Taman Negara , Part 3

19 July 2010
Walking through the rain forest the last few days we have taken special notice of the way the forest sounds. Today we walked to a cave, Gua Telinga, and because we did not see another human for about two hours and our never-ending conversation does tend to lull while we are hiking up steep slopes in 90% humidity we both observed some new sounds and made attempts at relating them to things we have encountered throughout our lives.

As we walked today there was a tremendous number of termites, and by tremendous I mean termites marching ten rows deep for an unknown distance every couple of feet. You could usually hear them even when you couldn't see them - the sound resembled the perfect bowl of rice crispies - "snap, crackle, pop". Imagine a commercial for termite cereal! ha!

The insect sounds, cicadas and whatnot, are deafening. Half of the time it just sounds like a loud buzz, like a distant bee hive that follows you around. Or maybe like a five year old with a kazoo.

On top of the buzz there are the bird songs, most of which sound like the noises R2D2 and the guns of the troopers in the older Star Wars movies make. Others sound more like the noise that a large stone makes when it is tossed into a lake or river, splunk.

And of course, this noise never stops. And while we rambled along the tree root laden green lined path we only saw a few fleeting glimpses of birds and flying squirrels, all the while trying not to disturb the termites and the ants as large as my big toe as they went about their daily six-legged life.

The only monkeys we saw today were those using a power line to cross the river - ha! We did, however, see a dog and a cat on our walk today, both very near a settlement of the several hundred native peoples, the Orang Asli, who still inhabit these forests.

While plants are easier to see, there are so many of them that it is astounding to us. Most interesting are the many species of ginger, the rhododendrons, and the tree fruits that have fallen from the trees. They range in color, size, shape, and texture. They come in practically every color, be they as small as a tic tac or as large as a softball, round or oblong, smooth or spiny. All of these correlate to some tree, though we cannot identify which as the canopies are so high.

In short, we are infatuated with the forest of Taman Negara. We will enjoy just one more sweaty, happy day exploring the paths and hoping to see something new before heading on to the tea plantations of the Cameroon Highlands.