Day 710 - Are we in NZ?

As we are up in the hills, we decided to take advantage of the cooler weather and planned a day of hiking in the jungle. First of all we set off to the morning market for fresh fruit and snacks, before having our favourite roti for breakfast.

The hills that surround the small town of Tanah Rata (at 1300m above sea level) are full of walking trails, and we decided that after 2 weeks at the beach we needed a good walk! So we chose the hardest sounding jungle trail and set of in search of tea plantations, waterfalls, and mountains.
The walk up (along trail 7) was beautiful - we started by walking through a small strawberry farm, moved on to a tea plantation and soon ended up immersed in thick, wet forest walking up a slippery, steep, muddy path. We were immediately reminded of NZ as ferns lined the track and moss covered the ground, and we thoroughly enjoyed the just over an hour hike to the top of Gunung Berembam (1812m).
At the top we got a view out over the rest of the forested area and could see first hand the destruction that has occurred to make way for the hundreds of farms that dot the hills. Here we had a snack of fruit before setting off down trail 8 towards Robinson Waterfall. Here was where the real fun began as the path was dangerously steep, and the decaying layer of leaves lining the jungle floor became the major hazard - that is, if we ignore the maze of slippery tree roots that owned all of the ground. All 3 of us had numerous falls on the way down, but we made it to the bottom albeit it via our own route as we must have lost the real trail at some stage! This put us into even more dense jungle that we bashed our way through in search of firmer ground!!
The falls were a nice place for another snack of our supplies and soon were back on the road headed towards town.In town we had lunch with 60+ Elizabeth - a world traveller who entertained us with her stories and used her language skills to order our food from the local lady cooking up a storm.

In the evening we met up again with Sean and Wendy and headed to check out the market before the rain set in. At the market we picked up far too many delicious snacks from coconut-sugar wrapped in banana leaf to pancakes to donuts and beyond!

Adlibing the wet, wet, jungle.