Island hopping on my own

Mount Kinabalu was nice.  I enjoyed seeing it, but I wish it had been more on my own terms.  I would have liked to investigate the park on my own more and spent more time on the mountain.  The botanical garden had been ho-hum, to me.  The same with the canopy walk and all the rest.  The mountain was what I had wanted to see.  So after that tour, when I was on someone else's timetable, I decided that I would visit the islands of the Tunku Abdul Rahman Marine Park on my own terms.  The park is located about 15 minutes by boat ferry off the shores of downtown Kota Kinabalu.

See?  There it is.

So I got up early and headed off to the free shuttle from the hotel/shopping complex where I was staying to downtown.  But, oops, maybe it wasn't such a good idea.  Rain, rain, and more rain.  Hmmm...  Well, I thought maybe a Starbucks cup of juice would help matters.  And by the time I had finished that the rain was letting up.  So I headed towards Jessolton Point, the ferry pier.  Along the way, I met a couple of guys who asked if I was heading out to the islands.  I said yes and they started to offer me their services.  When I said I was headed to the ferries, the one guy told me it was an hour away.  Hmmm...  I had walked to the ferry pier the other day and I don't recall it being an hour.  Maybe if I was crawling, but I remembered it being only 10 minutes.  He shut up immediately and just kind of mumbled something about it might be so.  And he lost any chance he had of getting me in his boat.  Don't these sorts of people realize that they are only making themselves look bad when they lie to us "unsuspecting" travelers?  And on something so trivial, too.  He could just have told me how much he would charge and have had a decent chance of getting a customer.  Oh well.

At Jesselton Point, I went in and looked around at all the different groups offering trips out to the islands.  I just picked one at random and made my arrangements.  I purchased a ticket to go to an island called Sapi Island.  I was offered snorkel and fins, but since I am alone and have nobody to guard my stuff, I figured I wouldn't be doing any swimming or snorkenling.  The woman at the window seemed a bit miffed at that, like it was some kind of horrible thing that I wasn't availing myself fully of the services offered by her company.  Well then offer me a solution to protect my stuff, you silly twit.  I would love to do some more snorkeling.  But she didn't.  So I took my ticket and went to the information desk to pay the pier fee.  In some ways it's nice to know who all gets money that I am paying for all the various services and how much it is at each station.  On the other hand it's also very nice to just pay the total fee to someone, and not have to stop every few feet to pay another fee for something or other.  Anyhow, off I went to catch my boat.  And we went sailing off over the waves to Sapi Island.  And at the pier at the island, I was faced with yet another fee, this time some kind of environmental fee for using the resources of the island.  These fees are getting much mroe prevalent these days.  But I am wondering if these various environmental fees are actually being used to protect the environment (or re-vitalize it) in all, or even most, cases.  This is despite them being a really good idea, in principle.

In any case, Sapi Island was lovely.  Not going swimming, I took the trail around the island through the mini jungle.  I found a rocky beach with waves crashing ashore.











Then I found a cliff looking down on more crashing waves.










Then I pushed onward following a lesser used path.  As I was walking along, not really paying much attention, I was startled by a sudden huge smashing crashing sound in the jungle.  I caught a glimpse of something quite large leaving the trail and moving around behind me and down the hillside.  It was big lizard.  And by big, I mean large.  It was longer than I am tall.  I don't know what it was doing being afraid of me, but it was, and it scurried away.  It was fast, too.  I wish I had been quieter.  I would have liked to take a photo of it, or at least have gotten a better look.  But I will have to let this stir the imagination instead.  Just imagine it as big as a large dog and you can get the idea.

After the lizard sighting, I pushed on along the trail, but was shortly stopped by some plant with really sharp thorns.  So I turned back and that's when I found my beach.  I think of it as my beach because nobody was there.  It was secluded and quiet and really nice.  So I decided that I could go swimming after all and set my stuff down and went for a dip.  The water was nice and the waves were soothing and it was serene and peaceful.





By this time I had decided that I would like to visit another island, but I had only paid to visit one island.  I enquired about the possibility of being able to go to another island and was told to ask the boatman.  When I did, it was just a matter of paying him the fee and being taken to the next island.  This island was called Manukan Island and it was much larger.  There was a resort on the island where people could stay (no doubt for a handsome sum).  And across from the beach on Manukan, downtown Kota Kinabalu was visible.  I took a walk into the jungle here as well (and that is where I saw the little fellow pictured above, the cousin of the large lizard I saw at Sapi Island), along to Sunset Point.  I only had until 4:15, so I didn't get to see the sunset on Manukan Island, but I had a great time on the islands in the marine park before heading back to Kota Kinabalu and a sit on the shoreline deck with a vanilla cream iced drink from The Coffee Bean and watched the sun set over the park out to the west.  It was a much better day than the one spent in a van going to see Mount Kinabalu covered in clouds and climbing over a canopy ropeway.  And I got to see a rather nice sunset to boot.