This morning at 6am we were very calmly awoken by the team after just 4 hours sleep, combination of the French couple snoring, the heat without a fan and the very thin mattress on the floor and of course the odd bug or two. :-)
Our 6.30 cruise saw us heading off in the same direction again in search of Orang-utans and crocodiles and anything else we can see. The highlight was seeing an orang-utan actually in the wild, absolutely incredible, she was gorgeous.
Although we did think perhaps she was on a remote control as they knew exactly where to find it and just about everyone I have spoken to about the cruise says they see just one solitary ape, this is apparently because they are solitary animals and she was feeding on the only fruiting fig tree in the area, a sure giveaway I guess. She was very cute, of course, and it was really great to see her in natural habitat, it’s just a shame she literally has just one tree to feed from now. :-(
Back at camp we had a couple of hours for chilling out and catching up on some sleep before we undertook out first jungle trek.
Unfortunately for Uncle Tans and for us, they have recently had to relocate their camp due to increased fees from the sanctuary park and are now quite a bit further down river from where they were before and pretty much surrounded by palm oil plantations.
The guides at the camp were really feeling this you could tell and suggested to us about taking a very long river cruise in the afternoon back up to the park area in search of wildlife. They told us the boat ride there would take 2 hours, we would then spend some time looking for animals before heading back so were looking at a 4 hour trip. Despite the fact that these river cruises were not the highlight of my trip (!) we all agreed to go and set off around 3.30pm. The boats we’re riding in are very small, you can’t stand up really for fear of falling out and couldn’t stretch out either, to add to this the seats were rock hard and pretty painful after just 5 mins. They gave us lifejackets which we promptly sat on only to be told to wear them instead, so on that note we started out down the river for two hours.
For the entire 2 hour journey they tried to point things out to us like kingfishers and birds circling high above us, but as someone of course pointed out, ‘we have those at home!’. Two hours later and we’re coming into view of some stunning beautiful primary rainforest, it really was spectacular and it was immediately clear that of course that’s why we weren’t seeing much where we were before, I mean really, why would the wildlife be way down river with very little vegetation and habitat when they had this entire rainforest to hang out in?
Anyway, we spent quite a lot of time looking for animals along the river side and saw a gorgeous little family of otters which was really nice, they were running and playing along the waterfront.
Apparently, the main objective in coming here was to see proboscis monkeys, that would have been lovely of course but we were never going to get as close to them as I had a couple of days before, especially with the sound of the boat engines scaring anything within 500metres away! The guides were doing their best to be fair, but there was very little to be seen making their job very difficult. We carried on up river for another hour or so before they decided enough was enough and they were going to give up. The flaw in the plan here was that we had already travelled much farther than planned and now it was beginning to get dark and we had at least a 3 hour journey back to camp. :-(
Boats really aren’t my strong point as I said and boats in muddy crocodile infested water certainly aren’t and the last thing I was looking forward to was the next three hours.
On this trip I had kept my lifejacket on the whole time, to be honest I’m not really sure what good it would have done and it did seem to play a far better part in being a cushion but I hung in there and wore it anyway. There were two boats on our trip each with a driver at the back and a navigator at the front and some 6 or 7 passengers in between them. As the sun went down, which it did very quickly and very early being not far from the equator, the navigator guy got out a battery operated flash light, I’m sure he could see what he was doing but at times I did wonder if you would get more illumination from a pocket maglite, actually this is all probably the adrenalin induced fear factor talking but it was scary! At least for me! :-( Everyone else seemed to be doing just fine looking out for crocodile eyes and anything else that may catch their eye. So the job of the navigator was to continually scan the flash light across theriver looking for obstacles and the job of the driver, apart from driving, was to listen to the navigator and keep awake! We kept on going for another two hours before we came upon a village we had passed on the way up the river so at least we knew that from here camp was only an hours ride away. We were supposed to be back at camp around 7 – 7.30 and it was already 7.45! We carried on going and I knew that without a doubt the first thing I would be doing once I had got back on terra firma was treating myself to a beer, and I don’t even like beer! After the journey and the fact that, despite wanting to get out and walk back, I had remained relatively under control I reckoned I deserved one.
On the trip back every now and then we would hit something in the water and I would quite literally jump out of my skin, at one point I was even holding on to Katie sitting next to me. The other boat had the main guide travelling in it and as such was out in front of us which if I’m honest suited me just fine, my reckoning was that that if anyone was going to hit something they would hit it first and it would therefore slow us down. Fair? Ok, maybe not.
We had calculated we had around 20 mins of the journey left to go, I think by this point everyone was getting pretty tired and fed up a bit, including the guides and drivers, I just hoped they didn’t get too tired and take their eye off of the river. Tio our main guide saw something on the riverbank and both boats headed over to check it out, it was a lovely little owl which was just sitting on a branch close to the water wondering, I’m sure, what everyone was doing shining a light at him. It was after this little photo session that our driver decided he was going to strike out ahead of the rest and be the leader for a change, you can just imagine my reaction. I was very restrained though and hung in there once again. :-) So down the river we go hurtling, speeding along until they get a glimpse of some fishing buoys and then they cut the power and lift the engine out of the water, I’m not sure whats worse, breakneck speed or the constant power cutting. There’s no moon out tonight and it’s a little bit cloudy, at times we can see some great stars but at other times nothing in front of our faces. Another 10 mins down the river and the other boat isn’t behind us, despite this we still carried on until our drivers phone rang and all of a sudden we were turning around again, just picture my face right now. We weren’t sure why we were turning round but assumed the other boat had just had the ultimate wildlife experience and we were going to see if we could have it too. But no, what had actually happened, despite us heading off first is that they had hit something in the water which had stripped the gears off of the engine! So there we were both boats in the middle of the river, well just near the bank actually, with one boat totally out of action and camp still around 20 mins away. Tio tried to call the camp but for some reason no joy, he managed to get through to someone in Sepilok but they also couldn’t get through to the camp. They attempted to think about us towing the other boat but I think decided there probably wasn’t enough power in the one engine. After a few animated discussions it was decided that we would carry on to camp and send out a rescue boat to the others, there was an elderly couple on the other boat so we made space for them on our boat and after leaving the others with the bread and watermelon headed back to camp.
I would like to think that our driver was going to go a bit slower now but I think he just wanted to get back as much as we did. Fortunately just as we were approaching camp another boat was heading out to pick up the others.
We got back to camp at 9.30 and I have never been so glad to get back on dry land, I can’t tell you how much I really do mean that.
We devoured our dinner and I treated myself to the much needed beer and waited for the others to arrive. It wasn’t much longer before they also got into camp for dinner. Tio was feeling really bad about the whole thing, the long journey, the broken boat and the fact that despite his best efforts we still didn’t really see anything new, so to make himself and us feel better he broke open the rice wine J I’m not sure quite what it tastes like, it’s a little like a liquor of some sort rather than a regular wine but it was certainly drinkable. That evening we were supposed to go on a night trek but assumed that after the todays activities that would no longer be an option, we were wrong and literally 10 mins later we were heading out again. Admittedly not everyone joined us on this trek which was a shame cause we saw some great things. We saw a few different birds species napping on low branches, but perhaps the best one of all was a very cute little fruit bat on a very low branch right before our eyes munching on his dinner. He ‘hung’ around for a good five mins before the talking and picture taking got too much for him and he was gone. As soon were we, straight to bed as we were up again at 6am the next morning as they were offering us a bonus cruise as we hadn’t seen that much so far, again we were to head off in search of Proboscis monkeys.
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