67 km

Another day of climbing, but also some long and fun descending too! The mountains, once we got up a ways, are cooler and breezier than the lowlands, and we enjoy the sounds of more birds and insects. We are seeing signs for elephants on the highway (like cow signs in the U.S.) and we’ve even seen elephant dung right on the side of the road, but no elephants yet! We’d LOVE to see one or two run across the road, but with all this traffic I just can’t imagine it. They probably wait to cross at night.

We do see or hear monkeys every now and then swinging through the trees. They don’t vocalize much, but they sure can make a crashing noise when they’re really moving.

We were told we’d find a resort on Pulau Banding, a very small island in the middle of Lake Temengor, but when we got there late in the afternoon, sweaty and so tired from the hills, we found that it was closed for renovations until March. So, we rode back and forth and around looking for a place to stay or camp, and ended up finding a good spot on the East side of the lake, just before the bridge that leads to Pulau Banding. There’s a small road that goes down to a flooded dock (built too low on this man-made reservoir?) and also splits off to go to a cleared area that was either a quarry or a logged area.

We had a quiet camp there. We went down to the floating restaurant at the flooded dock for dinner. We crossed to the other side of the bridge from that dock where we found steps that went down to the water. There we took a swim and rinsed out our clothes. Camping after a long hot day is OK when you can get a bath! The lake was cool and refreshing.

View of Lake Temengor from our campsite.

While lying in the tent this evening we both thought we heard an elephant trumpet somewhere in the dark distance. Later, we heard a grunting/growling noise not too far outside the tent. Monkeys. Don’t know why they were making that noise, but I didn’t like it too much!