Braving Borneo

My transfer was supposed to pick me up in front of the S.O.R.C between 12:30 and 12:40.  After watching a few minivans come and go (without me), I started to get nervous.  At 12:45 I tried to call the contact number I had – no answer.  I waited in the baking sun, and sweated, and waited a bit more.  Finally around the corner came a bus!  And they had my name on their list!  What a relief.

It took us about 2 hours to get to the part of the Kinabatangan River where the Nature Lodge is located.  Most of that time we drove my palm plantations, where they harvest the fruit and make palm oil (for cooking, cosmetics, etc).  These palm plantations, while doing a lot to help the Malaysian economy, are the primary reason Orang-utans are endangered.  Massive deforestation has happened to make way for the palm trees, leaving many small pockets of rainforest that are not big enough to support Orang-utans.  And as Orang-utans’ primary mode of transportation is swinging – and they cover large distances to find enough food – the plantations as well as rivers and such provide unhelpful borders.

Once into the rainforest, we unloaded the bus, loaded a boat, and motored over to the lodge.  Which is beautiful.  Trying to keep costs down, I booked a far-from-luxury but very integrated into nature lodge, and it was a good choice.  A few drawbacks (will document in my reviews section once I get to it), but overall had a good experience.  Our jungle guide, Mohammed, was great!  He really made an effort to tell us about the different wildlife we were seeing – their living, eating, reproducing habits and how they interact with each other.

We checked in and within 20 minutes were back out on the river for our afternoon river safari.

Having taken millions of photos (okay – 458 to be accurate), I’ll do my best to sort out just a few to provide an overview. Here is at least a partial sighting list:

Orang-utan (albeit way off in the distance)

green viper

macaque monkeys (loads of them!)

silver leaf monkeys (very rare and no photo – he took off quickly when he heard us approach)

hornbills

egrets

and the crowning sight of the evening – a tree filled with proboscis monkeys, including the dominant male.

A word about proboscis – they are only in Borneo.  The male has a very strange and big nose.  They are very shy monkeys, so sightings are quite exciting (I’m wondering if the nose thing contributes to being shy?  Certainly was a factor in my childhood shyness).  There are two kinds of groups in which proboscis live: a harem (dominant male with lots of wives)  or in a bachelor group (all the guys that don’t end up with a harem).  Listening to our tree full of proboscis screeching around, Mohammed’s words of wisdom: “that’s what happens with lots of wives…lots of family discussions.”

Back at the lodge, we had a 30 minute break to chill out and watch the bats fly around, then dinner and gearing up for our night jungle walk.  So here’s the thing and maybe you can help me understand it.  I wasn’t really worried about snakes (which are mostly poisonous around here), but I took tremendous pains to do whatever possible to ensure no leeches could get me (which are harmless creatures).  How does that make sense?  We all had to wear rubber boots because there’s been a lot of rain and mud – I was late picking mine up and ended up with some 3 sizes too big.  Oh well.  Left them on the porch and went in to pull on another pair of socks.  When I came out again, my boots were gone , apparently swapped out by some german students living in the dorm next to us.  And a pair of boots 5 sizes too big left in their place. Hmmmm.

Off into the dark we marched, flashlights on, boots sloshing, jungle sounds all around.  It was pretty cool.  At first. And then we reached the first mudhole.  Squish, squash, boot stuck, no – got it, squish, made it.  Sigh of relief and march on, looking for a ghost monkey and finding a flying lemur.  Next mudhole: squish, squash, stuck boot, pull, squash, squish, stuck…falling off!… no, falling over.  Hard to keep your balance in a jungle mudhole when trying to prevent your boot from falling off AND worrying about leeches

at the same time.  And unfortunately, that was it.  I had trouble enjoying the rest of the walk and was very happy when we got back and I could dive into the (kind of scary looking) shower.  After getting cleaned up, went to bed, said good night to my female roommates and roommate #5  (a friendly gecko perched on the wall next to me) and slept away.

Day 2 was supposed to start with a 6:00 river safari.  Unfortunately, it started with someone’s alarm going off at 5:00.  Followed by her rummaging around for 20 minutes finding her stuff before heading to the bathroom.  WHAT?  Who gets up an hour early to go on a river safari?  Are you kidding me?  The rest of us had set alarms for 5:45 – I mean, how long can it take to pull on clothes and brush teeth?  It’s the jungle for crying out loud. I doubt the monkeys care how you look.

Safari was again great, followed by a big breakfast and packing up.  I am a bit sorry to leave this jungle – the beautiful trees and landscape, the mysteriousness of it, the wildlife and the pure nature here – this is how I’ve always imagined Borneo.  Next time (if I get back here), it will include a longer stay in the rainforest!

Tags: borneo river safari, experiences, kinabatangan nature lodge, kinabatangan river

This entry was posted on Thursday, November 15th, 2012 at 1:46 pm and is filed under experiences. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.