We had a 4 hour drive to the Cameron Highlands, the first 2 hours were pretty uneventful except for the huge rain. When we hit the twisty turny roads - not so much fun. I know I'm a nervous passenger especially abroad so to me the driver was going too fast...but I just kept my head down and read my book, atleast he wasn't texting. We passed an accident, lots of people standing around and a bike on the floor. Then we saw a man, just lying there, he was dead. Ive never seen that before, horrible horrible memory.
A little later our driver decided to overtake a tanker, the only problem was there was another one coming the other way. We all literally held our breath and I'm not exaggerating when I say they both missed us by inches. Once I'd caught my breath I went crazy at him, nobody else had chance. We'd just passed a fatal accident and he chose to drive like this when he is responsible for our lives! I think I said the f word more times in that 30 seconds than I have the whole trip. It was horrible the rest of the way, we were all petrified and just wanted to get out of the van. We saw another 2 accidents after that. It is scary to think that if anything happens you are literally in the middle of nowhere, theres no air ambulance coming for you. When we stopped he apologised, if it hadn't been for the smile on his face I may have tolerated him but I'm pretty sure the look I gave him told him what I thought of him.
When we arrived at our hotel, I celebrated with a Crunchie - everyone agreed we deserved chocolate after that afternoon. The hotel was just like an old English country house, it reminded me of going on holiday when I was a kid or staying at my grandparents. No shoes allowed in the house and the rooms are all over the place, mine was just off the communal lounge/tv room. We all went our for dinner then most of us went back and watched a film, it made a nice change to the usual evenings we've had.
The next day I did a tour with a local guide (very sensible driver). He took us to see a tea plantation and factory, so much effort for those little tea leaves. Then we did a short hike through the mossy forest, it was probably about 40 minutes and that was plenty. We were so high up it was quite cool and everything was covered in moss and very slippy, climbing down a tree was fun! We visited a butterfly farm with reptiles and insects, I held a snake and a chameleon (I think). The strawberry farm at the end was pretty boring, just a ploy for us to buy strawberry food-which we did.
The afternoon was nice and relaxed, I had chicken noodle soup with Charlotte and then we picked out new books for tomorrow's journey. The hotels book swapping room was made for dwarfs, the door was about 3ft high so we had to crawl in, quite cute. I even ventured out for a run before dinner, as soon as I left it started pouring down. Apart from our journey here I've liked Cameron Highlands, it's been nice to wear trousers and I put my hoody on for the first time in 5 weeks. Tomorrow we move again, back down the hill.