Here’s the penultimate training weekend away to tell you about and it was back to the Cameron Highlands. The first bad part of the weekend was the bus journey up there. We knew it was going to be longer and more tedious than it should be for the distance you cover but this one took the biscuit. Not only was it the dirtiest bus we’ve ever been on in Malaysia but also it was anything but powerful. This resulted in us not reaching Tanah Rata until gone 10pm and we knew that most of the restaurants shut at that time. Luckily a couple still had customers in and were still serving food. So we quickly devoured something and went to get a room in the lovely guesthouse we’d used last time. Here cometh the second bad part of the weekend – they were full. We tried several only to hear the same and so the third and I’m very pleased to say final bad part of the weekend happened– yep – we ended up in a grotty room and it was fast approaching midnight by this point.
So let’s quickly move on to the positive aspects of the weekend. We were up at 6.30am the next morning and the day had dawned chilly with lovely clear skies so off we set. The Lonely Planet reckoned we should allow 3 hours to get to the top of Gunung Beremban but you know what’s coming – we did it in less, much less in fact at 50 mins!! The forest was beautiful with the early morning light filtering though the trees onto the mossy roots and branches. The view from the top was excellent and we could see for miles including the next Gunung we were headed for.
We assumed it would take us slightly longer this time since we’d already climbed one hill but were delighted at getting to the top in exactly the same time, namely 1 hour 15 mins. The clouds had started to come in just before we got to the top and thunder was rumbling in the background but fortunately the rain stayed off. It was quite cloudy but kept clearing for us to admire the views and marvel at how far we’d walked so far while tucking into our sarnies. The walk down was via the road like last time and just like last time we were forced to make the 5km detour to the Boh tea plantation café for tea and cakes. I would have had a coffee had they had any left! However by this point the sun had come out to play again and it really is a top spot to take a break. Since much of the walk we’d done that morning we’d done quite recently we found a route through the forest back to Tanah Rata to ring the changes. It was getting on for 6pm by this point so not only had we had a great day’s walking but we’d managed to spinit out so long that we only had to go back to the room to get showered and changed and then we were out again. Not a room to linger in, as I’m sure you’ve gathered!
The second day’s walk saw us going down the valley following another beautiful forest trail to a village called Habu, which is set among vegetable fields. Obviously a downhill wander to look at vegetable growing wasn’t the main focus of the day. Oh no! We then had to walk 10kms back up the hill to get back to Tanah Rata in time to get changed and catch our bus home. So we managed to clock up 45kms over the 2 days and climbed 2 peaks. The best news of all was that there were no aching limbs atall on Monday morning so we’re now convinced that our fitness levels are good enough to tackle Kilimanjaro.
We feel happy that we’ve done all that we can to prepare for this expedition and setting up the sponsorship has really helped to spur us on to the top. The response so far has been very positive and Unicef have been in touch to thank us for our efforts and to assure us the money will be well spent helping children who need it most.
Almost there and I think we may finally be starting to feel a bit excited.
