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Published: October 6th 2009
Fred the spider
If this spider, the size of my hand, had wanted my sleeping bag, I'd have given it to him!!WOW - I've just been on jungle training and whilst Ray Meers finds this an every day event, I think it was AWESOME. I can now hang a tarp and hammock between 2 trees with a mossy net (well sort of), use a machete (a perang in Malay) to clear jungle, dig a long drop (that's a jungle loo by the way), cross a river in a safe chain and carry out case/medivacs in a jungle. We set off trekking for 2 days and nights into the jungle, after having a bit of training from Floyd our jungle trekking ranger. 34 degrees at 7.30 in the morning is not fun with a 20 kilo back pack on your back, the heat really starts to take its toll. Within 30mins my very large t-shirt was drenched and by the time an hour had gone by, I had consumed 3 litres of water, which all ended up soaking my t-shirt even more!!!!! I have always hated snakes, they make me want to run as far away from them as possible; quite difficult with a 20 kilo backpack on whilst trying to stay upright on a near vertical muddy slope. However, when I was
Me and my basher before the rain
...but the following morning it tilted to a 45 degree angle. confronted with a beautiful bright green tree snake 3 feet away from me, watching as we passed. I was in awe. He was fabulous and I lost my fear there and then. There are butterflies the size of dinner plates here, bugs I've never seen before but belong on in BBC nature program. We got to our camp for the night and I found my 2 trees on a steep incline, then it all started to go slightly pear shaped. Now Floyd, out jungle ranger man, had told us not to call him by his name in the jungle, as the jungle spirits come seek them out in the dark and lead them to their their deaths. He was deadly serious about this one point and were told to call him friend in the jungle. So you can imagine that when you get 25 people who have been trekking all day in searing heat, all of whom are very dehydrated and therefore confused, tired and have really bad headaches, all of us calling him 'friend' didn't quite work for us. Some of us, and I include myself in there, sort of lost it a little for a short time. My
Long rickety bridge over a rain swollen wide river - lovely!
.....and it really did swing, not good with a backpack that size!! tarp drooped and my hammock didn't quite work out and 24 others were going through the same thing! So I found myself a basher buddy to help me put up my tarp and hammock, then I could offer my not so great services back. Fortunately, my buddy was better than me and after three hours of hanging my bed from a tree, i was truly knackered, but my basher looked fab. It was at this point I lost a battery from head torch, which in the jungle rendered me blind cause it goes dark - pitch black dark in the jungle at 6pm, so after eating a meal cooked in one pot, in the dark, I went to bed, at 8pm and fell fast asleep in relative comfort. 11.30pm arrived with a bang, and an electric storm over head raged accompanied by a bloody great wind which made my hammock swing like newtons cradle. which ultimately made my hammock sag and then sink to a 45 degree angle, making it resembled a slanted pouch rather than a hammock. I prepared to experience some of those large odd bugs I'd scrutinized earlier, close up and in the dark - not so
Sewing machine man
There are rows of these blokes in Kota Kinabalu that will fit you into your jeans as though they were pained on. How good is that! appealing. So, whilst watching the best storm I've ever seen, I jammed my right elbow at one end of the hammock and my left foot at the other and hung on for dear life until the rains came, and boy did it rain hard - for 3 hours solid (well it is a rain forest after all). I woke up at 5,30 the next morning, very dry and still hanging on for dear life, BUT, most importantly, still in my hammock - it was AWESOME. Mind you, there are some bloody noisy creatures in the jungle that never shut up. They sound like very loud car alarms and those space invader machine you get in arcades. I can honestly say that I've stayed in quieter hotels in the middle of a city. I'll be back there again next week with twelve 18 to 24 year olds, and when they say to me "I can't do this", I can say you can - really - you really can. A word on the 3 bowls system. When I got here, it was the first thing I was taught. 3 bowls of water, each containing water from a mains supply that has stood
for 30 mins with a purifying water tablet in it. The 3rd bowl then has a cap full of chlorine (bleach to you and me) added to it. Before you eatr you dip your bowl in the chlorine then the purifed water and afterwards, when you wash your plate, you dip it and your cutlery (that's fork and spoon - no knives) in the chlorine water. All this is to prevent D and V. So you can imagine how puzzled the Malaysian members of our team were when they were expected to do the same, having lived here all their lives and only just being introduced to this system. Give me back my dish washer, I miss it. I'm sure my Malaysian friends would prefer it to 3 sodding bowls too!!!!!!
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Rona
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Wow, sounds amazing Jill, good on you! After seeing that spider, I cant say I envy you!! Yikes!!