Beaten by the weather of Mt. Kinabalu

Photo: While ascending to 3272mtrs, ¾ of Kinabalu - 10/12/10

The breakfast in the hostel would be starting at 7.00h, so the previous night I set my alarm to 6.45am. The next day I would be climbing the highest mountain of South-East Asia; Mount Kinabalu, on Sabah, Malaysia. A few minutes past 7.30am I found myself walking along the road to get to the entrance of National Park Kinabalu, another UNESCO world heritage. My way to the park was a 1.8km curving road slightly going uphill. I noticed the grey skies and I hoped that it would remain grey, and that they would take good care of keeping the rain within.

At the park there were a few papers to sign, arrange a mandatory guide, pick-up a packed lunch, a last toilet-break and go!go!go!
It is possible to hire a personal guide, or with a group so obviously it is much cheaper to spent the cost of the guide with other people. I read that it was normal for single hikers to to join other groups or other single hikers. I walked out, and straight away I spotted two foreigners who turned out to be from Southern England. I approached and asked if I could join them and share the guide. This was ok for them, and also for the guide, so I found myself a guide, and off we could go.

Riding a wheel chair at the hospital

Photo: All wrapped up on Borneo, Malaysia - 19/12/10

Since I did not make it to the top of Mount Kinabalu, and in meanwhile I returned to Kota Kinabalu from a trip to Kuching, in Sarawak, I thought I'll give it another go, and to be more sure of reaching the top, I thought to climb to mountain in one day up, to the top, and down again. Because during the night there is a bigger chance of rainfall, and I didn't want to catch the same unluckiness as the previous time...
Earlier I was planning to go to Sandakan, as my flight to Kuala Lumpur would be leaving from Sandakan about 5 days later. Mount Kinabalu is on the way to Sandakan anyway.

So I took the bus, and after about 30 minutes on the bus I realized that I forgot my charger for the photo camera batteries! What could I do? Get off and go back? But from the bus station it is another 30 minutes and two buses to get back to the hostel....I could perhaps go to the mountain and return to the hostel afterwards or the next day. Could I ask them to send to charger perhaps?
I decided to continue to the mountain and see if it is possible to climb the next day anyway. In meantime I send a text message to Jennifer and Will who I met on the way and who I joined the visit to Kuching, asking for the phone number of the hostel so I could give a ring for them to check on the charger and take it from the room before someone would steal it.
I found out that Jennifer and Will, who where planning on flying to the Philippines, were not allowed to board their plane because it´s required to have a return flight to visit the Philippines...and they were sooo looking forward to go!

In meanwhile I reached to mountain, and I walked up the stairs to the head quarter.

Mt. Huangshan in Cotton Paradise

Photo: Mountain Huangshan, China - 17/11/10

In the hostel in Shanghai I met Julien from Belgium. We got along pretty well and we both planned to climb Mountain Huangshan, a few hundred kilometers west of Shanghai. We planned to go on the Monday or Tuesday and checked for the weather forecast which gave us some disappointing information....clouds and light snow!!! Not exactly what you hope for to enjoy the wide views when climbing a mountain. Luckily on Wednesday the weather was predicted to be clear and sunny.
Since there are quite a few peaks on the top, and a long route was sat out, we planned to go in two days.
On Monday evening we took the night train K8418 leaving at 17.45 from Shanghai for which we had reserved bed in the hard-sleeper, carriage 8, bed row 9, with for me an comfortable upper-berth. There are actually price differences between the lower-, middle- and upper-berth, lower being most expensive, upper cheapest. Our expected arrival in Huangshan Shi, also know as Tunxi was early in the morning.

El teide; the (illegal) Spanish top

With it's 3718 meters above sea level, el Teide and Tenerife can call themselves the proud owners of the highest point of Spain.
Me being on Tenerife had to visit this previously active volcano. Since it used to spew lava around the years of 1600 and 1700, the area is covered with dry solid pieces of lava.
Near the top you can see several mountain peaks close to eachother which used to be separated volcano's such as el Teide and el Pico. This all after the whole top used to be one big crater of an incredible 16 kilometers of diameter. Still today you can see on the south side the strong borders of the old crater like a long dike all around this mountain top.

Gran Canaria: the rocky island

Last Monday I made my way to the Hague and Utrecht for a last visit to my friends before leaving for the big trip. I left the Hague with a happy belly full of sushi! Dennis and Rianne took me to a Sushi restaurant: all you can eat in 4 rounds and a real surprise desert! For this surprise desert we could choose from three different flavors of ice so it turned out not to be a surprise at all and we greatly had to laugh about it. Also the waiter had to laugh about the joke. Later, with an other waiter serving our ´surprise desert´ we again had to laugh seeing the small cones with one coupe of ice-cream. We asked the waiter - not being aware of our jokes - with a sarcastic surprised tone of voice ´hey, we asked for the surprise ice-cream! So the guy serving us made a face ´ah of course! how stupid that I forgot´, and he pulled away our three cones of colorful ice-cream, turned his right arm with the ice behind his back, took the colorful coupes with his left arm from behind again and wide smiling he said ´Tadaaaa!!!´. With many after-laughs we enjoyed our Surpricecream.