Dodging leeches
Trip Start
May 06, 2007
1
161
166
Trip End
Jul 24, 2008
Kuala Tahan,
Pahang,
Malaysia
Friday, July 4, 2008
The major attraction in the easily reachable part of Taman Negara is the canopy walkway - the longest suspension bridge in the world. It was a bit scary at first, but after the first couple of sections I relaxed a bit and was able to really enjoy walking through the forest far above the ground and near the treetops. I shouldn't have been nearly as nervous as I was about it since this walkway was much safer and more stable than many other bridges I've crossed on various hikes throughout my travels.
After the canopy walkway, I decided to continue on the basic path up to the nearby peak Bukit Teresek. On that walk I met a French couple, two Austrian girls, a South-African girl, and a Brazilian guy. We all linked up and hiked together in front of the massive tour group on our tails. Not only did we reach the peak before the tour group, but we decided to head down the more difficult, more interesting path on the other side rather than turning around and heading back to the start like the tour group. The heavy rains the previous day made for some muddy sliding. The rains also seemed to bring the leeches out in full force. At first it was kind of cool to see a leech on the ground wiggling its head around looking for flesh to jump onto, but once you see one on your shoe the novelty wears off really fast. We loaded up on the insect repellent and went with the sexy look of pants tucked into socks, but we still had to stop periodically to flick them off our shoes before they had a chance to climb onto our legs. One of the Austrian girls wasn't as so lucky and managed to have two leeches bite her, but the rest of us happily escaped leech free.
After our hike, I made plans with the French couple to meet up the next morning to attempt another hike. We decided to do a less-traveled hike to a nearby cave - Gua Telinga. There are tours that go to the cave, but we figured we could hike there and explore it a bit on our own, saving each of us about $20 for a 3 hour tour. The hike was really nice and much less traveled than the hike from the previous day. We even saw some animals - a wild boar, a few squirrels - one of which even threw things off the tree to get us to go away, and a scorpion. The cave itself was definitely the highlight of my jungle time. It was dark and damp with narrow passages and full of bats. We got incredibly dirty climbing through it, but had a wonderful time. One entire leg of my pants was covered in muddy water when I emerged from the cave, but it dried eventually. After another leech-free hike we were quite proud of ourselves.
Unfortunately, the French couple was leaving the next day to head to the Perhentians and I hadn't met anyone else to go hiking with. Most people seemed to stop in Taman Negara for just a day or two and weren't interested in longer hikes. I thought about doing a 2 or 3 day trek into the jungle, but the pouring rain that seemed to arrive every night led me to decide that a longer trek wouldn't be so much fun. So after two days of jungle hiking, I threw my hiking clothes in the trash (no more hiking for this trip and there were so many rips and stains that these pants were long beyond salvageable) and packed my hiking boots away into the bottom of my backpack. The rest of my trip will be spent on beaches and in cities, so no more need for the getting dirty gear.
