We went back to
Lotus Food Corner for some roti pancakes (which came with a delicious
curry sauce) and fresh orange juice for breakfast. We then bought
some lunch ingredients from the minimarts beside our hotel, before
walking down to the start of Trail 4. One of the reasons we had come
up to the Cameron Highlands was that we had read that there was a
series of trails through the forest that you could walk around
without a guide. As is too often the case, the walks, we discovered,
are intermittently signposted, but we got off to a good start,
quickly finding the beginning of our chosen walk right where we
expected to be and were soon walking along a well-maintained path
through some attractive rainforest. Not long after, we emerged into a
large picnic area, where the girls inevitably wanted to spend some
time in a little playpark.
Back in the forest,
we started to have some trouble with unmarked junctions. The map Kate
had photographed before we left wasn't much help, but we just
followed our instincts and made it to our next important landmark –
the Forestry Department office. On the way, we stopped at another
unmarked junction and while we tried to get our bearings, we heard a
noise in the undergrowth, which eventually resolved itself into a
couple of little brown shrews. At the forestry office, despite the
presence of a big map, we had a bit of a struggle figuring out how to
get onto Trail 6. When we finally got going, we soon got going
uphill, clambering over roots and through large patches of mud. After
a while, we reached a ridgeline and the path flattened out a bit. The
trees became a bit thinner and more stunted and everywhere we looked,
everything was festooned in bright-green moss.
We walked for some
time, the track rising and falling as we crossed a series of small
creeks, until we finally reached a cement shelter set at a track
crossroads. We stopped there for our traditional lunch of tuna and
cucumber sandwiches (on some quite nice wholegrain bread), sitting
gingerly on the cold cement benches, which appeared to have a sheen
of condensation on them. The plan had always been to get to the top
of a nearby hill, but rain had been predicted and after seeing the
strength of yesterday's downpour, we weren't keen on getting stuck in
the forest without umbrellas, so we abandoned our summit bid and
headed down, eventually emerging from the forest on the edge of a
small farm, where we walked past rows of rather moth-eaten cabbages.
At the bottom of the
hill we discovered a large group of people visiting what we
eventually worked out was an 'agriculture park'. There were various
displays of various forms of horticulture, including a very
impressive collection of pitcher plants and the inevitable rows of
hydroponic strawberries. Adjacent to these was a counter selling
strawberry ice cream. We bought a couple of tubs, assuming that it
would be made with some of the lovely plump red strawberries growing
all around us, but were most disappointed to discover that it was
actually just artificial pink muck that didn't taste even vaguely
like strawberries into which a few bits of cut up fresh strawberry
had been placed. Our dismay at being so thoroughly duped was then
leavened by the discovery, as we walked out through the entrance,
that the people around us had actually paid to get into the park.
Once we had got our
bearings, we walked back into Tanah Rata, where Kate got a mug of tea
(the other crop for which the Cameron Highlands is known) and I got a
particularly awful coffee. In the evening we went to a little Indian
restaurant near the hotel for dinner, and then wandered around a
fruit and veg market that had been set up across the road, picking up
a few things for tomorrow's drive back down to George Town.
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