Water Water . . .

Yesterday was gorgeous blue sky, I guess if it wouldn't change from time to time, we wouldn't notice the difference anymore. This morning it has been pouring down and we came back wet from our walk in the park. So I saw the difference, thanks. Could we please have some sunshine tomorrow ?

After coming back from my Dad, I have been working a lot, it's anyway what this kind of weather incites you to do, lol.


Let's reflect Challenge : No Limits

I often explained how my mum was protecting me as a child, basically not allowing me to do anything she considered dangerous, that means I basically couldn't do anything at all.

Growing up, it left me some scars of being scared doing things, although I now could do them.  I also talked about my mid-life crisis, this dangerous business all took a turn during that time, when I was in New Zealand. I had met some nice people, one from England (at the time I lived in Germany) and 2 from Africa and together we decided to do crazy things, so in 2 days, we did class 4 water rafting, bungee jumping and mountain sliding.

It was quite an experience to say the least but it was fabulous to be free.

Years later, I was in England and married to Dennis. In 2003, we didn't have the girls at the time, both a well paid computer job  and we were looking for a nice place to go on holidays. I had been to Borneo before. I loved the wild nature and animals, so I proposed to go there and Dennis said yes. There did a lot of things, walks in the Jungle, visit of the Orangutans sanctuaries but one we were really looking forward to, was the climb of Mount Kinabalu. If I had to take only one memory with me, it would be that one.

This is Mount Kinabalu

That's when we almost arrived at the departing point (already 1200 meters high).

We hired a guide and people to carry our bags and we started climbing. At the beginning, it's kind of piece of cake if you are used to mountains a bit, although it's incredibly hot and humid. You can see our arms glittering.

Then after a while, it's only big rocks everywhere and it is really steep

Then you arrive at the first stop at 3100 meters and you stay in what they call a hotel. In fact it's incredibly basic, like a youth hostel with everybody sleeping together, it's a refuge for coackroaches (my favorite), but the people there are extremely nice and when they offer you some hot tea and a hot meal after such a climb, it's the best diner in the world.

We were extremely lucky because our guide had asked us to take 2 aspirins every 4 hours in order to keep our blood fluid. He said it would avoid us suffering from altitude sickness and it did.

But for whatever reason, the altitude made us both a bit crazy. I have a video (that I have not a clue how to upload because it is on a tape) of Dennis and I singing our own version of the James Brown "I feel good", you would swear we are both on drugs.

There were a lot of sick people, even experienced, so we considered ourselves blessed. You can see on the photo above the fog coming, within half an hour, you couldn't see 1 meter away.

You don't have too much time to look around anyway because they give you a light diner at 8 and send you to bed immediately because wake up time is 2am with departure at 2:30. The last part of the climb is made during the night so you can reach the summit and admire the sun rise.

This is the memory I will never forget. The first part is climbing a cliff with ropes (you will see photos later of the way down) and then you walk uphills until the end. You are given a whistle in case you get lost in the fog. You better shouldn't as some people have died falling off the mountain. So what you do is put one foot in front of the other, concentrate and empty your mind. Our guide asked us to switch our small torch off, I thought he was nuts, but after staying 5 minutes motionless, I could see my feet in the dark and the experience was fabulous. You follow the person before you, nobody talks because the higher you go, the more you start feeling it's hard to breathe.  Everybody walks so slowly that you feel you stay at the same place. Sometimes you see people crying on the side of the small path because they can't go on anymore, they went too quickly and now they can't move, so all you do is try and breathe and get another step, then another step, because you want to reach the top.

I am not a religious person but I keep on saying that during this trip I had the most impressive spiritual experience ever and Dennis says the same. We didn't say a word to each other during all the climb but we shared things like we never did before.

The last 50 meters are the steepest. It must have taken us half an hour to walk them. Our guide was fabulous because after each step I needed to breathe. He waited with us, encouraged us and then we were there. We arrived at 5:30 am. It took us 3 hours and as you can see it was freezing cold.

Each time I see this photo, I get a lump in my throat.

We waited for the sun to rise, but it was too cloudy so we then had to go down.

This is our way down. When we saw what we climbed at night, we thought we would have been scared to do it if we would have known in advance.

 

These are the cliffs on the way down.

The view was really nice.

Back into the jungle. It was fabulous but we were so tired.

After that, we spent 3 days in a hotel by the sea. We weren't able to walk properly, as our muscles were aching like anything. I never had pain like this before and obviously we weren't well prepared for the "after ". We were the attraction of the small hotel as everybody was laughing when they were seeing us.

That was a once in a life time experience. Tomorrow, I will tell you about more normal "No Limits" things.

Take care everybody, xxx