A day in the Cameron Highlands
17.09.2009 21 °C
We have now arrived in the Cameron Highlands, it is much cooler and as it is mountainous it rains – A LOT! They are in their rainy season here so it seems that every afternoon around 2pm it will rain for about an hour and then in the evening it starts again for the long haul and it buckets down with thunder and lightning. It hasn’t stopped us from exploring though….
Today we did a full day tour beginning with a search for a giant Rafflesia flower, the Cameron Highlands has the 3rd biggest species of this flower and they are huge! They take 2 years to germinate and then a further 9 months to grow to giant buds, then once it is time to open it takes each petal 3 – 5 hours to open so usually over 20 hours for it to bloom fully and it lasts just 5 to 7 days before dying! Anyway to find these flowers we had to drive for about 45 minutes mostly up a VERY steep hillside which was made up of clay and as it had rained most of the night before it was full of deep water, our land rovers were sliding all over the place, I have certainly never experienced a journey like it before! We then had over an hours walk to find the flowers and as usual it involved crossing rivers and lots of climbing ( we are going to be fit by the end of this!). We found them and they were pretty impressive.
Our next stop was to a village of Orang Aslis (original people) we were shown how they still use a blow pipe and poisoned darts to hunt for their food. Gerald had a go at the pipe and managed to hit the target - a piece of polystyrene on a tree!
Then it was off to the tea plantations, we only visited one but as far as you could see in every direction it was full of tea trees, all of which are around 80 years old. It was quite a beautiful sight but as the rain clouds were closing in our photos just didn’t do them justice.
We got to see the tea being picked and inside the factory we learnt about how the tea was processed.
We attempted to view the highlands from the highest point and after another steep drive up to the top (6666ft) discovered that it was full of low cloud and we couldn’t see anything but cloud!!!
So it was onto the final stop – a walk through a mossy forest. We all got pretty muddy on this trek as the moss holds so much water everything in the forest is wet and soggy. It was really pretty to walk through though and our guide taught us lots about the plants growing there, we should now be able to survive if we got lost in the forest!!!!
Anyway by the time we got back to the guesthouse after about 10 hours of adventures it was POURING down once again – guess we can’t have sunshine the whole time we are away!
Hope everyone is well, stay in touch