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Mt. Kinabalu

Sunday, March 5th, 2006

Mt. Kinabalu is the highest mountain in Malaysia, the highest in Borneo and claims to be the highest in Southeast Asia, although this depends on if you consider Myanmar part of SE Asia (I’m not sure why you wouldn’t).
The view is beautiful from the top, you can see all the way to the ocean and beyond on a clear day. The hike is usually planned so you arrive at the summit just at sunrise for really spectacular views.
It’s not that hard of a hike if you look at the statistics. You’ve got 2 days to do 20 kilometers and the elevation is just over 13,000 feet. Not too bad. The problem is, the entire trail is like a staircase. Going up we did great, made good time. Coming down, I was in a world of trouble with my knees. I’m sure it would have been OK if I had trained for it, I should have been spending 2 hours a day on the stair climber. As it was, my legs a pretty much ceased to function properly by the time we got to the bottom.

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A view of the mountain peeking out from behind the clouds, taken near the trail head.

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The sun is just starting to come up over a formation known as ‘donkey’s ears’.

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Here we are at the summit. At that elevation, it can be chilly even here.

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The view down the moutain into the valley.

Orangutans!

Saturday, March 4th, 2006

We visited the orangutan rehabilitation center at Sepilok. Basically, oragnutans that are orphaned or injured end up here and are cared for and gradually re-introduced into the wild. They have a ‘feeding time’ twice a day where orangutans that have been released can come and supplement the food they find in the wild with bananas and milk. Mostly the young orangutans return, as they get older they don’t like the human contact so much and are finding plenty of food in the wild.

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These are pretty big for Sepilok, they are probably teenagers.

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Just hanging around.

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We stayed at this cool ‘junge resort’ near Sepilok. The plants are just amazing.

Diving Sipidan

Saturday, March 4th, 2006
Our holiday in Sabah was fantastic! Sipidan Island was all we had heard it would be. As far as big animals, half the group saw hammerhead sharks, half the group saw a manta ray, it just depended which way you ... [Continue reading this entry]