TnT's Workout Blog

To start our visit we take a two-hour inter-tidal walk to see many marine species, some of which we probably would not have spotted without our knowledgeable guide Mindy. It is a nice and quiet walk just about 8km off the Singapore main island. Most of the time we can totally ignore the ships and tankers going by. And in last hours we can't even see the main island because of the dense rain.

We only have our cell phone cameras with us, so we don't take many or any pictures of the marine life. It is pretty dark anyway because of the surrounding rain, but also the animals are really well camouflaged for the naked eye, let alone the camera lense.

However, we take some wild life pictures: on the right you can see a field of sponge, our guide Mindy with a big anemone, and coral that's turning yellow, which means it is not feeling well.

Since our last trip the situation has improved a bit, and now there are separate lanes for cars and vans/buses, so we get through both the Sporean and the Malaysian immigration quite quickly. Thereafter the ride continues smoothly, people chat cheerily for a while until they start to snooze, including the van driver. We get alarmed after he is about to swerve off the road for a couple of times and makes sudden movements to take the control of the vehicle again. For the rest of the trip we keep an eye on his eyes, and he really has a hard time to keep them open. There is some heavy traffic coming up and we are climbing higher and higher up to mountains.

We start hiking at 10:55am. The trail starts easy with mild grades, although we have quite a few thick tree trunks to climb over. It gradually gets steeper, but it is still walkable: the roots form natural steps. After the 3-kilometer mark the fun part starts. First, the trail is deceivingly easy, but then we hit a wall, and the next hour or so we climb on all fours to grades between 45 to 90 degrees. There are a lot of trees and roots to help us push and pull us up. We think aloud that we are so lucky it is not raining, since the slope would be really nasty if it were slippery, we fathom-- and even nastier when going down.

In 2 hours and 40 minuts we are up on the summit. There's no breeze but a lot of mosquitos, flies and wasps to bug us. We boil some water to make coffee and instant noodles. At 2:30 we start the descend. Rest of the folks start to follow us about thirty minutes later. For us it takes just three hours to get down, but some others more than five. And why is that? It starts raining quite heavily after we leave, and it hurts more the people starting later, since the water flows downwards and makes the lower but steeper parts of trail quite slippery. And the darkness falls, which slows them down even more, even if these people are experienced hikers in the dark.

We are at the bottom of the hill at 5:30pm., the next ones about an hour later when we are done with showering, but we wait for the last ones to arrive for three more hours. And actually, we don't even wait for the ultimate ones, but leave to JB for dinner.

Our wildlife sightings are not many, but include some aggressive monkeys that circle around us up in the trees keeping hell of a noise, and disappear as fast as they appear. Later in the evening we see similar monkeys trying to steal food from the campground at the base of the mountain. They are not macaques, the most common ones in Singapore, but taller and more robust in build, maybe baboons?

This funny sign is posted at the car park entrance in Hortpark, where we stop for coffee and sandwiches for a late breakfast.