Gateway to Nature tour in the Cameron Highlands

I feel like it’s been getting warmer and warmer in Kuala Lumpur for the last week. The clouds disappear and the sun begins to shine brighter and brighter. Nobody knows if the rainy season is over. Everyone says something different about it, it will be a blog for another time. Now I thought it was warm from the start, but that was more of that clammy weather. This time it’s just hot and that’s why we start to desire for the Cameron Highlands, where it was a lot cooler.

Tea plantations

If you’re in the Cameron Highlands, you shouldn’t skip a tour through the tea plantations. You can choose to organize this yourself. There are plenty of taxis and companies where you can rent a car with a driver for a few hours. We stayed in the town of Tanah Rata and if you just stop by the shops and restaurants, you will find one after the other provider for tours.

Gateway to Nature

We decided not to rent a car, but instead to book a tour there. You have innumerable possibilities here. Every few meters there is a counter with someone who can tell you all about the different excursions. We booked the Gateway to Nature tour at the Golden Highlands Adventure Holidays. In terms of price it does not matter, all booking agencies use about the same amount. Per person we paid RM40 (€9) we forgot that we could still haggle. But what is €9 for a four-hour tour through the tea plantations?

Thunderstorm

The next morning at half-past eight we walked to the departure point where we took a small bus to our first destination, Mossy Forest. Many tours are in the morning because the weather is often bad later in the afternoon and starts to thunder. The clouds hang very low in the mountains, so the view over the plantations is not so spectacular anymore. I had written before that it was a hell of a bus ride up, but when I got there the view made up for it. Until the driver shouted that we had to watch out for snakes, I’ve never run up a hill so fast. We were already impressed by the view, but this was not the only thing we had come for.

Boh Tea

By bus, we drove on to the Boh Tea Plantation. On a mountain, there is a large glass restaurant that overlooks the huge tea fields. The driver said we better hurry up and get in line. We thought it was a bit exaggerated, but we did listen. Five minutes later we were very grateful to him when 50 new people were connected behind us in the queue. This was the highlight of the tour. A cup of Cameron tea in the Cameron Highlands overlooking the green tea plantations with a pastry … or three.

Hamsters

And then the party wasn’t over. We had to go to the butterfly garden. This was more like a greenhouse with some butterflies. They were beautiful, but perhaps more fun to go here with children. Furthermore, there are some other animals trapped here, such as a rabbit, hamsters, a raccoon, and reptiles. But I was glad that they were behind glass, I would rather not see them in the wild.

Strawberry garden

The last thing on the agenda was the strawberry garden. When we used to live in Germany, we drove to the strawberry fields in the right season and picked buckets there. At one point we found out, especially me, that we were not in the child-friendly bushes and I was under the stinging nettles. I imagined this again, without the stinging nettles. There were huge fields full of big red strawberries, but this turned out to be a disappointment. The strawberries were so small that you had to look carefully to find them and the fields were exchanged for rows of trays. Oh well, my day was already perfect when I saw the pastries.