Saturday 2 January 2016

Day 377: Several steps too far


After rising late again and having some toast and eggs again, we headed out into the forest again. This time we set off up the hill on the reservoir track, which proved to consist of a lot of stone steps going up the side of the mountain. A lot of stone steps. Going up. And up. And up. When we reached a side track heading off to some lookouts, the girls refused to continue climbing. I decided that having climbed so many sodding steps, I couldn’t stop without seeing the actual reservoir, and continued up on my own. I soon met a guy coming down who assured me that it wasn’t much further so I called out to the others, but the girls still refused to go any higher. Kate was also keen to see the reservoir, however, so she continued up with me. The guy was right and we didn’t have much further to climb, but when we got there, we discovered that the climb definitely wasn’t worth the effort: the reservoir was just that – a small man-made pond with a fence around it. Kate quickly turned around and rejoined the girls, but I stayed and did a circuit in the hope that I would come across a snake or lizard or two out sunning themselves in the man-made clearing around the reservoir. I didn’t.




When I got back down to the others, we set off for the lookouts, which, as per our other lookout experiences in Southeast Asia, were pretty uninspiring, the haze from the Indonesian fires obscuring anything that might have been worth looking out at.



When we had set off this morning, Kate had said, ‘I want to see a snake today,’ and as we approached the last of the lookouts, she fulfilled her own request, spotting a juvenile viper on a pile of bark beneath a large tree.




It was around lunch time by now, so stopped on a big log for some tuna and cucumber sandwiches – but we didn’t linger as there were clouds of mosquitoes around intent on lunching on us.

As per usual, it was a hot and steamy day, so on the way back down we stopped for a quick immersion in a shallow pool in a small creek, struggling a little to find a pool big enough to get wet enough in. The track we were following was uncharacteristically well marked, with big slashed of red and white paint on the adjacent trees; however, Zoe and still managed to wander off it at one point when Sarah and Kate had gone off ahead of us. Thankfully, we realised our mistake relatively quickly and rejoined the others not long after.


When we got back to the chalet, we did a bit of clothes washing and hung it out just as the sun disappeared. There was another storm in the area, but this time there was a lot of thunder but no rain.

After dinner – pasta again - I went out on another night walk, but despite covering a lot of ground, I didn’t see much: just a couple of sleeping Gonocephalus and a few big phasmids.


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