A wild orang-utan

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We arrived in Sandakan in Malaysian Borneo with 1 main objective and that was to see an orang-utan in the wild. We are both keen wildlife fans having been up close and personal to all of Africa's big game whilst on safari, tigers that strolled past our jeep in India and even a great white shark that circled the cage I was in whilst in Cape Town. However we knew that they were increasingly rare as a lot of their habitat has been lost to the ubiquitous palm oil plantation. This was depressingly evident as our plane approached Sandakan as all we could see from the air were rows and rows of palm oil trees. Anyway, our first stop was in Sandakan itself at the lovely hotel Elopura where, to our amazement, we spotted these huge lizards swimming in the sea and strolling along the promenade. They were about 2 metres in length. We'd never seen anything like them before and asked a local man what they were but he didn't know either (trust me to ask the one local oblivious to his own local wildlife) We subsequently discovered them to be monitor lizards and they must pack quite a bite as we watched a cat gingerly tip-toe wisely around one.

The next morning saw us visiting the Sepilok Orang-utan Rehabilitation Centre for orphaned orangs. As they are so hard to spot in the wild we wanted to at least see these beautiful gentle creatures as well as to support the work that this charity does. We arrived at feeding time when a selection of fruits (deliberately bland and unvaried to encourage them to forage in the forest for more interesting fare) is laid out on several raised platforms interlinked by ropes like a kids' adventure playground. We didn’t have to wait long for them to come swinging out of the rainforest. You see, what's good about this centre is that it's built on the edge of the rainforest and the orangs are not kept in compounds (apart from very young orphans that would die otherwise) but live close by in the rainforest and just use the centre as a backup to their, as yet, undeveloped foraging skills. Watching them swing acrobatically along the ropes was truly heartwarming. They set a very high bar in terms of flexibility for any aspiring yogi, I can tell you. Once they had finished their breakfast they trickled back into the rainforest one by one and so we made our way to the sun bear centre next door. Now these Bornean bears are the smallest bear in the world (about the size of a labrador dog only much chunkier) They did look very cuddly, I must say, although one look at their claws was enough to realise why the centre's walkways are about 5m off the ground. This didn't half make it difficult to get a decent photo as most of the time one could only see their backs and the top of their heads - quite frustrating really. Eventually, with persistence I managed to get a half decent shot - but most were subsequently deleted! As well as the sun bears we also saw black squirrels which are quite common in these parts but which I'd never seen before. We were well pleased with our productive morning of wildlife viewing and it was with increased excitement that we awaited our pickup to Kinabatangan.

Now, we'd been extremely lucky to get a chalet here as our trip was quite last minute and being high season everything was booked. It really looked as if we would need to stay elsewhere and commute in - not ideal for those dawn and dusk 'safaris' when wildlife is most active. But, just as I was on the point of giving up, we found the Sukau Greenview Lodge -and what a wonderful place it was - simple en-suite chalet complex with restaurant overlooking the river. We booked for 2 nights which gave us 3 dawn and 3 dusk river trips. I always allow more time when hoping to see wildlife as invariably you get several excursions where you see nothing. It's a policy that has paid off every single time for me as it did this time also.

Having already seen so much back in Sepilok, the pressure was off and we could just enjoy drifting down the Kinabatangan river which bore an uncanny resemblance to the river footage used in the film Apocalypse Now (fortunately there was no mad Colonel Kurtz to worry about). We very quickly adapted to this slow paced life and had no problems at all centering our days around the dawn and dusk river trips. One extra perk that the lodge arranged was a nightime river trip where the guide used a torch to pick out the wildlife. It was on this trip that we saw a cauldron of bats (great collective noun, eh?) a kingfisher and a tiny bird sleeping on one leg - so cute! The other extra was the jungle walk which was very interesting but, boy, was it humid! On this walk our guide demonstrated which leaves produced a cleansing foam by vigorously rubbing them together with water and also how to communicate long distance by rapping against the fan shaped buttress roots of the tall jungle trees. This results in a very loud and hollow sound that can be heard for miles. My favourite, though, has to be drinking fresh water from a water vine. As our guide explained; carrying water around in the jungle simply isn't an option (you need so much because of the humidity and it's far too heavy!) This is especially so as it is all around you anyway. You just need to know where to look for it.
So, with 3 dusk and 2 dawn river trips completed, we had managed to see proboscis monkeys, storks, a tree snake, another type of monkey whose name I can't remember and a yellow hornbill high up in the trees which was pretty special - however no wild orang-utan.
As I have implied above, we were ok about this as we'd seen them in Sepilok yet it would have been the icing on the cake to see one in the wild. However, we still had the dawn river trip on our day of departure to go and even if we saw nothing we both found it so tranquil and relaxing on the river that we really weren't that bothered. So imagine our delight when, on our final boat trip, we saw another boat disembarking and looking excitedly up into the canopy. Our boat quickly moored up alongside theirs and we scrambled ashore to join them when, lo and behold, there it was - a young orang-utan moving through the foliage about 6-7m away from where we were scrabbling to get our cameras ready. I took what photos I could, though it was moving pretty fast and my hands were shaking with excitement. And then it was down on the forest floor and away. A brief but breathtaking moment that will stay with me forever.

So here's to Borneo and the Kinabatangan river: home to "the king of the swingers; the jungle VIP."

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