A Trek in the Dark

On Saturday afternoon I decided that the weather was fine and cool enough for a small trek. So I walked up the hills to a beautiful, secluded waterfall. The walk went fine, and I also met the large monitor lizards several times (dt.=Warane), impressive but completely peaceful animals.

After that I was facing the decision of whether to continue the trip or to return to the village where I was based. Any reasonable person would have decided to go back since it was already 17.45, but... I took a small path through the jungle to get to the other side of the island, and it was immediately clear to me why the tropical forest is often called ``green hell''. First of all, there is almost no light, and all sunlight that comes through the thick leaf roof is more like a indirect light in a room that is painted dark green. Second, if you are not by chance on an island where getting lost is difficult due to its size, losing one's way can be lethal. Third, there may be dangerous animals, but luckily, not on Tioman.

Anyway, I descended along the river and arrived right in time on the other side to relax my feet in the sea water while looking at the setting sun. Yes... I had completed only half of the trip and daylight was going to disappear soon. At all, I had to walk back -- though I would, of course, take the road and not a jungle path!

Too proud or too stingy to hire a taxi, I speeded up, but I couldn't prevent that when I reached the highest point of the road, it was already pitch dark. This meant that while going down, Orion and Great Dog (or Great Hound?, in any case: Canis Major), who were standing in the zenith, would be my only streetlights. Since they managed to keep off the clouds, I suddenly acquired a unusally favorable opinion on hunting. Together with the fact that to the left and right of the road, there was an impenetrable darkness, it was easy to stay on track.

This changed, unfortunately, in the second half of the descent when the tops of the trees were covering the road, barring the starlight. For about half an hour, I was walking in nearly complete darkness, only interrupted by occasional lighter sections. Anyway, I made it down to the village without any injuries, Sirius be praised. To give you an idea of that last part, suffice to say that the first street lantern that I encountered behind a curve of the road, blinded me like the morning sun when removing the heavy curtains in a dark hotel room!