Profile
Blog
Photos
Videos
When arriving back in sandakan after Turtle Island we headed for a supermarket to get some 'fuel food' for the mountain. We ended up with some kit kats, mints and some biscuits for Peter. That was us ready to catch the bus to the National Park HQ, yet again we were sat at the back of the coach next to the toilet but thankgod its wasn't as smelly as the last journey.
The journey was around 4 hours long and when we arrived at the headquarters we needed to go to the reception to ring a girl called Cita. 20 Minutes after ringing, Cita turned up and checked us into our hostel, this hostel being called Grace. Cita told us it was about a 10 minute walk down hill to the hostel and that we would be met by a man called Eric. So we walked down to the hostel and was met by Eric who showed us to our 6 bed dorm room. We didn't get a key for our room as Eric reasured us our things would be ok as he would be around to keep an eye on everything. As soon as Eric said that we never saw the man again... great security work there Eric lad.
By this time it was 3pm and we hadn't had any dinner so we dumped our bags, freshened up a little and then decided to find somewhere to eat (which happened to probably be the most expensive place in the park with possibly the world's biggest menu's) Ohhh well.. fish & chips twice pleaseee.
It was only after eating our fish & chips Lucy realised we hadn't been eating very well lately.. too much rubbish.. this had to change..
Later that night we got our things ready for the mountain and went straight to bed siking ourselves up for the morning.
arghh.. morning arrived and we had to meet Cita at the HQ's to get our Permits and ID tags which had to be worn at all times. Lovely little tags with our names on.. definitely ones to keep. We were then introduced to our guide, who was called Gohinmin. Gohinmin was one of the oldest guides there, nevertheless his calf muscles were HUGE. He does climb that mountain every sunday.
So at 8.40am we started our 6km hike to the accomodation of Laban Rata, the first kilometre we found fairly tiring as we mainly power walked it, this was when Gohinmin told us to slow it down otherwise we would be tired the day after.. personally we think he couldn't handle the pace haha.. Nahh Gohinmin was totally right, he knew his stuff.. so we slowed it down a tad. When reaching the 4km mark it got quite cold, this is where we sat and had a little snack to try and acclimatize to the higher alttitude. Not allowing to stop for more than 15 minutes we moved swiftly on.. stopping a couple of more times on the way as Gohinmin needed to have a cigarette. We kept telling him it was a bad habit but he didn't listen..
After a repectable 4hr 7 mins we finally reached Laban Rata with nothing to be seen in sight just fog everywhere. Gohinmin took us to check into our room for the night.. once given the key we made our way to our accomodation which was called Gunting Lagadan Hut.. only another 250m uphill to walk. This may not seem that far to you but when you have to walk up and down the 250m about 6 times during your stay it isn't funny.
After having a little nap we walked back down to Laban Rata at about 4pm for a Hot chocolate as it was absolutely freezing. With about 5 layers of clothing we were finally warm again. Dinner was served at 5pm, what a great selection there was too.. we were well impressed. At about 5.30pm the sun came shining through and everywhere cleared up, we could see up towards the peak, down towards the villages and the sun setting over the city of Kota Kinabalu.. amazing!!!
Even at that height they still managed to squeeze a mini football pitch on the only flat surface there were, unlucky to the lad who missed the goal and had to climb down the edge of the mountain to go and get it.
At 7.30pm we decided to call it a night and go and get cosy in our beds. Peter went to the toilet while lucy were getting ready for bed.. she accidently knocked Peter's contact lense case onto the floor, which slipped under the bed.. right to the back. We forgot to mention we were staying in a TINY four bed dorm with two older men from Macedonia. Anyways Lucy couldn't reach the case, neither of us could.. The only way to reach it was to use one of the men's walking sticks.. this turned out to be a disaster..
Lucy grabbed the stick trying to memorise the position it was in so that the man didn't know we had touched it.. it was all going so well until Peter banged the end of the stick on the floor... this wasn't just an ordinary walking stick.. it was a very expensive one with a torch built in it... yes you guested it the torch had fallen to pieces...
s***!!!
This is how it went:
Lucy: scrambling around the floor telling Peter to lock the door while she found all the pieces.
Peter: Still trying to get his contact lense case until he realised he had broken it.
Lucy: Couldn't stop giggling
Peter in a Very Mad Voice : 'this isn't funny, if we don't fixed his we're in the s***.' as he still guards the door.
Lucy: Putting all the pieces back together, then Positioning the walking stick back to where we found it.
That wasn't the end... we only went and found the battery a few minutes later.. having to start all over again.
Finally after all the commotion we got to bed...
Waking up a few times to heavy rain... ohhh great
1.45am we heard our alarm and did NOT want to get out of bed.. piling on the layers and getting our headtorches ready for something we can both safely say we have never done before in our lives. At 2.30am we met Gohinmin at Laban Rata, so we walked 250m downhill to walk back up the same 250m uphill.. its beyond us why he couldn't just meet us at our accomodation.
The rain had stopped thankfully which meant we could continue the hike up to the peak. 750m were just a normal climb then after that we had a cold, soaking wet rope to use. Bare in mind this was in the dark as well. When using the rope at first we thought it was going to be a tough climb but we did well, in some parts we were able to climb ourselves. Half way up to the peak Peter had to stop because of headache and feeling sick.. he also looked very pale. He powered through and we reached the top (4095m) in 2hr 50mins.. the feeling was amazing.. we were so proud of ourselves. WE HAD DONE IT!!!!
By this time it was still dark and Gohinmin asked if we wanted to stay for sunrise but we were soooo cold, it would have been silly to hang around for half an hour. So we set off back down hoping to get a better view a little further down and we did... it was stunning. We were so lucky to have had a clear morning with the views so picturesque.
The descent back down to Laban Rata went really well.. ohh part from Lucy slipping once and banging her elbow. Then once at Laban Rata Peter felt worse.. this is why we started to head back down to the HQ's without hardly any break.. BIG MISTAKE.. 6km downhill on rocky paths actually turned into torture.. at some points we actually felt like crying because our legs and knees were hurting so much. Didn't really help that it was chucking it down aswell.
But we did it... what an experience ...one we'll never forget..
- comments