Kuching, the capital of Sarawak (Bornean Malaysia), is known as the "Cat City". Why is this? No one is quite sure originally, but now the city has been adorned with large cat statues in various poses, and has it's own breed of street cat, a smallish cur with only a 1/2 length tail. Where most other SEA cities have packs of mangy looking dogs, Kuching has hundreds of surprisingly sleek looking cats prowling around. I guess the residents here give homage to their city by leaving their curries a little less guarded than they usually would. Complete with a rather nice Cat Museum (we quite enjoyed), this kitty capital's got class.
Only an hour away lies the biodiversity mecca of Bako National Park. After a slight transportation malfunction that resulted in us waiting for 2 hours for the bus, we arrived at the ferry to the park a little late in the day (around 3 PM). We met a group of international students also going to the park, and we caught a ride on their boat. We had Germany, USA, Kenya, Iran and Australia represented amongst the 9 of us. It was a fun boat ride to the park. We had a dorm bed booked for 2 nights so we weren't worried about time too much. On our way to the room, a troupe of macaques appeared. These thieving little monkeys saw my plastic bag full of dry noodles and fruit and wanted some o' dat! There was a faceoff and the human was the winner this time. I was the scarier primate. Only a few moments later I saw the same group of macaques run up to a girl, rip open her plastic bag and steal so many biscuits. She was terrified, it was hilarious.
After checking in, we went down to the sprawling beach in front of the lodge. The tide was out so we could walk very far down the beach. We stopped to look at a tide pool. Inside this tiny pond we found 3 kinds of fish, 3 kinds of crab, a barnacle, a clear shrimp, a lizard nearby and a hermit crab. I knew for sure that this was a special sort of place. We walked further down the beach and found some more hermit crabs climbing on the rocks. I conducted a science experiment to see if it hurts when a hermit crab pinches you with it's claws, resulting in a definite "YES OH GOD GET IT OFF". After convincing him to let go by dunking him in the water, we turned around to go back and found that the tide had come in so much we had to wade back part of the way around some of the megalithic sandstone formations. Needless to say, the tide pool was underwater. I hope the animals in it didn't drown. Further down the beach we saw a crowd and we walked over to see what they were looking at. 3 huge boars had come out of the forest to forage on the beach. We watched them dig crabs out of the sand as the sun set. So romantic.
After dinner, we signed up to do the night walk. This was a short hike in the dark to see some nocturnal animals. We saw so many spiders, so so many. Some of them were as big as my palm and others even bigger. I definitely don't want those on my face. We saw a small pool brimming with catfish, and a friendly terrapin. On our way back, we saw the coolest animal: a flying lemur, or Colugo. The cute little guy was just sitting up in a tree eating leaves and sap, not even caring about the dozen-odd people taking photos like he was Britney Spears in hotpants.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sunda_Flying_Lemur
The next day we decided to hike to the waterfalls, about 2 1/2 hours away from the lodge. We set off and jaunted through a mangrove forest, uphill through the jungle to the kerangas, a scrubby forest. Along the way we saw lots of pitcher plants, a type of carniverous plant that catches flies and eats them! The ones we saw were small, there is no way a human could be eaten by them, don't worry guys. We got to the waterfall, where we ate lunch and shared with the fish below us. We walked down to the beach nearby, and then walked back, seeing even more pitcher plants and some proboscis monkeys! That night we hung out with two South Africans that we met, Mike and Adrianna, who we ended up sharing a boat ride back and having dinner with the next day.
Our last day we woke up early (kinda) and went for another hike. It was very hot this day, but as we hiked upwards there was a noticable shift in humidity (down) that made the heat more bearable. Whilst in the jungle we found some hermit crabs, which I didn't even know lived in the jungle. Seriously we were at least 2 km from the ocean and yet there he was, sitting in his little moss covered shell. Weird. The most surprising things in life are not the things you never thought you would see, but it's the things you never thought about seeing or not seeing. There are things in this world you can never even conceive of conceiving until you see them.
Anyway, we hope you are all enjoying these blogs, as much as we like we don't have time to send individual emails to everyone so hopefully these blogs make you feel a little more connected to us, as we would not like to come back and find our friends know nothing of our lives for all this time! Well that being said we know not that much about your lives excepting a few so email me back and let me know! To all the people who aren't reading our blog: YOU SUCK!
No comments:
Post a Comment