Either side of the road it’s usually forest.  Whatever road you take.  Wherever you look it’s forests as far as the eye can see.  Sky and forests.  Green and blue.

Parking my bike in the bushes I had decided to take a hike up a tiny rocky stream leading up the hill directly off the road. There was no danger of flash floods since this wasn’t a proper stream.  It was more like the remains of a deluge from the Storm of the Century that happened a few years back.  Anyway, it was dry and less overgrown than the surrounding forest, plus I’d seen some wonderful rocks alongside the road and this seemed like the ideal place to get access.  Exactly.

Up around 40 metres from the road the ground was encased in this anti-rockfall metal webbing.  It was another one of those indicators of humanity: someone’s been here before.  The metal web made climbing around much easier, like a climbing frame, perfect for an evolved monkey.  Exactly.  I’m not sure how far up this webbing continues but it’s best not to explore so deep in the woods alone (you might get some kind of groin rash maybe).

Impressive rock formations.  I nimbly skipped around the climbing frame, around the micro-cliffs, over the lush vegetation and palm trees, through the coconut grove and the sandbanks, around the Hermit’s cave and then up onto the jutting slab where I transferred to knotted vines and swung blindly into the dappled light..

The vines lead me to a narrow shelf of compressed rock.  It was a particularly beautiful spot to serve High Tea, and eat a tongue sandwich.  The view was poor (too many trees) but the ambience refreshing.

The compressed rock looks like gneiss (this is a lateral section).  Beautiful.

I felt compelled to continue climbing and climbing.  The forest is bewitching.  What’s just around the rock?  What’s just over that brow?  I can see daylight up there…danger.

Will power.  I concentrated on tiny leaves attached to a rock.  It helped break the addiction.  It might help you quit smoking. Try it.

While concentrating on the little leaves I noticed this wad of something stuffed in the rock.

Everywhere you look there’s rock beauties.  Dappled light.  God it’s exciting not having a path to follow.  You see great stuff like this and it takes you completely by suprise:

I decided to make it to the brow of the next ridge.  I really could see daylight.  The road is on my left and I can hear the river slightly – it is a good reference point.  So I am scrabbling on all fours with twigs in my nose and pine cones rattling around my ears, dead trees are falling all around me and tons of earth shift with each and every laboured step.  I’m crawling into the sunlight now, and the view is obscured by leaves.

I can’t see the wood for the trees.

END