A Trip to a Waterfall

Well, it was Tim's last day visiting, so we decided to visit a waterfall. We had gone to the city, to a small island, to some great places to eat, so we thought we would visit a more country setting. Northeast of the city is the country's national zoo, and right behind it is a small kampung (small village). The village had an interesting sign, which you can see below.

The village was really cool to see for me. It probably had 500 people, and it was really a small town feel. The people were nice - Angela and I will probably return. Once you go through the village, there is a reserve area that is gated. We parked our car and hiked to a waterfall. The guard told us to take the right fork, so we did... he didn't tell us that there were two forks... We took the first one, so we walked an extra hour with our backtracking. We finally got to the waterfall, got some pictures (there was a big rock at the bottom of it, so I climbed up to get some photos).

By the time we got the waterfall we were hot (needless to say) as it's 90 degrees all the time here with a killer humidity. We thought a nice swim would be nice... Well, I had put my feet in the water and it felt really nice, so we were almost ready to wade in the water at the bottom when I noticed something - blood on my leg! I looked closely and there were slug/worm like things on my leg and foot. Before freaking out too much, I remembered a friend had said (about a week earlier) that the waterfalls were great, but beware of leeches. He said that you burn them off (similar to ticks). Since we had no ticks, we resorted to pulling and plucking them off. Their teeth contain a chemical to make you bleed more, so we bled quite a bit. In all, we each had 10-15 of these nasty things on us. We chose not to get in the water after that - we headed back. By the time we got back to the car, my foot was covered in blood (nothing bad, just gross since it doesn't clot quickly). We drove home, stopping on the way home for some band aids and alcohol pads.

That sure made an interesting end to Tim's time here, but it was an adventure. People here say leeches aren't harmful, they just make you bleed. We were told they are less harmful than mosquitoes as sometimes mosquitoes carry diseases.