Day 227 Cameron Highlands

It's cold here in the Highlands. It cooled down to about 15°C at night, and it still wasn't really warm this morning. So I waited with long pants and a jacket for my tour that I booked yesterday to explore the Highlands. It turned out that there were only three of us, so we had a lot of space in our vehicle. The first stop was at a butterfly farm, which had butterflies as well as a lot of other reptiles and beetles. A kind of small zoo for everything that crawls, flies, and crawls.

But the butterflies had by far the most beautiful cage and had space to fly around. The cage was actually quite nicely done, if it wasn't for all the dead butterflies lying around.

Our guide said this was completely natural, this species does not have a long life. However, it did not make the best impression.

After the farm, we drove out of the city to the HIGHLIGHT of the Cameron Highlands. The huge tea fields that stretch over the hills. Our guide proudly told us that these are still plants from the first generation and that the tea fields are about 50 years old. The view over the seemingly endless tea fields was breathtaking and we were really lucky with the weather, it was a clear beautiful day.

There was a steep road between the tea fields up to the highest hill in the area.

The summit is slightly higher than 2000 meters above sea level. Since it is always a bit damp in the highlands due to the fog and regular rain showers, the highlanders are very proud of their mossy forest that grows up here. But since it was trash-covered by tourists and trampled and climbed on the sensitive ecosystem, the authorities reacted quite radically and fenced off the entire area. Only an improved path is accessible. On this path, you can take a walk through the forest and get an impression of why the forest is called Mossy Forest. Personally, it was not really impressive for me since I was recently in a Mossy Forest in Indonesia and got a much better insight there.

After a short forest walk, we went to a tea factory where all the tea leaves are processed.

We learned about all the steps necessary to make drinkable tea from the leaves. However, the tour took a little longer than 5 minutes.

Afterwards, we were taken to the cafeteria where we could buy the tea.

After the tea break, we drove back through the tea fields to the city. The weather had changed dramatically, and shortly after we started driving, it started pouring. So we postponed the visit to the market and first visited one of the strawberry farms.

The strawberries are cultivated here in open greenhouses and watered with irrigation systems. If they were grown in the fields, no strawberries would grow because the soil is too moist for the plants.

Since it was still raining heavily, we visited the Cactus Point next, a flower farm where there were many different flower and cactus species to buy.

When it stopped raining, we could visit the small local market where mainly strawberry products and other fruits were sold.

On the way back to the hostel, we stopped at Timetunnel, a museum about the history of the Cameron Highlands. It was very well done and told some stories of different people.

The final stop was a Buddhist temple.

When we returned to the hostel, it started raining heavily again. So the entire hostel gathered in the common room. While some played Monopoly or card games, many were busy using the rainy afternoon to plan their further travels. I did that too and realized with slight panic that I only had 4 weeks left before heading back to Africa. And just to mention it, traveling is sometimes associated with a lot of work, especially when planning the next trip.