June 20th, 2005
Near the end of June we went for another hike, but this time at McRitchie Resevoir. I learned that McRitchie Resevoir had a suspension bridge that was 25 meters above the ground up in the tree canopy so of course had to go and check it out. When we got to McRitchie we of course saw the resevoir and began to work our way around the lake to the trailhead. Just before entering the woods we saw a bunch of turtles hanging out on this small penninsula.


What are you looking at?


And Jeremy really likes this shot. I think these are red-eared sliders.


Once we entered the woods we saw all these 'teams' with the same shirts coming towards us, but they were walking. We asked them if they were in a race of some sort, and they said yes. Our friend Ange was also in the race we thought, and at the speed these teams were moving, we thought for sure she could win it! Well, she did, and she beat everyone by a full 15 mins! Jeremy and I are considering doing an adventure race too, just because if we do enter,we think we'd have a good chance of winning! And we could always use another $800!

We saw some amazing butterflies on our hike into the woods! The one above is a Branded Imperial Butterfly. And we saw lots of robust red dragonflies!


And we got to the suspension bridge. The capacity was listed at 30 people. This is what it looked like when we got there...


nice and peaceful....and then, about 60 folks showed up and basically forced us off the bridge. They were talking and yelling and chattering so loud, and they just walked across the bridge, they weren't really even looking at anything, and even if they wanted to see anything, like birds, like we had wanted to see, they wouldn't have been able to b/c they were so loud and it was such a large crowd! It was a disappointing experience, and just solidifies that we are in a space where there is no open space. There are too many people on this island! We long for our quiet woods back home!


But when you do see some wildlife or insects, they seem to be really big! You can see the size of this milipede next to my glasses! And that's only the front third!


We disturbed him so he curled up.


This is one of the trees we saw as we continued our hike, now all along man made boardwalk thru the woods around the resevoir.


The fruit on the trees up close. I think this is the Bat's Laurel tree and the fruit is edible, the skin is very thick and the flesh is very little. There were also supposed to be rubber trees in this forest.

McRitchie is Singapore's oldest central resevoir, completed in 1868 and elarged last in 1904.

© December 6, 2008