stranded- where are the heroes?
Saturday, November 24, 2007,2:34 PM
Hold on a sec. why is rachel blogging when she’s supposed to be at DOE?
My trip is cancelled. Horrible weather we are having on this side of the world. This side of borneo, even. What bad weather? Not rain, not thunder. Just waves. HUMONGOUS waves.
The trip started out okay. There was not a cloud in the blue-blue sky, so it was steaming hot. We got on the bus to the army training camp around berakas and set off.
Mr airdrie the teacher in charge set us off according to groups. My group went off second. Kashmira’s group went first. At first when our group set off we were keen to remain clean. We were walking along the cliff, following the group ahead of us when we encountered our first wave.
Ling and I managed to scramble up to one of what we thought was ‘solid rock’but it turned out to be some funny slippery clay stuff. We managed to gain footholds in the cracks between those clay things, then another wave crashed. This time joan made us wait before we crossed because we were catching up on the first group.
Someone in the first group had fallen into the water. Kashmira, whose bag was soaked by the seawater was trying in vain to stand up. The waves pushed her against the cliff and swept her away. her foam mat that would serve as a mattress was swept out to sea. Later she said that she had lost some articles of clothing and food- including her favourite shirt.
Back to our group. Joan went ahead and gave a signal that it was okay. Wei wen and I went to join her, then she told us to go ahead as she went back. The waves became really strong and wei wen and I were soaked by the waves. We managed to climb on till we reached a little sort of shelter- like a little inlet cut into the side of the cliff. The soil was once again that slippery clay thing, but we managed to climb up.
There sneha, shalabha, sruthi, priyanka were sitting on the cliff. They pulled the bags up the cliff. Round the bend, a few of the guys from the third group had caught up. Shaon, alex, fauzan, james and George rounded the bend, fauzan leading ching and syazwani. They decided that we ought to go up the cliff and swing over the ledge to reach the top of the cliff.
Once everyone was up on the ledge, that became our lookout for about two hours. George went back to inform mr airdrie of our ordeal, while the other guys went around the jungle trying to look for an alternative route. Then we saw a sign that said:
protected placeno entry without permissionby ordercommander royal brunei armed forcesIt turned out to be some sort of shooting range thing, as we heard guns shooting in a distance. We stayed around a clearing, and sat around in the heat. Several people sat down cursing the sea, some trying to clean themselves. The ground became muddy, as our feet were wet. it made mud which stuck to our shoes, and when we stood on the leaves, it stuck leaves to the soles of our shoes, and made it difficult for us to walk. as ching said, when asked why she was cleaning her shoes
'very heavy bah' we watched the other people at the beach play in the waves, with jealousy.
Eventually mr airdrie arrived and told us to stay where we were. He came and went back to the beach where everyone were, then came back again to tell us we would have to go through the jungle and go down a cliff where miss mcintyre would lead us to safety. we took our bags and went through the jungle. Ching was scared and very sure she would see spiders, as she had just seen one on syazwani's bag.
He led four people ahead of us, and brought them down to the beach where everyone else was. Later he led one us by one down a cliff full of sand that was gradually eroding as each person passed. All in all, there were 13 people who left their rucksacks back there in camp.
Out of the 13 people who got stranded, everyone was safe except fauzan who got stung as he stood in the waves leading people back to the beach.
We stood around after that as mr airdrie managed to contact the bus driver and bring us back to school. Back to square one, from where we started. No camp, no cooking, no nothing. Food all wasted, but I’m not entirely sure that we wasted our Saturday away.
*turns out there’s this cyclone thing coming our way around borneo, causing all this rain and huge waves-
Labels: trips
