As I write this I’m sitting on our jungle riverboat (klotok) wondering how to begin to write this blog. Once again DawnO booked us one hell of an adventure. For the last 4 days and 3 nights of our Indonesian holiday we have lived on our klotok with a crew of 4. We have a guide, the riverboat captain, a cook and a mechanic. We have been boating along Borneo’s Sekonyer River which winds its way through a national park that is home to some pretty amazing creatures. The crown jewel of this jungle is the orangutans. We’ve pretty much filled our memory card with some unbelievable pictures so I guess the only way to write this thing is to just get to it.
Each day we have had the absolute treat of watching orangutan feeding time. In the national park there are three camps that house park rangers and conservationists that care for “semi-wild” orangutans. Part of this care is providing one meal a day of bananas to the inhabitants while the rest of the time the animals forage for themselves. Every day at the same time, the orangutans descend on the feeding platform and feast on their favourite fruit provided by the park rangers.
There is a hierarchy that the orangutans follow which starts with the alpha male, who has fought his way to the top. He doesn’t always show up for feeding time, but when he does, he gets the privilege of dining first. The females will sometimes join, but the other males hang back until they feel it’s safe to approach (always when the alpha male has left). During our first day’s feeding, the alpha male, Roger, made quite an entrance. Typically the orangutans will swing in from the tree tops and make their way down along the outskirts of the feeding platform keeping somewhat clear of the tourists who have a designated area where they can sit and take pictures. Roger decided to make his entrance from behind the crowd of people. When we all turned to look we found him in a tree, his feet on the main trunk, and each hand holding a branch where the tree had split into a “Y” shape. At this point he effortlessly ripped the tree in two as if he was Hulk Hogan and the tree was his shirt. When he came down to the ground he first walked towards DawnO, who quickly moved out of his path. He then walked towards me and made eye contact, at which point I bowed my head and tried to look as respectful as I could. He brushed past me and made his way to the feeding platform. All eyes were on King Roger.
Every time we’ve encountered orangutans there has always been a mother with either 1 or 2 of their young near by. The younger ones always stuck pretty close to their mothers who didn’t seem to mind us taking photos.
Orangutans were not the only animals we got close to. Each day we have been very fortunate to pull up to the river edge for an up-close encounter with proboscis monkeys, macaques, and stork-billed kingfishers. We even got to see a saltwater crocodile, though we didn’t get a picture. We also saw the Malaysian false glacial which is an endangered crocodile looking creature with a very skinny snout.
On the first evening we had a “night-time nature trek” which consisted of a ranger taking the lead, DawnO and I next, and our guide, Arya, bringing up the rear. Our ranger started the hike into the tropical rainforest with a flashlight in his hand and flip flops on his feet and every 30 steps or so he’d shine his light on some creature of the night. One of the more peculiar sights were the various sleeping birds who appeared to sleep with their eyes open. We saw fireflies, which was a first for DawnO, and one of the creepiest things we saw was a tarantula which attacked a long blade of grass the ranger used to trick him out of his nest in the ground.
About halfway through the night trek we heard one of the scariest sounds you’ll hear in the jungle, day or night. That sound was our guide saying one word… “Run.” All of a sudden the ranger in front of us started moving fast with DawnO and I on his tail. I could hear our guide stomping his feet loudly but he didn’t seem to be running towards us. We got about 20 feet away and our ranger stopped. Our guide finally jogged up to where we were and said, “Fire ants. One bite is like a bee sting.” I had never been happier that I was wearing shoes.
Some of you may already be familiar with my disdain for mischievous monkeys. It’s not all monkeys, just the little a-holes that like to cause mischief by stealing things and creating havoc wherever they go. Macaques are this breed of monkey. Today we were docked next to this tree that had about 6 or 7 macaques in it. They kept getting closer and closer to our boat, looking like they were flirting with boarding. They acted like they were interested in eating the leaves that were in that particular tree. I’m no fool, so I made sure everything that we had that was small and lightweight was securely stowed where a monkey couldn’t get at it. After about an hour of living in harmony, we heard this loud bang on the roof of our boat. It sounded like someone stomped really loudly from above us. I didn’t think a crew member had gone up there so I did the brave thing and told DawnO to take a peek. She saw a macaque who immediately took off running when they made eye contact. He jumped into the palm leaves growing on the other side of the boat, away from his accomplices. He was now trapped on the other side with no easy escape route. He eventually made his way to the rope that was used to tie our boat to the shore. He shimmied across it to the bow of our boat. That’s when DawnO decided to give him a taste of his own medicine. She lunged at him and he panicked! He took a flying leap towards his monkey friends and came up short. I don’t know if you’ve ever seen a wet monkey, but it was one of the best things I’ve seen on this entire trip. I was so proud of my wife today.
Tomorrow we start our long plane ride home. Our next blog will be coming at you in May!