Jungle Trek
So we've just arrived back from our 3 day 2 night jungle trek down the Kinabatangan River. Before that we visited the orang-utan rehabilitation centre on the cusp of the jungle. It's a really neat place where they take in orang-utans who are being held as pets by locals or found in plantations and teach them how to fend for themselves in the wild. There are two feeding times daily (10am and 3pm), so we made it to the afternoon one. At first it was quite slow with 3 orang-utans chomping down on some bananas, but after a while, it got really exciting. Two big orang-utans thought it would be fun to climb down their platform and climb up our viewing platform and scare some of the visitors. At one point Sara, another visitor, and I were on a walkway when the two orang-utans climbed down from the tree and walked right past us. This was after watching a movie detailing how they are 4 times stronger than a human adult and can easily snap a man in half.
Fun fact: Orang-utan is a local word that means 'man of the forest'. They are the 3rd closest primate to humans in terms of genetics.
After the rehab centre we headed out to the jungle to see orang-utans and other fun animals in the wild. We took many boat safaris, a couple of jungle treks, and viewed the wildlife from the main camp building. Overall, we saw a bunch of long-tailed macaques (they loved to be pesty at the camp site), proboscis monkeys (big-nosed monkeys), monitor lizards, bearded pigs, and colourful birds (hornbills, king fisher, etc...). The birds are like plastic birds at night, you can go right up to them and take pictures so long as you don't disturb the branch. However, the most exciting animals were the wild orang-utans and crocs. Most of the crocs we saw were baby ones with their heads sticking out of the muddy river, but we saw one large head, then the body of a large croc (Dave says it was between 3-4 m long, but Sara's not so sure about that..."Dave's not a croc expert" were her exact words). The orang-utans are few and far between in the jungle, so it was really neat to see them and hear their kissing noises.
Pics to come...
Fun fact: Orang-utan is a local word that means 'man of the forest'. They are the 3rd closest primate to humans in terms of genetics.
After the rehab centre we headed out to the jungle to see orang-utans and other fun animals in the wild. We took many boat safaris, a couple of jungle treks, and viewed the wildlife from the main camp building. Overall, we saw a bunch of long-tailed macaques (they loved to be pesty at the camp site), proboscis monkeys (big-nosed monkeys), monitor lizards, bearded pigs, and colourful birds (hornbills, king fisher, etc...). The birds are like plastic birds at night, you can go right up to them and take pictures so long as you don't disturb the branch. However, the most exciting animals were the wild orang-utans and crocs. Most of the crocs we saw were baby ones with their heads sticking out of the muddy river, but we saw one large head, then the body of a large croc (Dave says it was between 3-4 m long, but Sara's not so sure about that..."Dave's not a croc expert" were her exact words). The orang-utans are few and far between in the jungle, so it was really neat to see them and hear their kissing noises.
Pics to come...
posted by Sara and Dave at 6/12/2006 03:58:00 a.m.
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