Aug 2005

Day 27. And I'm so glad to see it! Well feck me, what a night! At around 5am i was woken by some rustling and gnawing sounds below me and to my right. Crap! I'd left my bag and all my kit on the floor! The first time I'd done such a thing! Being the jungle, it was pitch black all around... so the fear starts... and I was too scared to even MOVE an inch! So I lay there in my hammock, head torch in hand, not daring to turn it on, with the sounds of scuttling continuing below me. Literally just below my arse! I knew it must be some sort of animal, perhaps originating from the sheet metal. Therefore, I should of known that it would be small, but oh no! The only thoughts going through my mind were "bear... puma... monster". I lay hammock-bound with absolute fear for about an hour, wanting to cry for help, or turn on my torch, but not having the guts to do so. After the most terrifying hour of my life, I dozed off due to sheer tiredness. The noises had also subsided...
By morning I learned that the mysterious creatures (although likely to be rats, other rodents or civets) had paid visits to Calvey, Emma and a few others. I wasn't alone in my terrified state! The monsters had lived in the sheet metal, and had probably returned to their corregated castle by daylight. I kicked the metal a few times to annoy "them"...
I frantically tried to disinfect my kit in the river, using handwash soap... it didn't feel or look clean no matter how much scrubbing and rinsing I did! The monsters had also gnawed my bag strap, played with my bowl and crawled over my socks - i was far from pleased! I donated my bowl to the guides, as I was NEVER EVER going to eat from that rat-piss thing anymore! Other members of our team did the same, making us feel guilty for giving them diseased reject items, although they did ask for them! And guess where the guides put all their newly acquired kit? Yup. Under the sheet metal!
So it was the final walk & hurdle back to Bario this morning, and it was only going to be about an hour and a half! Thus not being too hard. And it was over familiar ground (the same damn trail that we'd used when we set off from Bario!)
Once in Bario, me and Calvey took Gabriel by surprise and hoisted him over the "finishing line"! We didn't go and stay in Nancy's house again, but instead we walked (a fair distance!) to a nicer homestay! It had free Milo, tea, coffee etc, a TV, loadsa seats and was bigger and more spacious with loads of rooms. It was also clean! What a nice end to all the walking! Even "The Bucket" shower was relieving, despite how cold it was!
We did return to Nancy's for a "take-away" lunch, then the rest of the afternoon was much-deserved lazy time, ready for the Bario BBQ in the evening. The excitement!
At this new hostel, there was a girl with really bad food poisoning - she looked terrible, AND was going to have to trek tomorrow. Oh dear. I'm so glad I haven't had anything worse than mild squits yet! YET!
That night, the BBQ was a gathering for all World Challenge, Trekforce etc teams in the area (more than you think!) and many locals, with lotsa food (donuts!), singing, random conga-lining and the cooliest blow-dart warrior man ever! Dang, he could aim! It was held inside Bario's main village hall, which was pretty damn spacious! "Ceiling trapdoors..."
Some bastard smashed up the hall's toilets, probably someone linked to that annoying twat guy from the other team, who HAD to be centre of attention. Their team was the worst ever!
Anyway, we were forced to re-do our rendition of Brown-Eyed girl in front of everyone (about 100+), and cacked it up, resulting with us being presented with "sympathy chicken!" Classic!
Another classic line came when we were watching a Scottish team perform something typically Scottish... Samira asks, "Are they Scottish then?!"
The night seemed to last forever, but we escaped early...

We walked home, singing...

Day 26. It rained a fair shaboodle last night, waking me up and forcing me to tumble out my hammock to rescue my clean, drying clothes! They were now wet again! The rain also forced me to listen to scary jungle noises as I lay in my hammock, desperately trying to get back to sleep...
In the morning it was more porridge for brekky-pooz! We left camp on time at 9am sharp, ready for 3 hours jungle walking. Each days trek was now getting shorter as we'd decided to drag it out, wanting to spend more days in the jungle than return to Bario (no offence to the place!) Walking was ok at first, then we all got knackered as usual. However, following breaks, you were revived enough to walk on until you were fookin' splattered again! The rate at which we walked was very quick towards the end, especially through an open, unrainforesty area... although that was maybe because the sun was so strong and we didn't want to be sunburnt again...
Once more, camp arrival was early, leaving us plenty of time for lunch (mmm... same old crackers, tuna, peanut butter and flying fish!) and also mucho time for putting up our hammox... mmm... snug!
This campsite had obvious signs of human life. It was a deliberately cleared area by a river (as most campsites were), with a big pile of corregated metal at the centre. My hammock, like many of ours, was put up on one side of it. The guides (Lisas and Gabriel - both male!) helped everyone sort out their hammocks, cuz they were lovely like that! Zoe set up camp near a branch covered with white-belly-button-magnet-small-fluff-creatures nearby! They were very odd indeed, and no-one, not even the guides, knew what they were. Perhaps they weren't letting on that they knew, and wanted to make these fluff creatures seem even more mysterious!
Apart from the "poo-in-the-path" fiasco, not much happened in the evening. We sat around the fire by the pathway, eating bony chicken gloop, wishing we had marshmallows!

My headtorch is failing me...

Today's Leech Count: 3 (Total: 12)

Day 25. The day started well with porridge and a jungle poo! I then had to dismantle my lovely hammock house that I'd made the night before. I'd put palm leaves up for walls, swept the floor of debris using my foot, created little walkways...
The night's hammock sleep was quite pleasing and got me reasonably prepared for today's 6ish hour hike... although not much can prepare you for such a thing!
So with a peeling, sunburnt neck, we left last night's camp site (...me thinking about my lovely Stick Insect... might he say goodbye?). I won't moan again about sweat, pain and buggered feet...
We (s)tumbled unto the campsite at 2ish (i'unno) and proceeded to get hammox and bashers up as usual. And as usual, it was the least thing you felt like doing, especially when you needed another poo (...cough, shifty eyes).
Next, I did another, larger jungle poo - 2 in one day! How I love conceiling bushes...
Then came glorious river swimming and clothes washing. Basically it was bobbing around in a shallow stream in your clothes like an otter... or so I'm told! The water was NOT warm to say the least, but it did cleaning wonders! Soos and Adam (Leader) had an argument when Soos wondered if Adam could turn away whilst the girls were bathing, but I won't say much about that... eheheh.
This is the same campsite that we'd used when walking to the village of Long Dano. Although last time we were here, we arrived late (when it was darkish) and left early in the morning. This didn't give us much time to explore the local area and it's few facilities. We were also camped away from the clearing and river, as another group (rivals!) had taken our current location.
The main feature of the campsite was a large, green building/hut structure, which Kyle disappeared into for most of the afternoon... with our guides. It was odd, but kept Kyle busy... although I'm sure conversation was hardly rife with Kyle basically mute and the guides not speaking much English!
We had lots of time to waste in the afternoon, so I did some lazing, clothes drying and helping to prepare dinner (lotsa pasta, sauce and the remaining ant-free parmesan!) Yum yum.
The rest of the evening's festivities included Emma burning and smouldering her pink bra that was dangling precariously above the campfire! There was also mucho talking about music (like Jeff Buckley) around the very same bra-eating fire... looking at stars... smelling again...

I'm wearing thursday socks!

Day 24. Sweet bejesus! 10 hours of new scenery! We started walking at 7a.m. sharp. Leaving Long Dano was hard, and we took ages saying our goodbyes to their kind faces. With the longhouses in the distance, we were soon past the green pastures surrounding the village, back into the jungle...
One early notable event was the viewing of a dead and gutted Sun bear, freshly hunted and killed by poachers, or maybe locals. But I think the bear was endangered. After acting like paparrazi, we continued our march, with leeches waving at us to pick them up! Saturated and drowning in my own sweat, there was lots of hill-slip-falling as we went up hill, reached a peak, went down hill, reached a river, crossed it and began going up hill again... This cycle continued all day! We got good views of Pa Dalih and Pa Ramadu villages before crossing a waist-height and refreshing river in sandals... Our lovely guides took our bags for most of us, as they feared that if we carried our own kit, we'd trip, be dragged down by their weight and never be seen again!
As we'd prepared ourselves for 10 hours walking, mentally, and to a lesser degree, physically, we preserved our energies and minds better. We even walked for an extra one and a half hours, cuz we're good! And got ahead of our 10 hour schedule. I can't remember exactly what happened as exhaustion had long set in, but overall, the day's walking was around 10 hours in length... but the extra 90 minutes walk wasn't scheduled... so perhaps we'd only planned to walk eight and a half hours... oh i don't know! Basically we walked for ages, got really tired, pissed-off and sweaty with only short breaks every so often! "I'm too sweaty for my shirt... so sweaty it hurts!"
Samira even got a bum leech!
At 5p.m. as darkness began creeping in, we stopped walking. Thank feck. Setting up hammox and tents was knackering as you can imagine, and everyone wanted to just sit around and die. But we couldn't, or we'd simply be fucked! No hammock = no bed = no rest = no fun! Now time for a feast... we ate a nice rice & tomato & tuna & sweetcorn dinner. One of the nicest jungle meals I've had!
The day was GREATLY improved by playing with a dinosaur... kinda... i meant a stick insect - The Sabah Thorny Stick!!! Woop! It was the best creature EVER, built like a tank, with clawy claws! I want 1 or 2 or 3! It crawled from one of my hands, over my shoulders to the other hand, whence it tried to escape! But no... I made it do the journey all over again! After playing with it (forcing it to walk on me) for about half an hour, I realised that I should maybe let it return into the depths of the jungle. I was like a mother leaving their child on the first day of school! I followed it (slowly) for a while... until I had to intervene when I saw it heading towards danger - moving deliberately towards the campfire! Maybe to tot itself?... it was the only way of getting away from me... Much to it's dismay, I picked it up and saved it's life. It's legs a-flailing, I placed it on one of the trees my hammock was tied to, hoping it'd visit me during the night. It never did...

"Jungle Boogie, get down on it!"

Today's Leech Count: a whopping 4! including at least one Tiger leech (the vicious, jumping kind!)
Total: 9

Day 23. It's going too fast. Today's project was possibly the easiest yet! We walked (with wicker baskets on back) for 15 minutes or so, to a place where the locals did some deforesting! I mostly stood around inspecting the odd caterpillars and other bugs that had been showered upon us. After dragging logs down a hill to repair a bridge (again!), we loaded up our wickers with one big log each, then walked back to the village. I carried my log under my arm - i'd had enough of the basket from yesterday's sand experience! I even made it back without breaking into a sweat... which was hard seeing as this is getting on towards the equator at noon!
Then lurked a killer workout session, randomly organised by Adam to prepare us for all the walking during the next week. Can I now say... I HATE BURPEES! Granted however, i did feel better for it... after a long sit down though! Pretty much the rest of the day was one of those lazy tuesdays. We are leaving the village tomorrow (sad sad)...
Me & Calvey continued our "naming the 27 Beatles number ones" game... to no avail (it's harder than you think!)
I ended up getting about 23ish, Calvey slightly less. Cuz I'm better than him.
Packing our bags was quite a hassle as everything was everywhere and shared about. We even tried a last-ditch practice attempt at "Brown-Eyed Girl", despite the guitar string snapping! (I just wonder how easy it is for the locals to get such items as C major guitar strings around these parts?!) Oh the guilt!
So we gave up the practicing, deciding we were as good as could be... which wasn't very. Shower shifts continued all afternoon to rinse away the stink...
What a great evening followed...

• Food auctions - we BOUGHT food off the locals for our walk tomorrow, despite them piling food upon us all week!
• Lotsa nice food - a TRUE feast, for the eyes and tummy yummy yum
• Speeches - ... from both us and the locals including Soos speaking in Kelabit!
• Performing - Our rendition of Brown-Eyed Girl went down a treat, and we loved the old ladies of the village showing us their hypnotic local dance... well I did anyway!
• We even argued about sharing the food we'd bough! ... No wait, that's a bad thing...

The best part of the evening came with dancing! Following the lead
of a very agile NINETY-TWO year old, we all danced to the rythms of the local sound (think Sitar, but accelerated and more crazy!). How the old man could move! There was the "hat of dance", where the wearer performed a solo dance and everyone followed lead. We all had a go and twas non-stop fun - mu ha ha... my lanky jig! There was also conga-lining where everyone joined in, but that finished us off, and so our matresses beckoned us!
As we prepared to settle for the night, a kind woman appeared in our house and gave us two more (free) pineapples! How random!

We're leaving Long Dano tomoz, with a 10 hours walking day ahead of us... dear god!