UP INTO THE MOUNTAINS

Now that I've had a night's rest, I took this photo out of our resort room window.  It really is a pretty setting.  Unfortunately, the place is filled and most of the family's here have very young children.  On our plane trip here yesterday, a small boy spent the last 20 minutes of the flight screaming "no" at the top of his lungs.  Dinner last night had gangs of nutsy, people acting like it was their last meal on the planet, and their kids were screaming full tilt.  I've had a hard time adjusting.

Our view

Today, after breakfast, Rejoice and Dr. Ibin (I found out what his real name was), picked us up for a drive up to Mt. Kinabalu.  The indigenous people actually called it Aki Nabalu (our family's heaven).  If you get rid of the a and run the other letters together you get Kinabalu.  It's a granite plug 13,000 feet high.  We weren't going to the top, just to a spot to see the peak - which we did for a very short time.  We mostly looked at cloud forest and plants.  Here are a few photos.

Our first stop was at a gas station with the best photo of the peak of the day.

We stopped for a break at the Nabalu shops, and, I actually found a few things to buy.  Must shop......

Here are some photos of the break.

The gourd-like objects hanging near me are a type of flute.  The gourd is attached to what look like a set of pan pipes.  We, unfortunately, never heard what they sound like.

We drove on into Mt. Kinabalu park.  A number of people hike to the top of the peak.  It takes 8 to 10 hours - or more if you take your time.  Once a year they have a race to the top and people get there in 2 and a half to 3 and a half hours.  Sounds dismal.

We then drove to a spot where we could take a walk in the forest.  Rejoice told us that it would be muddy - it was muddy!  He also warned us that we might encounter leaches.  Whew!  No leaches.  Below are some photos of our walk.

Rejoice is showing us a rattan plant.

Tiny orchids

Rabina berries.

When we finished our walk, we went into a botanical garden.  On the way out we encountered a tree shrew.  Here he is below.

We went out of the park and had a great lunch in a local cafe, then went back to the park for a slide show about the mountain.

Taken outside of the cafe.

Bamboo orchids.

Coming back to Kota Kinabalu we passed by the sea shore again.  We had seen this yesterday.  I'm not sure why, but the horizon is very shortened here.  Very high humidity??  Flat earth??

It looks like the boats in the distance are about to fall off the edge of the world.  Odd perspective.

Tomorrow we leave very early in the morning and fly to Sandakan.  That's where Sepilok - the orangutang sanctuary is located.  We play around there a full day, then at 9 at night fly off to Kuala Lampur.  We get in at midnight.  Sounds like a bit of an endurance contest.  Next update as soon as we have the internet tubes.