Up at 6am and a 3 hour trek through fairly dense jungle. The sounds of the insects, frogs and almost operatic gibbons rang out, and then all of a sudden we saw our first orang utan. Just minding his own business in the canopy. We stayed with him for about 15 minutes before carrying on. It was bit long before we met a semi-wild mother and her 5 month baby. She came down to see us, although the baby was not so sure and shimmied back up the vines! She took food off us all, bananas, nuts and carrots. Such an amazing experience to have a monkey take food, and fairly gently too, from your hand. To see them move around with such grace and dexterity was amazing. We then headed to a platform where some of the re-released orang utans head when they want food and found a giant male who was waiting for pineapple!! We didn't see anyone else all morning and all felt truly privileged to have come so close to those we had seen.
This afternoon four of us went tubing down the river, which was hilarious as we are at the end of the dry season, so there is not much water in the river. Then Neil and I suffered "catastrophe failure" when we hit a rock and our tyre exploded! The four of us found a rock each to sit on and waiting whilst "our man", Harry, went back up the river for a replacement! There are worse places to be stranded for half an hour! We then spent two happy hours floating down through jungle, mountains, villagers and children bathing, watching birds, damselflies and general life.
All in all an excellent day! Beer time!!
Awesome those orangs. You saw your first ones on your 30th birthday! Your trip sounds amazing. Make sure that the orangs don't leave their forest before John and I visit next year! You seem to be making an effort with testing the beer. Is it up to Bhutan and Burma standards? Boys beat Liverpool last night. Had new defence set up. Rio and Vidic need to up their game to get a place.
ReplyDeleteHave fun. xxx