Borneo - home to the Orangutans

We arrived back from the Orangutan trip after dark last night. What a fantastic experience it was. We teamed up with the couple from the boat that sailed from Bali with us and hired a klotok, a flat bottomed double decked boat along with the crew - the captain, a cook, and a guide. The guide, Andie, spoke pretty good English and is a Dayak. Dayaks are the indigenous people of Borneo and are farmers who move their villags about every few years to find new fertile farming areas. These people have offered strong resistance to the logging that has been changing the face of the country. Andie took us through the jungle, in bare feet. When asked how far his village is from here, he said "quite a long  way - 4 hours by speed boat,then 3 hours by motorbike and 10 hrs. by foot”. His family live in a community of about 15 families, about 60 people living from what they cultivate - use no money.

He imitated the sounds of the Orangutans to attract them down from the trees and the sound of a mother crocodile to get the baby croc. lying in the reeds to swim towards us! We traveled like the colonialists of old, sitting atop the deck on chairs at a table for meals cooked directly by the cook below, sleeping at night on mattresses on the deck beneath flowery mosquito nets and having every need seen to. The conditions were simple but everything was kept very clean. We never had a meal without about 6 different dishes - really delicious. Fish  with mild green curries, large crabs and shrimps with different sauces, Stir-fried vegetables with almonds, tofu dishes, chicken curries, soybean or fish deep fried patties, banana fritters, and a huge variety of tropical fruits just to mention some of the dishes. We saw wild Orangutans along the river bank who were, very interested at taking a look at us, as well as proboscis monkeys who jumped into the river and swam across behind the boat - apparently because the boat frightens away the crocodiles. Later at feeding places in the two research centers we visited we saw many Orangutans, mothers with babies on their backs - young ones of all ages and the huge alpha male of the area. It was amazing how human-like they behaved. We had some nice walks through the rain forest - most of it secondary growth - Andie said you have to go much further into the forest to get to primary forest.

The river we went down into the jungle was very brown and muddy – the result of the alluvial gold mining further up stream, but once into the smaller tributaries the water was clear but black from the natural tanins in the water from the rainforest.

I'm writing this from an internet cafe in Kumai. It's little more than a tin shake but the equiptment works - sorry I can't download my photos though - next time I'll download to memory stick first.

Happy birthday to all the October(first half ) birthday people, Colleen, Ralf (alles Gute), Josephine (unsere Einheits Maedchen), Peter H and Peter C. Have I forgotten anyone? hope not