Jungle Trip

We are going to deepest darkest Borneo--an Eco lodge in the jungle.

We board a plane to fly to Sandakan on the east coast of Sabah. Actually, people still call the island Borneo. Once in Sandakan, we are taken to Sepilok Orang Utans Sanctuary. The orang utans were fast becoming an endangered species because the babies were being orphaned by the locals so they could have the babies as pets. An organization decided to try and rescue these orphans, and try to reinstate them in the wild. They bought enough land for a rehabilitation centre and a reserve. It takes 6 to 10 years for the orang utans to become sufficiently self supporting to leave the compound, and live in the reserve. If it is a male orang utan, he is moved to another reserve further away as the males are very territorial. We went out to the feeding station to watch them feeding. These stations are set up further and further afield with less and less food available from the main compound so that they learn to forage in the forest for their food. Occasionally, an orang utan may decide to stay in close because there is no good reason to change the status quo--be fed rather than to forage.

Next door is the sun bear conservation project. The sun bear is the smallest bear in world, and is an endangered species due to its habitat being destroyed, and the Chinese using the bile from this animal in their medicines. The sun bear has large razor sharp claws for foraging, and protecting itself.

After this,we make a long, bumpy journey by road, and then a five minute ride on the River Kinabatangan to our home for the next few days. After settling in, we are taken on an afternoon boat trip down the river to a tributary where we see: an orang utan in the wild, black hornbill, a small and a stork kingfisher, shorttail and longtail macacquet monkeys, proboscis monkeys including the dominant male (the dominant male has a very large proboscis or nose), snakebirds (look like snakes when they are sitting on top of the water waiting for a fish), a monitor lizard (can grow to 2 meters in length). Suddenly, our boat captain jumps into the seat beside our guide. He has been sitting in the motor compartment. We look into the water and see what has startled our driver --a large crocodile!