Cameron Highlands

Today we were supposed to go to the Mossy Forest, but I determined that you need to hire a guide to take you there because you need 4-wheel drive capability to get up to the trailhead.  So, we scheduled a tour for tomorrow morning, so what are we going to do today.  We all awoke to discuss and Peter and Susan decided to take it easy today.  They will just walk down the hill and checkout what is going on down there, eat lunch, and return to the apartment for a relaxing day.  From researching the area, I knew that there were some hiking trails, so I pick one out for Tim and I to try.

We drove about 20 minutes to The Cameron Valley Tea House, parked the car, and entered the grounds.  We had to pay 3 MYR => $0.67 each to enter the tea plantation land.  This is where our hike started.

For the next 2.15 miles we climbed and climbed and saw some amazing scenery.  

​During the climb us, a couple passed us going down.  They were doing a one-way hike from the town they are staying in, to the tea plantation we started at.  I told them that if they are still around when we get there, we can give them a ride.  We shared contact information if they were interested and we continued on our way up.

I think it took us about 1.5 hours to get to the top of the climb which was the radio tower I am pointing to below. 

We forgot to take a photo of us at the very top, but this is us a few minutes later on the way down.

As we were going down, another younger couple approached us from behind.  Like the last couple that we saw, they also started the hike further up the trail, and was going one-way to the tea plantation we started at.  I told them that there was many turns ahead and asked if they had a map (they didn't).  I gave them brief directions, but they seemed overwhelmed and were very tired from the climb up they did from the other side.  So, they decided to stick with us back to the tea plantation.

It took us about 1.5 hours to get up, but it only took us about 1 hour to get back down to the Cameron Valley Tea House.  When we got down, the couple we met earlier texted and said they would take us up on the ride as did the couple we just came down the mountain with.  

After having a refreshing peppermint iced tea, the four of us loaded into the van.  They other couple got a bit lost without a map and ended up a bit further up the mountain, so we picked them us and headed to the town they were all staying in.

After we dropped them off, we decided to stay in this town to eat lunch, so we picked a place off google maps and had a pretty good lunch of shrimp fried noodles and delicious fresh fruit juices (Tim - Mango; Me - Watermelon).  After lunch we drove back to the apartment and arrived around 4 PM.

We had plans to go out for dinner, but we ate a late lunch and were pretty beat from the hike.  Plus, the tour guide is going to pick us up at 6:15 AM tomorrow morning, so we all decided to eat whatever we could find in our belongings.  After some blogging and snacking, we called it an early night at 10 AM.

Tomorrow we have a guided tour up to Mossy Forest which should be really nice.  Until then...