Dad let us sleep in all the way until 9am!!! We woke up the next morning and had breakfast next door at the grocery store which had a bakery in it. we got "american" style breakfasts, which included a fried hotdog and baked beans, but it was very good. I wanted to see the beach, so we walked down a couple blocks until we got to the ocean. KK itselt is a large harbor, not much to swim in. The bank is a large fishing pier full of dead fish smells and boats. But the water was the beautiful teal green that you could see to the bottom and there were lots of little fish around. There were islands in every direction near and far we could see from the bank and the mountains off to the distance to the east of us. We wandered along the pier anad found the food market where they sold meat, fish, and veggies. We also found the cultural market, which was the variety of beach goods you see everywhere else but makde for a 5ft person to walk through, so the guys kept getting waked in the head by long strings of shells and beads.
I had forgotten a rain jacket, so we started into the city center (about 8 blocks total long and 3 wide) to look for a jacket. After failing at one of the large typical Asian malls of random vendors that open late, we stumbled upon a department store hidden upstairs. I found a fully lined rain jacket from some no name label for the equivalent of 11usd!!!
We arrived at Taman Kinabalu around two in the afternoon. The drive was beautiful! It was a 2 1/2 hour drive into the rolling mountains of Borneo. The flat land didn't stay flat long and I was very glad to have taken motion sickness pills. It looked like a post card, as far as the eye could see there were mountains after mountains completely covered in trees. Every now and then, there would be a clearing along the side of one with a little neighborhood with colorful roofs or a tea or cabbage farm. In the distance, there was a VERY large peak of a mountain that stuck out from the rest with its super steep slopes. I immediately started trying to take photos while we curved through the mountains for almost an hour (we drove around it) to then find out later that this was NOT the mountain we were going too, the driver just laughed at me. When we neared the mountain, there were too many clouds to actually see the peak or the steep sides. All we could see was this HUGE waterfall, I would guess 800ft coming what looked like out of the clouds and disappeared into the jungle, after falling almost 1000ft!
Our driver told us our mountain guide and we would meet him at 730 the next morning after breakfast to start the climb. We got settled into our rooms, a four bed hostel along one of many places to stay along a snaking road a mile up into the mountain. We stopped at their park headquarters, which had the world heritage UNESCO monument (Malaysia's first as they advertise everywhere) and a museum about the mountain. The museum was a multiple room display set up with moutain models, climate and geology information, stuff about the different vegetation at the numerous elevations, etc. I read a sign talking about how the peak(4095m when the signs were made, but we found out its grown to 4101m, which is 13,454.7 feet) ) and park hq are at such different climates, it's like climbing from the equator (which the island crosses) to Alaska!! We entered a couple rooms with model animals and bugs and plants of the flora and fauna we will be seeing throughout the hike. There are giant squirrel, monkeys and orang otan, deer, anacondas, killer looking giant bugs and beetles, all kinds of variety. Dad and I took of into a trail for maybe an hour while max went back to the hostel , the time change finally catching up. The trails were very at as it's been raining non stop here for thirty hours and just finished. The trail was surprisingly full of clay. We heard an owl but that was it there was a nice stream running through the trail too. At six we had a climbers meeting we listened to a little speech about what we would be doing in the morning. Then off to our buffet dinner and now we are about to sleep, all backed up and anxiously awaiting for the morning :)
No comments:
Post a Comment