1 post tagged “butterfly”

Yesterday, I spent the morning taking a guided tour of the countryside with others from my hostel. It was vaguely touristy, but occasionally quite beautiful -- the views from the tip of the hill at the rose garden we visited and the steeply terraced rows of tea plants at the BOH tea estate were breathtaking, as were the butterflies at the butterfly garden along the route.

I took a bunch more pretty butterfly pics; you can find them here.

After the tour, I got lunch with four others from the tour group -- Sasha and his girlfriend (whose name -- sorry! -- I forgot), from Prague, Christian, from Germany, and Kimberly, from Colorado. We got along well, and decided to go for a hike on one of the nearby "Jungle Walk" trails that afternoon.

At the urging of the hostel staff, we decided on Trail 9A, which was a relatively short, relatively flat hike by a waterfall. The beginning of the trail turned out to be lovely, but paved, and somewhat uninspiring, so when the branch to Trail 8 came, we took it. The map -- which we'd only glanced at -- described Trail 8 as "very steep" and "difficult", climbing to the top of Gunung Berembun, an 1840-meter peak. It more than lived up to its description; this was, by far, the hardest hike I've been on, and the altitude didn't help.

After about two hours of foothold-finding and branch-grabbing, we reached the peak, 1.37km from the trailhead (most of that distance more or less straight up, of course, and some of it was mildly miserable.) It was about two hours to dark, and we were in the middle of the jungle; we still had to get back down. We took Trail 7 down, along the way finding a really cool branch swing that -- Mom, stop reading -- sent the rider out over part of the valley. It felt like flying.  (Sorry I don't have any pictures of my turn on the swing -- here's one of Sasha.)

By the time we reached the bottom of the mountain, the sun was setting.
In what was either a very stupid or a very smart design move, getting back to the road from the end of the trail required walking through the MARDI agricultural research site -- and, more specifically, through a strawberry farm. Featuring luscious, plump, pluckable strawberries, just hangng there. After a four-hour hike.

We got back to town just fine a bit after dark, had beers, and got Chinese food. It great to meet the whole bunch. If you're interested in these folks, Christian has a blog (in German), and Sasha has a website and uses flickr. (He was shooting with a gorgeous 35mm Leica, and works as a professional photographer in Prague. I hope to see him and his girlfriend when I'm there in November.)

Today, I'm laying a bit low, being rather stiff from yesterday's adventure. The climate, hostel, and town here are all very much to my liking, so I don't think I'll be moving on right away.