Pulau Kapas is a small tropical Island just 6Km offshore the small town of Marang at the east coast of Malaysia. It is an protected Marine park with a few rather small and quiet resorts.
After two weeks of jungle environment we didn't have enough of the outdoors but we wanted to change location.
We were missing the sea so we decided to travel to another tropical island. Since it was still Monsoon season we knew it was going to be very quiet on the island. We had read that there are beaches without any human constructions which was perfect for us because we wanted to keep staying outdoors and make camp rather than getting a room. We decided to give it a try and hoped to find a Robinson island.
What we found was indeed quite a paradise. It wasn't as remote as the Island of Alexander Selkirk the real Robinson but we found a beach just for us!
We camped under a nice shady beautiful tree on the beach.
All along the shallow water there were corals and colorful fish. The jungle was full of coconut palms. We had all the time we wanted and all comforts one could hope for in the nature. Us the sea, the burning hot sun, corals and a nice place to be…
Apart from the food we brought to the island we also fed on coconuts and seafood. Drinking water also wasn't a problem. We found a small cave were water came dripping out through the rocks which we collected drop by drop. Beautiful mineral water!
We quite enjoyed our time as voluntary island castaway's!
Images
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Shelter
I build a raised platform bed. I always wanted to do that.
It is build with old branches, old palm leaves and jungle vine. I used a tree that was growing in our favor parallel to the ground so I could lay thick branches from the tree to a bamboo pole that I put between to forks. Another layer of thinner branches laid crosswise and then covert with a big layer of palm leaves.
This shelter is not only very comfortable and easy to build it most importantly provides protection from all the creepy crawlies like snakes and spiders and crabs that seem to have a lot of business especially at night .
Food/ Water
We turned into part time hunt and gatherers. Apart from our food and water that we brought with us on the island, we had to find more if we wanted to stay any length of time. We brought about 6Kg's of rice, 1 Kg of nuts, about 2Kg of fresh veggies some oil and spices. We had to ration our food a lot in Kuala Koh National Park, this time we wanted lots of food and delicious too.
So we had to go gathering. Well, to be fair we also could have gone dining out in the resorts restaurants on the other side of the island… Hunting wasn't so successful. We tried to fish a little bit but only caught a few small ones and lost interest in trying.
Gathering edibles was much more successful. Food that can't run or hide is for sure the better choice.
In the course of the two weeks that we have stayed on the island, we ate a bout 30 amazing coconuts, a couple of Pandanus and could supplement soups with Morinda leaves. A long the rocks and beaches we collected snails, limpet's, hermit crabs, crabs and even found and oyster while snorkeling.
Coconuts that look like on the pictures, the ones with a new sprout already growing out of the shell are by far the best and most delicious ones. There are filled with about half a liter of sweet coconut water, lots of coconut flesh, easily enough food for one person for one day and on top of all a sort of watery coconut "cake" like treat. Absolutely fantastic!
The red fruit in the middle is called Pandanus. It grows wild near the shores and is delicious when ripe. Each of the segments contains a sort of fruit juice which can be sucked out of the otherwise very fibrous fruit. The picture on the bottom right shows pictures from hermit crabs we collected.
Raft
We build another raft. Entirely build with driftwood that we found lying around along the beaches, almost all of which is bamboo. Jungle vine and rope we found among all the other garbage washed ashore holding everything together and palm leaves make it more comfortable.
We paddled to the spot on the far left of the photos about 1Km across.
Once on the other side we didn't managed to swim back with the tide coming in and the current pulling us out.
We were luck that a friendly boatman towed our raft and gave us a ride back to our island retreat.
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Posted on February 24, 2012 at 6:05 PM in Malaysia, WORLDTRIP | RSS feed | Respond | Trackback URL
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