And then there were tears – Steph’s first cry

The gorgeous forest before things got ugly.

Our plan was to take a lovely jungle trek to a large town where expansive strawberry fields and tea plantations could be found. Steph was determined on this goal. Austin thought Steph just wanted to stroll through the forrest.

Armed with flip flops and half a bottle of water and a poorly scaled tourist map, Steph and Austin set off on their adventure, unaware of the terrors ahead.

The hike started off as most jungle treks do: AWESOME. Mossy groves (where all the fairies live) creepy viney trees (where the bad fairies live) and thick underbrush (where nasty huge dinasour lizards live. For real though.) played games with their vivid imaginations. What a gem of a jungle!

Two and a half hours later, they found themselves contemplating the illusive meaning of a dilapadated trail sign. Left? Right? “I though we were on trail 6...” Hmm. The first sign of danger.

Moments later, Steph was hopping down a ravine when suddenly an enormous branch stabbed her through the underbrush from out of nowhere, splittering her quadmuscle without drawing blood. (yes. It was that intense feeling, ok.) She teared up a little, but was brave and pressed on despite the superdooper aching. We HAD to  be close!

The slight incline became a slightly more intense incline, then a cliff, only to be traversed by climbing the exposed jungle roots like a ladder and using bamboo vines as ropes. This went on for  ~2 km, with spirits dropping with every step. Finally, Austin and Steph reached the peak! (which turned out to be the highest peak in the area)

Seeing an approaching traveler, our heros hailed him. Asking with jubiliousness where he came from. “I came from Taman Rata. It’s not but 2 hours down the otherside of this mountain.” He said in an undetermined british accent.

Confused, Austin asked, “How can this be? We left Taman Rata about 4 hours ago...we are headed to Brinchang. Do you mean Brinchang is down the other side?”

The man pulled out his legitamate map. No. He did not mean Brinchang.

We walked in an enormous circle, barely passing Brinchang, then up the highest peak, almost all the way back to where we had begun. All in flipflops.

Steph waited till the man had turned around before she hysterically burst into tears. Austin knew not what to do, for he had never seen his wife in true hysterics.

Steph seriously bawled. A ticked off, in pain, thirsty, at the top of a stupid mountain with two hours to go and all her dreams crushed kind of tantrum.

Austin laughed, and Steph has still not quite forgiven him.

However, the next day we found out that 7 people had been robbed of all their possessions on the trails that we were on, during the time we were on them. Maybe Someone was looking out for us after all...