In a wild world
Trip Start
Oct 11, 2007
1
11
18
Trip End
Ongoing
Sandakan, Malaysia
Wednesday, November 28, 2007
During the last week in Vietnam I had been sending a few emails back and forth with a Malaysian company, trying to book some activities in advance as I had heard things can get quite full. Hence as soon as we arrived we were on a tight schedule.
Firstly off we headed out to the jungle resort at Sepilok, a few minuites walk from the urangutan rehabilitation centre there. These little kiddies I had long wanted to cross paths with, and even though it was unlikely to offer the interaction you often see on TV documentaries about the area, it still promised to be a good experience.
Before seeing them in the flesh though, they showed us a short film about what is actually happening to them out here. Heavy logging in Borneo is severely threatening their natural habitat, and numbers have started to fall as a result. More and more urangutans are found illegaly kept by locals in cages as pets, and the vet at the sanctuary is now on call to tend to injured or mistreated animals at whatever time of day or night they may be brought in. The thing that really makes you realise whose fault all this is, is in the visitor centre, where you come across a small board with questions on it and you lift the windows to see the answers.
The question posed was:
"What threatens the future survival of urangutans more than any other factor?"
When you opened the window, it was a mirror.
It was a very poigniant moment for me, and led onto something I will explain a bit further down.
Back to the urangutans themselves, we made our way to the feeding area and were escorted to this spot by a small gathering of long-tailed maqaques. Unfortunately for us, also watching the events were a bunch of young kids. Well, I say watching, they were more intent with running up and down the boardwalk and making hell-and-all noise, thus scaring the majority of the primates away. After seeing it fit to make a few disapproving grunting noises in the general direction of the hyper-sprogs parents, I turned back to the action. Much to my delight, three urangutan's had decided to hang around despite the commotion.
Gracefully swinging around the surrounding ropes, they eat bananas in seemingly every position concievable. It really was a fantastic moment, and, needless to say, I was having a field day with the zoom lens.
As the crowd dispersed, I had a clear view and was picking the perfect frame for a shot when I noticed something a little different. One urangutan, at first appearing to be nonchalantly swaying, was wiggling about with a little motion than at first glance. Coupled with that, the other one was laying on it's back with it's head dropping off the side of the platform - a little twinkle in it's eye...
"Are they...?", I turned to Claire and uttered.
"I think so", was the instant reply.
Yes indeedy. Our little friends had decided that it was time for a bit of, lets just call it, 'exhibitionism' (if only for the fact my Nana would be upset if I used any other word to describe it).
Walking back to the visitor centre, I convinced myself that what I had just witnessed was 'a step to getting more urangutans in the trees'. It was true though, nature should be allowed to choose it's own course, no matter how public they decide to go about it.
But in keeping with that, it also needs a little hand. And that's why that evening I logged onto the website mentioned on a leaflet I had picked up in the visitor centre, and adopted a baby orangutan called Sen. Welcome to the family Sen, you can have Dale's room if you ever want to visit.
The following day we took a ferry out to Selingan Island (locally referred to as Turtle Island), with the aim of spotting, funnily enough, some turtles. It's this island that has become renowned as one of the best places in the world to spot huge sea turtles, where they come to land at nightfall on the beach to lay their eggs.
The word from the ranger was that the previous night, they had had some turtle action at around 9:30pm, so we waited patiently from 8pm for the call from the guide.
As time passed, Claire and myself thought of ways to kill time - mostly involving me losing at Blackjack. It was 11pm and we were getting restless. The iPod was out and Claire was falling asleep on the table.
12:30am: Still no joy. Claire goes to bed along with about two thirds of the tourists on the island upon hearing that we 'may' get some turtles 'within a couple of hours. I keep the faith.
1:30am: A call! A turtle is on the beach, but not comfortable with laying eggs. We could either wait a little longer, or we could go have a shoofty. Unsurprisingly the group decision was with the latter. We got around four minutes with the turtle before he turned and headed towards the sea, but it was worthwhile. Who knows when I'll see these creatures again?
Moving on, our last full day of our swift visit to Borneo was to head out to the Kinabantangan River for a spot of river safari. En route we visited the rather uninspiring Goamontong Caves, and arrived at the river lodge in time to have a catnap before the cruise.
This ended up being the perfect way to end not just Borneo, but my pre-NZ adventures. Taking to the water in a small motor boat, the guide pointed out everything on the banks of the river, from proboscis monkeys to monitor lizards. We even stumbled across a croc peering his eyes above the water. Fantastic experience.
At night we were offered one final option of heading out into the jungle by torchlight. Claire, at first deciding she was game, soon decided to run and hide under her bedsheet with her shirt done up to her collar and jeans tucked into her socks. I think all the talk of spiders, snakes and other insects had pushed her to the edge, as she suddenly spoke about how she should be wearing heels and a nice dress instead.
Still, I did'nt manage to come across that interesting anyway, just a kingfisher and a tree frog. I think Claire may have made the right decision.
So that was the Borneo adventure over. Time ticks on the clock and it's only two days until we board our fight to NZ. We plan to spend the next couple of nights in Kuala Lumpur so it's going to be a quick transition from jungle to city.
The next time I write I will have reached my destination. See you all there.
