In the Jungle, the Mighty Jungle

The weekend brought with it a trip to the MacRitchie Reservoir. 

Well the weekend actually started on Friday evening with drinks at an amazing rooftop bar.  The bar is called 1-Altitude and is on the top of the OUB Building in Raffles Place in the heart of the Central Business District.  The views were fantastic and I'd certainly recommend a visit to the bar simply for that though it is a nice place with a very chilled out ambiance.  From the top of the building you can look out across the marina and see all the cargo ships out in the sea and back into the city with all the buildings alight far below you - fantastic!

As it was approaching Halloween the bar staff were appropriately dressed as zombies, ghouls and so on and the bar was decorated too.  Being from the UK though Halloween in the warm does seem a bit strange but Singaporeans seem to have embraced it completely as everywhere I've been lately has been getting into the 'spirit' of the occasion. 

However back to our trip to the reservoir.  The reservoir is an opportunity to experience at first hand what I imagine Singapore would have been like before it became the developed landscape we know today.  I can officially say that it is the closest to a jungle that I've ever been too.

The reservoir seemed huge as did the surrounding tropical forest.  There are a number of paths you can follow and although many of them have wooden boardwalks to walk on (as you can see in the picture above) several also do rely on you being able to negotiate your way around tree roots and stones etc. and are much more natural in appearance.

We actually followed a set walk which in total was 12km, we completed 7km of it as there was a convenient point at which you could shorten your walk. I have to be honest though by that point 7km in the heat and humidity seemed like a very long way and I was more than ready to call it a day. However a return visit to walk around the other part is definitely in order.

Our walk also included a walk amongst the tree tops, this was actually a walk across a free standing 25 metre high, 250 metre long suspension bridge.  The views were fantastic although the bridge did move a fair bit so I wasn't totally sorry to reach the other side of the bridge.  The photo below shows our tree top view.  Some what ironically just after we reached the other side we encountered one of Singapore's famous downpours.  We were able to shelter until it eased up but it seemed meant to be as we were after all in a tropical forest.

The forest also has an abundance of wildlife and we were fortunate enough to see a family of macaque monkeys. They let us get relatively close to them to get some lovely photos. We also saw some lizards and lots of butterflies. There must also have been a fair share of mosquitoes etc. as my legs had been bitten a few times by the time we got home. I gather there are also monitor lizards there but we didn't see any of those. However I've seen plenty in Bangkok and here in Singapore as well so I wasn't too bothered.

Overall though I had a really lovely day and it is definitely somewhere I'd like to return to.  If only to finish the other part of the walk!

Comments

  1. This is on our very long list of things to do while we are here. Thanks for this post!

    ReplyDelete
  2. Thanks very much, I think we only scratched the surface even though it seemed like we had walked for miles as it is so big. Definitely one for a return visit.

    ReplyDelete

Post a Comment

Thank you for taking the time to comment.

Popular Posts