Green Island

Another sojourn to the isle with a photosynthetic tapestry...Green Island. Still not unpacked from Malaysia, we head off to the sun once again...

We made it to the island late morning, rented a scooter, packed it with our tent and hit the road. We did the customary one-lap of the entire island (a solid 1/2 hour) and then busied ourselves throughout the day finding an appropriate campsite - we found a nice spot on a beach in the middle of a very old volcano - and hiking, scrambling and checking out the hotsprings. After we had hiked, soaked and set up camp it wa time for dinner (ok....a common thread we are learning not only in Taiwan but also in Malaysia: Vegetarian, to them, includes meat. "This is the vegetarian noodles" "Oh, thanks...um....is this meat?" "Yes, chicken" "but I ordered the vegetarian noodles" "Yes, there is no fish or beef in it!"... It went totally further this weekend when the menu, perfectly segregated into seafood/noodles/meat/rice/vegetables had an oddity. Under the vegetables section it had cabbage, spinach, seasonal veggie and lobster. Lobster. A vegetable. This was not an english translation issue....this was a perfectly translated menu, and in chiense we asked her to explain the decision to put lobster with the veggies...no reason. Its just were lobster goes....hmmm.....).

After dinner we scootered back to our camp access, meandered through the brush to get to our perfectly moonlit beach. Alone, just the crashing waves and the illuminated moon.

It was calm as we tore oruselves from the view and went to bed...no wind. Then, about couple of hours later...apparently a typhoon had decided to visit us (ok, ok...not a real typhoon....but strangley strong winds) and we both woke to the sound of the tent pole snapping.

CRACK!

Then a constant onslaught of fierce winds shaking the fly and the tent all night. I think we got about 20 minutes of sleep afterwards! When we woke up and surveyed the damage, it was bad. just a tent pole, but a rip in the tent along with it was like a shot to the heart. The tent becomes a part of the family. This family member was broken in half, ripped and unable to play with us again until some significant surgery. Woe is us.

The next morning we woke to the sunshine, an empty volcanic beach and a nice breakfast and coffee in the tidepools. Then we packed up again, did a couple of hikes (short 2k diddies..) and grabbed some lunch and hit the ferry for the ride home. 50 minutes on the ferry, watching the green chunk of rock recede into the background, watching Taiwan itself get bigger as we approached it, and watching flying fish scatter and....fly.....across the ocean.

Then to the train, then home.

Another awsome Green island weekend, hot and sunny, saw some new birds and found a totally new place to explore in the mountains. We think it is either a reforestation project, a sustainable farming plot or some sort of illegal plant that is being planted among a nice clear area of the mountain forest. We have pictures...we will find out!

Enjoy the pics!

The ferry ride over to Green Island is a little under an hour, and it is time well spent with crates of eggs, open barrels of diesel (beside which people smoke) and boxes of unknown effects. To the right is a nice view of the intertidal zone of the island itself.

A bird - yet unknown - on a craggy pinnacle, and Trevor on another.

Crystal climbing up from a basaltic abyss that took us to the ocean, then pausing later to watch the "fishies" while I waxed poetic in the background about the geology...

Nothing like brushing ones teeth in the basin of a dead

volcano, watching the sun rise over the pacific!

Drying squid, trad style, and a glass lizard (?) or a species of skink. Either way...a cool critter.

Warbler? Jen....want to step in here?

Mating insects and a goat. Many goats on Green Island - brought there as a remedy for grass and quickly turning into a biological quandry. Now the population is controlled, but the word on the street is that they took their toll before they were controlled. Most are now paddocked, or hereded, and this little guy was hanging out with his mother by the side of the ocean.

Crystal pulling up to the start of the trail that took us to our beach, and Trevor creaking through the vegetation to see the beach, the impromptu campsite and the place where the tent died. Or, was hurt. Or, got a love bump from mother nature.

Trevor on the beach, Crystal setting up camp.

The tent, with the horrid truth masked by the fly. Unsheathed....ouch. That angle of the pole does not look proper....

Trevor, on rock, scampering about, happily.

Borneo

Evening on the South China Sea

Proboscis monkey (male)

The other birthplace of evolutionary understanding...

Absolutely amazing. All of it.

We crammed a lot into our 2 weeks, so I suppose chronological order might be the wrong approach. Lumpers or splitters, I suppose. I think we will take it event by event, or place by place, or thing by thing, or _______ by _______. No matter how it is explained, it is a surreal place. Leaving was torture.


Mt. Kinabalu

At 4093.2 masl (each sign that makes reference to this mountain does in fact include the .2 just to emphasize that it is well measured and holds on to the claim of highest mountain east of the Himalayas in south east Asia...its accurate, to be sure, but it does give that "i'm 12 years old and three days...im almost 13 for crying out loud" feeling!) Mount Kinabalu is a stunning peak, alone in the sky. Although Borneo (Sabah, Malaysia) has mountains and, Sabah at least, is quite rugged in topography, none reach this high. There is not even a ridge line that climbs gradually to this peak. Instead, this geological oddity is a pinnacle of bare rock among a green and lush undulating topography. It kinda stands out. It's granite, splendidly beautiful, and is the place we set our minds to reach. In a nutshell, here is the way you do it (a highly regulated park runs it, so you have to play by the rules ... permit, guide, etc). Day 1 - climb to huts 3/4 up mountain. Eat, sleep early. Day 2 - get up at 1:30am, eat breakfast, make it to the peak by 5:30am to watch sunrise. Descend to huts. Eat. Descend to trailhead. Day 3 - Feel a pain in your legs that make you question if you will ever walk again. The trail is steep, many steps and near the top, on the bare rock you are climbing in the total blackness of the 3am morning, there are ropes established.

Along the rather decent network of day hike trails at the base of mt. Kinabalu...

The view from our hut on the slopes of Mt. Kinabalu. Below the clouds lies Borneo, above us the craggy peak of Kinabalu!

Its so beautiful, totally thrilling and the views from each part of the trek are stunning. Words can only begin...it was worth the wait and totally worth the training we did to get us to the top. On the morning that we mnade the summit climb we were super pumped, hiked like the wind and made the peak at approximately 4:30am. The sun poked its head above the horizon at about 6:00am. That gave us 1.5 hours of a crisp clear sky full of stars, alone on the mountain overlooking all of Borneo. And cold. It was bloody freezing....literally, at about 0.4 c ... and we sat, stargazed, ducked away from the driving wind and tried to drink in every possible moment.

Us at the peak of Mt. Kinabalu; 4:30am.


Then the sun came up.

Stunning. Simply stunning.


After the sun warmed our bones, we took some pictures and explored around a little, we started the hike down. It got hot very fast...and we delayered with every few steps until we were down to our pants (rolled up) and t-shirts. It was so utterly amazing...the feeling of being there, on the mountain, with the endless sea of bare granite around us gently sloping until the direct downward face of the mountain...sun on our face, the feeling of accomplishment and the realization that there was infront of us, all around us, Borneo. We were standing on top of South East Asia at that height, but we were in Borneo specifically, looking down at all of it. So calming...so weird.


We made it down to the huts, ate, made it down to sea level by around 3pm, ate and shared a celebratory beer, then relaxed with some local coffee and tea, our binoculars and the birds of the jungle.


From the alpine heights to the jungles lushness in one day.


Orang-utans and Proboscis Monkeys


Palm oil, that putrid little necessity of junk food, is killing the Orang-utans on Borneo (they also survive in small pockets on Sumatra) and the Probioscis Monkeys (endemic to Borneo). The industry is huge, and the plantations are horrid. Not habitat fragmentation, but renovation. The entire island is being converted to oil palm plantations and the only reprieve that these primates, Orang-utans and Proboscis monkeys, get are from the helping hands of humans who care more about biological diversity, habitat preservation, food webs, and the remaining jungles than corn chips, salted peanuts and candy bars. To the south, in Indonesia, the stress is from illegal (and 'legal') forestry...logging....slash and burn.

The place that was pivitol in us understanding evolution, habitat for unfathomable diversity of species and cultural epicentres, piece by piece, being destroyed. Pitiful.

The palm that kills...the fields of these are endless, a vast monoculture of oil palms...

Orang-utan sanctuaries have been established in both Sabah (Malaysia) and Kalimantan (Indonesia) on the island of Borneo, but lets be honest...two sanctuaries on the entire island of Borneo, surrounded by endless seas of oil palm plantations, for two threatend/endangered (depends who you ask) species is a pittance and an embarassing reality. But they are working hard, doing exceptionally good jobs at preserving forest space, rehabilitating Orang-utans, releasing them back to the wild, educating the population and integrating international volunteers (mostly students) to help and learn with the process. It is an amazing place, simple in its presence (nothing like a zoo, or a big commercial museum, but more like a few cabins in a forest with a hugely special story) and gave us yet another highlight of our trip.



Proboscis monkeys, totally limited to Borneo, have a similar tale. Oil Palm (in Indonesia it is illegal lumber harvesting that is doing the same thing) plantations have driven them from once island wide distribution to a few small pockets, bordered by stale, dead plantation land. In a curious twist of events, a mage-plantation owner back in teh 90's realized for the first time that his land was killing teh monkeys, that his business was causing irrepreable ecological harm, and he decided to do something. So, he set aside a chunk of forest area and mangrove swamp and established a sanctuary for them. He stared a feeding routine (they were losing all feeding grounds) and set up a place for people to come visit, see the monkeys, learn about mangroves and the monkeys and to generally halp these critters have a place to exist. It is a little weird, like a war criminal halping a lady cross the street and then claiming that they were a humanitarian....I mean, the guy could have reverted some of his plantation to forest, changed his plantation practice (they do this in Indonesia...so it works) or used his profits to establish new sanctuaries around the island. But he didnt, wont and at this time it is best to supress the anger and to find peace with what these weird primates have been given. This guy did save them, for sure, as they were on a trek to extirpation if he did nothing here, so lets be happy for that.

PS - Proboscis monkeys, which we did not know before hand, have permanent erections. Males, that is. We tried to prove this theory wrong, but every dude....yup.


The oil palm plantations are ugly, depressing and horrid. But they employ more than half the population. Therein lies the crux of the issue....


Into the Rainforest: Birds, Trees, Canopy Walks


We made our way from the primates, which are actually in the rainforest too, to the rainforest areas where we could hike, birdwatch and find random places to investigate. We found a nice canopy walkway where we could birdwatch (and watch the coolest things ever...we could see for about 1km across the forest top to the nearest ridge line, and on one evening we saw a tree all the way across the forest shaking...birds? Must have been very quiet and very big. Squirrel? No chance. Orang? Maybe? Then we saw the tree beside it shaking...then the tree beside it...all in a line towards us. So we watched and watched and over the course of perhaps ten minutes the trees all started shaking one by one until the tree beside the canopy walkway was the one...something was there...then we saw it - orang utan! So cool to watch this lumbering primate dance across the canopy of the forest...so fast, so elegant, so quiet. Then it hunkered down....sleep.).


We even got to see three (well, if you are Crystal you only got to see two...heh heh...) flying squirrels. they slowly climbed their way up to the top of the highest emergents, paused...then jumped. And glided. And glided...all the way across the forest to the bank of emergents at the far side. So totally cool! Then the pair of hornbills flew across the setting sun. Then the rediculously loud cicada...joined by the calls of the birds....joined by the pseudo-barking of the macaques. Overwhelming. Beautifully overwhelming.


In the mix of all of this was a horrid adventure to get a bust to the next town, some fun nights in markets and on the coast sipping some brews, tottling some coffee, an awsome conversation with a lady who worked for the Orang Utan sanctuary...a vital link to its success...who shared some brutally honest facts and perspectives with us about the environmental conditions of asia and the mentality of people in asia about said environment,we saw some insects, did some killer hikes, had sunshine continuously on our backs, and some amazing food.


Now, via Brunei and a night in the Philipines, we are back in Taiwan, back in the stride of teaching and getting ready for the weekend....which will take us.......time will tell!


But first.....Orang v.s. Macaque, Round I.....bets?

Check out the pics...click here!

Boo-yah!

This will be the last post....

Went to the local internet place in town, procured us a pristine wireless router, zipped home on thee trusty scooter, plugged it in and .... ka-plam! It works!

So, we now have internet again...and can share a moment in the market of Hualien City from this last week.

This, then, will be our goodbye for now.

Our last post...

A lot has happened in the last few days, and I fear typing these words...but this will be the last post on this website....


...until Feb 21st.



:)

The truth is, our internet connection died, we are missiling (moving like a missile...fast, with direction and intent goals...does that word exist?) through our final chores and packing to get ready to leave on Monday for Borneo. If all goes well, we will land 11am Sabah time and be on our way to Kota Kinabalu by lunch. If all does not go well.....watch the news.

So, we are sitting in an internet cafe, typing away on commodore 64 era computers and trying to tidy up all our banking and flight details. The busiest days always the last ones, eh? Tomorrow we take a train to Taipei, hit up the hiking store district and try to find some last minute doohickies and then hunker down - perhaps check out the science museum - and wait for take off.

See you all in a couple of weeks!!

One Week!

January 8th we leave the sultry shores of Taiwan, via Taipei International, to the illegally logged - orang utan endangered - stupidly hot - leech infested - Theory of Evolution developing (Huxley, at least! oops...Wallace...Wallace, at least!!!) - biodiversity hub of the planet. Hope to climb a mountain, hike a few rainforest trails, spot some tropical birds and spend some time at the Orang utan conservation site.

And, if it all works out, we snag a few pictures or videos of the illegal logging hub of the world. We are landing in Malaysia, but Indonesia is just a hop and a domestic flight away....hmm...

Still need to whip up some leech socks, a few odds and ends, a knife, and a list of excuses as to why we want to enter illegal logging areas...perhaps needing to pretend our camera is broken.

One week.....

Willy Smits, and the Orangutans