnic group of northern Vietnam whose language is closely related to Vietnamese. The path through the cave is only about 300 meters long, but no one can walk it without a lamp.

The cave has three chambers. The outer chamber is bright and airy, and it is where people of long ago once lived. The middle chamber is dark and damp, and today it is home to colonies of bats. The innermost chamber is completely dark, hung with stalactites and studded with stalagmites. In 1966, archaeologists dug here and found three ancient graves, each holding a human skeleton. They also found stone axes, stone knives, bone points, shells and animal bones. Across the Cúc Phương area, traces of prehistoric people date from about 7,500 to 12,000 years ago.

Deeper still lies the central forest, which people know simply as Bống. From here, a trail 7 kilometers long leads first past the cave of Sơn Cung. It passes a group of five chò chỉ trees. Then it reaches the tree called Chò ngàn năm, the Thousand-Year Chò. Standing beside these ancient trees, anyone feels small, in the most literal sense.

For anyone who loves a challenge, there is a round trip of 7 kilometers up to Đỉnh Mây Bạc, the Silver Cloud Peak. It is the highest summit in the park.

Cúc Phương also has a botanical garden that gathers rare trees from the forest, from across Vietnam, and from around the world. That way, anyone who comes can meet them all in one place.

Then, each year toward the end of April, the forest seems to change its clothes. Swarms of forest butterflies take to the air and fill the sky over the whole road into the park. They are thickest in the central forest. Cúc Phương has more than 400 species of butterflies, and the most common are white or yellow. The butterfly season lasts until about the end of May. Walking among all those wings is like walking through a shower of petals that never reaches the ground.

Around the forest lie the villages of the Mường, who have been bound to this land since ancient times. There are houses raised on stilts and rice fields climbing the hillsides in terraces. There are mortars for pounding rice and looms for weaving brocade. And there are festivals and customs all their own.

When night falls, the forest does not sleep. The insects strike up a great concert, one voice taking over from the next. Among the branches, fireflies light tiny sparks that blink on and off like stars that have strayed down into the forest. To lie still and listen is to hear that every call belongs to a living creature.

Then the night passes. The insect music fades. And as a new day begins, from deep in the old forest, the calls of the primates ring out once more. They carry across the limestone cliffs, and the whole old forest wakes up with them.