macritchie reservoir for the win!

thursday 6 august

macritchie reservoir was absolutely amazing!! ~ and free!
i went today with piotr and cat, and while we were slightly lost and confused on our way there, it was much easier getting back to campus.

the reservoir is right in the middle of singapore-- the lake feature directly to the left of toa payoh. NUS is somewhere in between Clementi and Sentosa Island. it may look far, but actually, from changi airport to clementi is about a 45 minute taxi ride.

anyways, this reservoir was really cool! the park was really well made, and there were interesting animals and trees and flowers everywhere!

this is a picture that piotr took of me and cat just hanging out in a tree overlooking the reservoir.
so, if you can't tell, i'm the one in the back wearing yellow.

here are some of my favorite pictures from the park.
these are pictures from while we were still walking along the reservoir.

these following pictures are from the middle part of the 11 km (6.5 mile) trail that we walked.
the last two pictures were taken from an observation tower in the middle of the trail.

these are a couple pictures of some pretty flowers we saw along the way.

my favorite part though, was all of the animals that we came across during our hike.

this is a 3 meter long water monitor lizard.

we also saw lots of clouded monitor lizards. they look the same as water monitor lizards, but smaller, and live on land. if you look carefully through the leaves, you can see the clouded monitor lizard in the picture below. these guys only get up to around 1 meter in length.

additionally, we saw this little lizard whose name i do not know. he was the littlest of the bunch at probably around 6-8 inches in length.

we also saw lots of little squirrel looking things that were really cute! they almost looked like squirrels and lemurs at the same time. the absolute BEST animal that we encountered though, had to have been these furry little creatures:

monkeys! on certain parts of the trail, these monkeys are everywhere! in the trees, on the path, hanging out on logs... they're also completely used to humans and aren't afraid of people at all. they just go about their own business eating and playing in the trees.

i was literally 3 feet away from the monkeys and they didn't try to mug me, hit me on the head with a branch, or pee on me. these animals were completely friendly and so adorable!

a baby monkey playing hiding behind the tree...

monkeys everywhere!

hooray!