Kinabalu

Kinabalu National Park, 2:18pm, 7-12-07

The rain begins just as I put on my shoes to leave for a guided walk of the botanical gardens. Unfortunate. However, the room that Matt and I are saying in ("Hill Lodge #4") is nice and quite big. There is a writing desk, a couch, and lots of floor space. Its design is kind of like an uberdelux yurt. It's raining much harder now and it's cold too. Frankly, I'm not looking forward to walking through this tomorrow (or the next day, or the next...). But as my dad said it's raining at home too, so while my location is changeable the weather is not.

Perhaps I spoke too soon. After making tea, the rain has stopped - for the moment at least. I will prepare my clothes and go to the gardens. I suppose I'd better familiarize myself with cold rain once again.


Two days later
After two days on Kinabalu, I can hardly walk up the stairs to my room. The trail is 6 km the first day, then 2 more to the top and back to the bottom on the second. Most of the way is steps. And the reward was abstract at best. We got to the summit at 5:30am this morning. There was a heavy fog, a strong wind, and a cold rain. Conspicuously lacking was any sort of view.

The hike down was nice though, as it cleared up some and the barren granite landscape was cetainly unusual and grand. I took pictures, but I have no way to get them to onto the computer that I'm using at the hostel.

Tomorrow we take a 6 hour bus to the east coast of Borneo to the city of Sandakan. From there, we will spend several days in the jungle around the Kinagatangan river. It's like a jugle wildlife safari, I hope.

I can put up pictures when I'm waiting around in airports on my way home.