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Published: October 23rd 2010
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Oriental Darter
Kinabatangan River Valley Sandakan. We had such an amazing time in Sarawak, and then we find ourselves in the town of Sandakan, in Sabah. It's expensive, the men ogle, and it ain’t pretty. We book the Kinabatangan River Valley trip (2 nights costing the price of a full week in Sarawak) and get the heck out of Sandakan the very next morning.
We pay extra to stop at the Gomantang Caves on the way to the river, having enjoyed the spelunking in Niah Caves so much. These caves were not nearly so impressive, except on the olfactory system. The stench of guano clears the sinuses immediately. The boardwalk is barely high enough to clear the guano, and another tourist in flip flops is getting an interesting foot treatment. It's slippery too, and you wouldn’t want to slip in here.
There is a strange sound, like thousands of mechanical pencils clicking. We flash our light on the cave wall beside us to discover the clicking sound is cockroaches. In one square foot we can count twenty. There must be tens of thousands of them in here at least. We shine the light on the guano beside the boardwalk and watch the cockroaches carrying
off a live bat that has fallen to the ground and broken in its wing. Possible plot lines for a horror movie are coming to mind. Outside the mouth of the cave are two longhouse barracks for the workers who collect the guano and the swallows nests (for bird nest soup). The nests will fetch $500 US per pound, its quite lucrative, but getting them involves climbing to the ceilings of the case, a dangerous task, even if there is a metre of guano to cushion your fall.
Finally we arrive at our lodge on the Kinabatangan River, not much to speak of, they fed us a meal and then we were off on our first boat trip. The boat trips are at dusk and dawn, when the wildlife is actually moving about, and it is definitely moving about. That first evening we see proboscis monkeys, a wild orangutan, rhinoceros hornbills, oriental darters and of course tons of macaques our least favourite kleptomaniac simian. We arrive back at the lodge, and with nothing much else to do, we read for a while and go to bed early. After all, we have to be awake at 5:30am to catch the
Coackroaches
click, click, click, click... fortunately I had seen Walle which made this more bearable... Gomantang Caves dawn boat ride.
The morning boat takes a different route, down a tributary to an oxbow lake which has this geographer grinning. We go for a “hike”, more like a march through the mud. We were forewarned of the leaches and had tucked ourselves in as best we could. The hike doesn't reveal anything pretty, although some interesting creepy crawlies and strangling fig trees are discovered. As promised, the leaches are abundant. Unlike North American leaches, these guys are barely 2 cm long and skinny like a worm. They bide their time on forest leaves awaiting animal traffic, to which they hop on, squirm their way through fur or layers of cotton and feast on blood. When I get back to the boat, and start a thorough search I discover them on my legs, my belly and my arms, despite being covered head to toe in multiple layers and tightly tucked in. I pick them off one by one, and am proud of myself for reacting quite calmly to each new discovery.
We return to the lodge and then we nap because there is literally nothing else to do while waiting for the evening boat excursion. That afternoon
Red Leaf Monkey
Gomantang Caves we stroll 2 km down the road to the village, to see what there was to see, buy cold drinks and stroll back. Happily, we return to the lodge to find a new group of tourists have arrived. We meet a Dane and two young Canadian men from Toronto. “Happy Canada Day!” the boys from Toronto announce. Well, so it was!
That evening’s trip is the most successful. First we hear them, the sound of small trees being uprooted and chewed up into a pulp. Then we started to see the long trunks peaking through the reeds near the river. Finally we are treated to a rare wild elephant sighting. Our guide urges our boat driver closer and closer to the massive beasts, despite my pleas to keep a healthy distance ( and please note they are the pygmy elephants, the smallest variety), so in the end, I el I might as well document our possible demise and click away hundreds of photos of this pachyderm family clearing a highway through the rainforest. The bull doesn't ever charge our boat, we escape unscathed, and while it was certainly foolish, it the most amazing glimpse of truly wild elephants.
That night, four Canadians and a Dane walk down to a Chinese lodge that sells beer, in order to celebrate our National Birthday. They only have 4, so it is not going to be a big celebration. Still we take a step towards world peace, agreeing with our Danish friend to a truce when it comes to certain small Arctic islands. Declaring the Carlsburg beer we were drinking to be “not half bad” (its Danish if you don’t already know), we agree to share the contested islands and host an annual "Celebration of Beer" festival on the islands.
Our guide takes us on a night hike, but it isn't nearly as successful as the one in Sarawak because of our celebratory mood, and a less than adequate guide. We are less than stealthy, giving the denizens of the night forest ample time to disappear. For instance, our guide does find us a poisonous centipede on the underside of a fern, which he has turned over with a branch. We are all leaning forward to check it out, when suddenly the fern snaps back! We all look at the guide who turns the fern over but now it is centipede
free. We took the next 100 metres at a jog.
We enjoy a fourth boat trip the next morning, though we beg off another lesson on rainforest leaches, and instead just enjoy a peaceful boat ride of watching the sunrise and the morning routines of monkeys, kingfishers, hawks and monitor lizards.
Of course that means we now had to return to Sandakan.
It still wasn't pretty, but there was an agricultural fair going on which proved very interesting. We enjoyed the sounds of auctioneering in Malay and sampled fruits and nuts. Maybe it was the fact that we were flying out that night, and didn't have to pass another night in Sandakan, but it was more interesting upon our return.
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