More monsters to add to the menagerie
Tuesday, October 14th, 2008Today we went on a half day trip up the mountains to explore and see the tea plantations that litter the countryside here. It was pretty amazing stuff. Our first real port of call was up to the highest point in the Cameron Highlands, we were right up there with the clouds, looking out across miles and miles of mountains. Expect plenty of pictures soon!
Then we went for an amble through some of the jungle. Nothing too strenuous, although the use of both hands were necessary to swing between some of the boggier parts. Lauren was very stoic even though she maybe didn’t overly enjoy some of the muddier sections of the jungle walk. Thankfully, a girl in our guide group said that she had been to Taman Nagara (the place where I was originally going to go trekking) and she said that the Highlands are much more beautiful. I’m thinking of going on a full-dayer tomorrow.
After our little 45 minute stint through the jungle, in which our superb guide, an Indian called Mani, showed us a variety of herbs and leafs with medicinal properties, we went to the tea factories themselves. They were interesting in their way, I guess for completion’s sake it was worth seeing them, but they were a little dull, but the tour only lasted 10 minutes or so, and then we got to sample some fine Highland’s tea. That was delicious indeed, and highly recomended.
Hopping back on the Land Rover, we took the mountainous path to the innocuous sounding ‘Butterfly Farm,’ uhu…
So, within 5 minutes of entering I’d already seen a cobra. Yes, a real, live cobra. Then there was a little break from the sheer terror as we went through and saw a collection of creepy crawlies. A beetle the size of a man’s hand, some enormous cockroaches, funny looking frogs.
Ahh, then came the Pit Vipers, the Pythons, the Dog-toothed Cat Eye snake, the cobra (again) all of my favourites. I was, to be polite, bricking it. I feel I no longer have anything to prove to myself with snakes, I’ve eaten them, and now I’ve seen them close up (including a scream-inducing moment when the cobra opened it’s mouth and sat up, much to the amusement of the staff.)
Still shaken a little now, I can finally leave Asia knowing that I had faced my deepest fear.
Lauren is looking forward to waking up to my screams tonight I assure you.
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