Cameron Highlands - Tea & Strawberries

Halfway through our five hour bus ride from Ipoh to the Cameron Highlands the road narrowed, steepened and got much twistier. We're headed back to the hills. As the palm trees turned to pines we saw many greenhouses finding out later that these were mostly Strawberries. In town we found ourselves again without a room arranged, tired from buses, hungry and dark outside. That night though our savior was waiting for us at the bus stop, a man with a van and the offer of a reasonably priced room was there to save us. He took us to Fathers Guest house: http://fathers.cameronhighlands.com/ which was a simple, funky place with good food, hot showers (outside), and movies on the telly.

We spent 3 nights there, ad after dropping our bags in the room that first evening we had some chow in the form of bacon cheeseburgers. Bellies full we had a wander into town to get the lay of the land and then off to bed. Up early the next morning and longs filled with cool dry(ish) mountain air, we had coffee and toast before starting on a little hike. Into the jungle, lots of very tall palms though some pine trees, we saw many beautiful butterflies some with wingspans 6-8" wide. The trail followed a creek with a waterfall at one section, though I was mad that I couldn't get a good picture of it. As the trail progressed it went from concrete paving stones at the start, then narrowed to dirt trail, and by the end our shoes were barely clinging to the slippery trail which was now being washed out from previous rain as well as having trees for us to climb over. 2.4k later and jungle safari done we hit a road were picked up by a truck from the nearby tea plantation that took us up to it's tea factory. Though the factory was closed that day, due to eid the Muslim holiday, the tea shop was still open and after taking in the stunning views of the hilltop plantation we stopped in to have a cuppa. Vanilla flavored for me and Mango Tea for Sarah was enjoyed in the company of many other Malaysians on holiday as well as other foreigners such as the Saudis sat next to us. As we left for our long walk back to town we were graciously picked up by a Malaysian girl and her English partner.

We pottered around town, mostly on the Internet, the rest of the day, though starting in the mid afternoon was the hardest rain I have ever seen. Period. We had to run across the street from the Internet place to where we wanted to have dinner and got absolutely soaked. Especially me as my flip-flop ejected from my foot halfway across the road. We dried off and had a nice Tandoori Indian meal though. Again early to bed and early to rise though Sarah has now picked up a sniffle. More toast and coffee for brekkie and off again for the day. This time to the next town over, again hitching a ride. This town was filled with horrible looking high rise hotel blocks but did have a cool strawberry farm where we had a great fresh strawberry milkshake. They also had loads of other vegetables growing in hydroponic greenhouses. After our shake we walked 2km up the road to a butterfly garden that was just awesome as you can see from the picture below. My favorites were brown with teal but were really hard to get good pictures of. We then headed back to our guesthouse and had a relaxing evening of playing with my new camera, watching movies and eating Curry and rice dishes. The next morning of the 22nd we got on a bus heading for Kuala Lumpur getting ready for Christmas.