As peaceful as the village is during the day, it was not at
night – at least not at our house! The house next door hosted a crowd of people
who played games, exchanged stories, and sang until 3:30 a.m. The cockerels
started crowing at 4:00 a.m. (well before daylight at 6:00 a.m.) and the dogs
of the village had a communication system going like the dogs in 101 Dalmations
and if there were two or more dogs close together each one passed the message
along! The other two guys and Ray hardly slept. I barely heard it all and slept
till about 5:30 a.m.!!
Our foster mother made us breakfast of rice, egg, and some local
meat dish and the best pineapple and paw-paw you could have! Plus nescafe with
condensed milk. I jettisoned back to my youth in Africa.The bus came to pick us up and we set off on our two hour
journey.
We drove for about an hour to the village and stopped to buy
snacks for our mountain climb. Once again we looked up in awe at the mountain we would climb tomorrow.
Then we drove another hour up the mountain to
its base in Mt. Kinabalu Park.
We arrived at the park around 10:30 a.m. but our
accommodation wasn’t ready so to pass the time we all walked down to the botanical
gardens and the exhibition centre which we found was closed for renovation! The
others said the gardens weren’t anything to write home about, so we didn’t go,
but did go into one of the restaurants and found the best WiFi in a long time!
Then we walked out of the park to a local restaurant for lunch.
After lunch we got into our accommodations, sorted out our
stuff for the climb, then Ray and I went for a short walk on one of the mountain
trails. So peaceful to be in the jungle – only the jungle sounds to hear and
the sweet aromas of the vegetation to smell.
At 6:00 p.m. we had a group meeting, then dinner. Ray and I
made a quick trip to the Wifi restaurant in the park and hit the sack early.
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