4.

Leaving Martin’s, we crossed the stream I’d heard in the night, and began to hike upwards through rainforest, along a little trail. Although this was often muddy, it wasn’t too slippery – we were really lucky that it hadn’t rained too much during the week. Sometimes there were rough-hewn steps – a foot-long shard of wood rammed into the earth, say, where it was particularly muddy, or particularly steep. Although walking through the rainforest was beautiful, there wasn’t much time to look around; attention was mostly focused on the next step up.

Luckily, for those of us who are not mountain goats, there were a few rest breaks along the way with wooden benches to pause on. As we breathed at the first one, Thomas lept away into the bush and cut down a walking stick for JCD (and because he got one well I had to get one too). Although it was a bit cumbersome at times, it was really useful when you needed to propel yourself upwards.





We went through rainforest for about an hour or a bit longer, before arriving at this point (j’s stick above). There was an impressive view from here (and again it was nice to have a pause…).