The following morning we slept in, bought a few last minute essentials, and chilled out until our mini-bus arrived to take us to the base of Mount Kinabalu. Everyone seemed so relaxed and friendly in Sabah, the cars drove the speed limit and stopped at red lights, and even the salespeople were too busy saying hello to actually try and sell us anything. Everyone walked down the street at a relaxed pace, and were always happy to give directions. It was lovely.
The village of Taginambur consisted of a few well-built two-storey homes, and we were welcomed with coconut sweets (I ate so many I felt sick, but God they were good) and cold water, before a demonstration of how to make coconut oil. The house was lovely, quite modern and set in front of a row of enormous black mountains. We tried to figure out which enormous mountain was the one we would climb the day after next. (I had a feeling it was so enormous we couldn’t actually see it from here, but I didn’t voice that opinion too loudly) The mountains we could see were beautiful, strung with clouds like tinsel beneath the hazy sky, surrounded by jungle. And enormous.
We hung out for the afternoon, ate an early dinner of chicken curry, and watched a traditional performance by local Dasun (the local tribe) kids accompanied by five boys drumming on huge metal pots, all hung by rope to a metal stand. We tried drumming and dancing along with them, causing general hilarity at our obvious lack of ability at both drumming and dancing. It was a lovely night, and I even managed to forget about climbing the enormous mountain. Almost.
-Sarah
Sarah