Pajareo sin fronteras

Driving across Sabah from the  Rainforest Discovery Centre  toward Mount Kinabalu was a sobering experience. From the remnant primary forest of the RDC, we almost immediately entered an endless expanse of plantations, with squat oil palms covering the low hills as far as the eye can see. Palm oil has lifted  thousands of people in Southeast Asia out of poverty, but it's also responsible for the loss of huge swaths of lowland forest and the associated loss of wildlife throughout the region. The giant palm oil corporations attempt to greenwash themselves by funding small conservation projects like the RDC, but seeing what it's done to the landscape in Malaysia is truly depressing.  The traffic going westwards wasn't nearly as bad as it had been on the way there, and after four hours or so of negotiating the bad roads we saw Mount Kinabalu towering over us, filling the entire horizon. Kinabalu is basically a huge block of granite that was uplifted over the surrounding l...