Mount Kinabalu

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Sorry about the lack of blogging but we've been having trouble finding internet places and any time on our tour to blog.

We are now in Sepilok Orang-utan centre in Borneo, but more about that later if we have enough time. For now, this'll be another marathon. Happy reading!

We left Kota Kinabalu for a long bus journey on Sunday. We met up with our tour the previous night, a group of sixteen in total and a leader called Wan. This part of the holiday is a 10 day tour organised by Guerba and Tropical adventures of Borneo. The journey started in a little bus to the Highland which had trouble ging up some of the hills. We saw some great landscapes and even a few glimpses of Mt. Kinabalu, which we were to climb on Monday. It was quite unnerving since there were many smaller "hills", but when you looked up above the cloud level there was one, large peak, which looked out over the cloud level. That was what we had to climb, which made us bite our nails a little!

We arrived at our hotel, one Fairy Garden Resort and left for Poring Hot Springs. We went for a short walk into the jungle and over a canopy walkway. For those that don't know this is ladders with planks of wood on them, suspended by rope nets about 41 metres off the forest floor. It can be a little scary when it rocks! We then spent some time in the springs, which was relaxing, though the sulphorous water was rather odorous.

MT. KINABALU

This 4000 metre peak is the highest in south east Asia. Fortunately you start climbing at about 1600 metre, reducing the journey somewhat. Basically, you climb to 3,300 metres in one day and stay overnight in a hut, unheated of course. This is a 6 km walk. You get up at 2:30 in the morning to do the last 2.5 km and watch the dawn rising from the peak. We managed the 6km walk in about 5.5 hours, to arrive at about 3 in the afternoon. We then spent the rest of the day relaxing in a heated restaurant, drying our shoes and getting aclimatised to the 7.3 degrees C temperature, 20 degrees lower to what we were having in Singapore. We awoke at 2:20 as planned, but to a howling gale and pouring rain. This was not good. The guides said that there was no chance of us going up the mountain since it was too dangerous and there could be parts of the track that were waist deep in water. So we went bakc to bed. We tried again at 4 am, but to no avail. At a more reasonable 7:30 we went to breakfast and started our descent.


Sorry but we must dash, they're taking orders for dinner. More later!

DORA

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