Perhentians Aug 2014

We had to anchor off the mooring field by the main town on Perhentian Kecil to restock some groceries.  Surprisingly, I found most of what I wanted in one of the little mini markets tucked back around the end of the town.

We are heading down the channel towards town.  The town is just beyond the white mosque there on the water.

 A giant clam holding loudspeakers at the end of the jetty.

 Looking down the main 'street' of Perhentian Kecil.  A school, a daycare center, some mini markets and a few restaurants is it.

 Looking out over the beach from a far corner of the village.

 A lady cleaning squid for a restaurant stall on the main street in the village.

 Our dinghy at the town jetty, along with the taxi boats.

 This kitty cat found some fresh water in the big blue tubs by the jetty.

 The Muslim cemetery across the main road.

 You can just see YOLO out in the channel beyond the dinghy and taxi boats at the jetty on Perhentian Kecil.

 In the bay at D'Lagoon, there is a stairway to the ridge which houses a large solar array and a couple of non-working wind turbines.  This is our view from our anchorage spot here.  The camera makes it look farther than it is.

 The D'Lagoon resort with their private beach.  Very shallow rocks and coral to get in there.  What you see is what you get, the entire resort is in this photo.  It was full of Europeans as we heard a lot of French spoken here.  Two of their guests overturned a kayak near us and I had to rescue them and take them back to the resort.  Then they had to get a resort boat to tow the water-filed kayak to a beach and empty it, load it onto a small boat and bring it back to the resort.

 The shoreline was full of these crevices that were now caves with little beaches in front of them.  Too bad the caves were full of trash.

 You can see the damaged platform where the stairway starts at the water.  Jason snorkeled the platform and saw that it had fallen off of its support structures.  You can imagine the force of the storm that moved this much concrete!

 Looking up the stairway as we started the climb.

 A view from the water on the other side of the platform.

 YOLO in the distance.  We are on the stairway platform.

 The shoreline in D'Lagoon bay is mostly solid rocks.

 The view of the clear water was pretty impressive as we climbed the rickety rusty stairs.

 Looking down from the first covered platform area, you can look right through the water to the sand and rocks below.  Gorgeous, clear water.  You can see the amount of trash that storms have thrown so high up onto these rocks.

 Looking straight down into a crack in the rocks.  They look cool, but there isn't much to see in them as the water keeps the rocky bottom pretty well scoured clean.

 A nice view of YOLO and the platform where the walkway starts.  Our little dinghy is tied to the platform.

 Another view from above, showing the water clarity and the nice sandy bottom with a few rocks in a corner of the bay.

 The orange color of the stairs is from rust.  You can see the wire cables have all corroded away and hang like dark strings from the hand rails.  Obviously not made from marine grade stainless steel at all.  Several steps were missing altogether and Jason and I never stepped on the same step at the same time, afraid the load wouldn't hold.  And we walked on the edges as much as we could to avoid the center of the steps where they are the most vulnerable.

Looking down from the second covered platform.  It was quite a hike to the top,

D'Lagoon resort is up in the top of the bay here.  A pretty place with good protection and great holding in sand, but we were the only yacht here most of the time.

The top portion of the stairway was covered by solar panels.  I don't believe they are working and several are missing, but it was a good thought and they make a good shade cover.

The view of YOLO in D'Lagoon bay from the top of the walkway.

The wind turbines and part of the solar array at the top of Perhentian Kecil.

These solar panels look like they could produce a lot of electricity for someone to use.

Jason resting at the top platform

Jason captured me with a bad face at the top of the walkway.

We followed this pathway all around the fenced off power array.  On the far side is a path down to Long Beach and at the other end is a path down to D'Lagoon resort.  Both looked like steep, rutted dirt tracks and we had no reason to venture down either of them.  Much better access from the beaches.

This is at the top of the path coming up from Long Beach.  They put up nice machines, fences, and signs and then don't seem to maintain these expensive structures....the money from the gov't is to build things, but not to maintain them.  Politics is letting so many things go to waste here because of the policies.

Another big construction project on the water next to the village.  We think some of the stolen beach sand ended up here to be used in concrete.  The village is just beyond the raw dirt.