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Published: February 27th 2009
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Germania?
Night falls over the German village of Tanah Rata... I had my doubts about going to the Cameron Highlands as the description in the Lonely Planet didn't sound too exciting. A lot of strawberry farms, tea plantations and a great risk to get lost, great! I could care less about these farms and plantations and I do have a tendency to get lost, but that's mostly in cities without signs. I knew there would be a bunch of walks to do but I had no idea what kind of walks. A limey I met convinced me though that there would be really nice ones. So I made up my mind to go there, even though I met an old Spanish geezer who told me I should skip it.
So I got on another really comfortable bus. They did however run a halfhour of some kung fu movie on this one, all while some idiot bitch played music on her cell phone... I guess earphones haven't made it to SEA yet. You see, it's quite common that people play their personal shit music for all to hear, like in the good ol' 80's when "cool" guys were walking around with a boombox on their shoulder. This bus was half an
Sky is burning
Sky fire in Tanah Rata. hour late aswell, so I guess Malaysia ain't perfect either. No sweat though as this is nothing compared to the "schedule" in other parts of SEA. As we got closer to the highlands the bus ride got more and more scenic. Winding roads and rolling hills. Coolest were the hills covered with tea as the pattern resembled that of spandex pants worn by hair bands in the late 80's. Unfortunately I sat on the wrong side of the bus (as usual) so I couldn't get a good picture of this.
Arriving in Tanah Rata, the small town which is the big tourist stop, a smile crept across my lips as it looked a bit Bavarian with the all the white houses with brown details in the hills. As some of you know I'm a sucker for all things German so this really made my day. Getting off the bus I also noted how big a difference there was in temperature compared to Kuala Lumpur. So nice and cool! In the evening it was almost too chilly only to be wearing shorts and T-shirt.
I checked in at the Cameronian Inn for no other reason that they had an
Waterfall
You can find this waterfall not far from the starting point of trail 9. available room. I haggled it down to 40RM a night. The place was okay I guess. Quiet in the evenings but loud in the mornings as I had the kitchen and cleaning facilities next to my room and a loud staff to boot. No ensuite bathroom either, which I guess is pretty much standard..? Bummer, as I'm a bit spoiled from other countries. I found the food there a bit pricey so I ate elsewhere. A big plus was the free WiFi that wasn't mentioned. It was a bit slow, but still.
I came to this place to do some trekking so trek I did. There were no good maps to find anywhere so I hand copied some that were on the wall at my place. Some dude had drawn them and proclaimed they were the best to be found. Unfortunately no copies were handed out so you had to photo or, as I did, hand draw them yourself. I started out the trekking with trail 4 that was supposed to be for not very experienced trekkers. I've done quite some trekking on my journey but not any real hardcore ones so I chose this one to see where
Cameron Highlands jungle
Yep, you got some cool jungle here aswell. they put the bar. I did not like this trail, partly because it was too close to traffic and people and thus taking away from the nature experience, and partly because it was a bitch to huff and puff up to the viewing tower, which by the way was closed... Even though I've lived with stairs all my adult life and now done some serious exercising on this trip I can never ever get any kind of conditioning, so steep walks totally kill me. I don't mind walking for 10-20km a day, but I'd rather not do it uphill...
The next day I decided to try trail 9 (9A & 9B in a loop). Now this is what I'm talking about! This was a really cool trek, much "junglier" than #4. I almost broke/twisted my ankle and plunged down a 10-20m ledge though. My sence of balance isn't the best and I'm a bit of a "klantarsel" as we say in Sweden, which means clumsy ass. This ain't a good combination when trekking over root covered narrow paths next to ledges. There was a part of the trail that the map guy had marked as a tricky and narrow
Jungle tree turd
I don't want to know what this is... ledge. He wasn't kidding! There was some fat cable running along the wall of the hill that I held onto for dear life as I felt the slightest mistake would plunge me to my death. Now I knew where the bar was at. This ain't pussy Australia where they warn you about the slightest pebble you could trip over, in fear of being sued.* If they say things are tricky or dangerous here - they are! And this loop was for novices... On the way back it was a 1km uphill battle for my poor lungs and legs. This really sucked the energy out of me. Strange thing is that these uphill stretches totally exhaust me but I do them in half or a third of the said time it should take - and I'm not fast! So the mentioned times are very generous. If you're a well conditioned trekking junkie it wouldn't be a problem to do these two treks in one day.
On the third day I chose to do the 5 + 3 trail which wasn't as cool as the 9 trail but still pretty nice. I liked the changing flora with some jungle parts and
Nice flower
What the hell!?!?! Sissy flower loving wimp! some more tolkien-ish ones. This one was a bit tricky for my no-sence-of-locality. The guy had made some errors on the map (uphill when it was supposed to be downhill, for instance...) which of course got me nervous and some parts of the trail were so overgrown it was borderline machete time! Somewhere after the halfway mark there were lots of fallen trees covering the trail and for a while I wondered if there still was a trail beneath all the "rubble". I had to do some climbing over fallen trees and just cross my fingers I would find the trail again, all while thinking about all the people that have gotten lost in these hills... *gulp* I was fine though and found my way out to the big road and walked it back to Tanah Rata.
There wasn't too much fauna on these trails but butterflies and the annoying insects buzzing in your ears and face. On trail 9 I encountered a footlong millipeed though. In all the crappy jungle movies these are deadly and let's say this one was for excitment's sake (I really have no idea). A monkey was swinging by on trail 5 + 3
but that was it. I really didn't expect to see any animals so these were a pleasent surprise.
So folks, I really enjoyed this place and would like to thank that pommie who sold me on the idea of coming here. Oh yeah, I almost forgot! I have a confession to make... After my first evening meal in town I continued to check the place out and to my huge surprise (and sadly enough, to my great pleasure) I stared at a big Starbucks sign. Wow, a Starbucks out here. That is so great and sad at the same time. Unfortunately the big corporation has got me in its claws. <:-/
*I like Oz, but this is quite ridiculous. Not unlike Sweden! :-)
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