Aug 2008

What's happening?

- beep beep beep beep -.

Oh right. That's the alarm going off. It's 05:35 and we have a morning river cruise at 06:00. Awesome.

We pulled ourselves together (as much as we could for 06:00 in the morning) and sauntered out to where everyone else was waiting for the boats. Surprisingly, we were conscious enough to organize ourselves so we got the seats we wanted: at the back of the big boat, by the guide.

We launched and quickly realized that not many other animals were awake yet. We didn't see many things, but it was still nice and relaxing to be out in a boat in the morning. We did see some birds and monkeys.

We arrived back at the camp with enough time to eat breakfast and get changed for the three-hour morning hike up to one of the oxbow lakes along the Kinabatangan River. As we were going through the jungle, our guide stopped to point out edible and medicinal plants traditionally used by people who live by the river. He also showed us different types of fruit eaten by orangutans and other monkeys.

We found this little bug and Court got to practice using her new macro lens. It worked really really well.

We arrived at the lake for a little rest. Our guide explained that this lake is famous for some very large fish. He said that every year the people who live on the river have a large festival where they catch the fish and then barbecue them. We weren't there for the festival, unfortunately.

We walked back up the path to a spot where WWF is planting banana trees as a food source for the animals. Our guide said that elephants will come here to feed for a while, and then move on. We saw, but didn't step in, evidence that the elephants had, indeed, enjoyed the bananas. At this spot, another guide came and picked us up with the boat for a quick ride back to the lodge.

Then it was lunch / rest / relax time. We didn't do much in the afternoon.

The nature lodge offers the opportunity to charter boats, at MYR62 per person, to go out looking specifically for elephants. Yesterday, a German mother and son did just this, and they got lucky and managed to see some. They told the other members of our group about this, and they also decided to charter a boat to look for elephants. In our group there were 15 people, and 11 went on the optional elephant cruise. Four people decided not to go, and we were two of them. Budget restrictions, disappointingly. Y'know how it is.

We laid low until it was time for the 4:00 pm cruise. We set off and saw a lot of the same stuff as yesterday, including lots of macaques, proboscis monkeys, and birds.

Then all of a sudden our guide took off and sped down-river. One of the other boats had spotted these:

Elephants!

There were about 15 in total. We were really, really, really, really lucky to see them. There are only two herds in the area around the river: one with about a hundred elephants and one with about fifteen. We saw the latter. Our guide said that they are in one area one and day and move on the next. They take about four months to move up river and four months to come back.

They were all lined up along the river bank chowing away at the reeds. We sat and watched for a long time. But then, in a quest to get closer (we don't know if it was the guide or someone on the boat who decided to do this), one of the boatmen put their boat up on the shore almost next to the baby elephant. These elephants are not aggressive, but it still spooked the baby elephant enough that it turned and walked away. Which meant, of course, the other elephants followed suit. This whole situation was very uncool with us. We're going to write a strongly worded letter.

But, at this point we did notice a male elephant down stream. We floated our way down to see him. One of the other girls noticed that he was radio collared and he only had one tusk. We weren't sure why that was.

We went cruising down the river some more. We didn't really see that much, because we were all still really excited about the elephants. Then we noticed that the optional elephant cruise was coming back from down-river. Our guide said that the other group didn't see any elephants. We felt good that we didn't pay for the other tour and lucked into seeing them. At the same time, we felt bad for everyone else. At this point our guide made the signal for 'we saw an elephant', flapping his hand behind his ear, and sent the other boats off to find the elephants we saw. Thankfully they did see the elephants, so it worked out for all of us.

We got back to camp around 18:30. We had a little more time to rest until dinner at 19:15. After dinner it was the night hike. We didn't go last night so we decided to go tonight. We left around 20:30. It was pretty dark and were gone for an hour. We didn't see very much: a sleeping bird, a slightly poisonous frog and a stick bug. But it was still great to be out in the jungle at night.

Then it was bed time. We had another cruise the next morning at 6:00 am. It was a good animal spotting day.

Olympics? Sandakan? Or the Kinabatangan River? Which one should we choose? Or how about all three? That was our plan for today. Hopefully our plan would go better than the last.

We woke up in our hotel, which turned out to be quite the disappointment. We had very little water pressure in the shower, the shower curtain didn't even enclose the whole tub. But the dead cockroach by the floor drain made it all better! Oh well. It was only one night and less than 12 hours at that hotel.

They gave us a coupon to go get breakfast at the restaurant next door. It turns out it was the same restaurant we ate at last year when we were in Sandakan. Court ordered mee goreng and I, wanting some “normal” food, ordered the western breakfast. Who got the “normal” food? You guessed it: Court. She got some really nice fried noodles and I got a couple under-cooked eggs, a sausage that was more like a hot dog, and some under-toasted toast. This prompted some sage advice from one Courtney MacMullin: “When in Asia, order the local breakfast. You'll get more and it'll taste better.” Point well taken.

We had to quickly find a bank to get some cash to pay for our river cruise. Neither one of us actually realized that it would be Sunday and nothing may be open. Fortunately, we found an ATM to get some cash. Unfortunately, so did about 10 other people. There was one lady and her son there. He was about 5 or 6. He was wandering around the ATMs, picking up receipts that had been discarded on the floor. But then all of a sudden he talked to his mom and then he went outside. He was back in about five minutes. Court later filled me in that he went outside to pee.

It was getting near the time that we were to be picked up, so we had to split up. Court went and packed all of our stuff while I ran to the grocery store to get some food for lunch so we could eat on our way to the river lodge. The grocery store was STUPID BUSY! It was Walmart-at-Christmastime busy. But the store was a lot more cramped and a lot less organized. I know I forgot a lot of things, but I just wanted to get what we needed and get out of there.

I met Court back at the hotel and had a few minutes to watch some of the swimming events at the Olympics. Then we had to check out and catch our ride to the lodge. We confirmed the day before that we were going to be picked up at 12:00 from our hotel. At 12:30 we decided to call and see what was going on. We got through to someone but he had to contact someone else and he said he'd get back to us. Another 20 minutes later he called back. It took the hotel staff a while to figure out who he wanted to talk to. The guy on the phone said the driver would be another 20 minutes. He arrived about 30 minutes later. We got on the road about an hour and twenty minutes late, which isn't too bad for Sabah.

I think our driver was in a hurry to get out there because, man, did he ever drive fast. And he passed everything and anything he could whenever he got a chance. Coming into a turn? Why not pass. Close to a blind hill? Sure, that's the best time to pass. And on it went. We stopped at a café to get our permits to go into the nature park and to pick up a couple more people. We didn't get a chance to warn them about the driving, but they learned pretty quick.

We arrived at the lodge around 15:40. They quickly ushered us to our little lodge and gave the quick run down. Here's the hot water, here's the fan, here's the toilet. The usual stuff. Then they said the next river cruise was at 16:00; basically, hurry up.

We got unpacked. Or should I say our bags exploded all over our room. Then we were off to go on the river cruise. The lodge launched four boats with outboard motors, each holding between six and ten people. We got into our boat and off we went. We'd cruise down one side of the river looking for stuff then on our way back we'd go along the other side. In total the cruise took about 2.5 hours.

We saw a lot of different stuff while we were out, especially monkeys.

First we came across some long tailed macaques.

Then Bigfoot

No wait. It was an orangutan.

We also a few silver langurs. The adults have small little mohawk on the top of their head, as you can see the in picture. The babies are orange. After about six months, their colour changes to gray.

We also saw some proboscis monkeys. They are only found on the island of Borneo. Their distinguishing features include their markings (they look they are wearing a jacket, and their arms are a different colour than their body), and their nose (males have large noses, kind of like Gonzo).

Our guide today said when you see the proboscis monkeys swimming they keep their eyes, to see, and their nose, to breath with, out of the water.

We also saw a water monitor lying in the sun warming up.

This is me on the way back from the cruise and a few of the river.

Dinner came after the cruise. This was the point at which one of the lenses popped out of my glasses and now it won't stay in without the help of some tape. It goes without saying that the day we leave civilization is the day I break my glasses. Oh well. After dinner, there was an extra night hike that we could do. We decided not to, because we were talking to a couple from the Netherlands and two ladies from Slovenia, when they came around and asked us if we wanted to go. We asked when it was leaving and they said now. Our response was no thanks, and that we'd do it tomorrow.

By this time we were exhausted and the next river cruise was tomorrow morning at 06:00 so we hit the sack.