Where orangs rule

Asia » Indonesia » Kalimantan
April 19th 2007

Published: April 19th 2007

Tanjung Puting

My reason for visiting Kumai is Tanjung Puting Nationalpark, a junglearea on the other side of the river. It was declared a gamereserve allready in 1935, and got its nationalparkstatus in 1982. It has suffered from weak protection and a lack of ruleenforcing, but it has avoided destruction. Yet. So far luck has been better than the action. Now it seems that authorities to some extent have started to recognise the areas big biological value. Here is mangrove-an extremely important vegetationtype-did you know that even life on many big coralreefs need mangrove? Their offspring often have a lifestage in the shelteringmangrove, beside-it hinder erosion. Here is swap and wetland. The jungle itself is one of Kalimantans biggest remaining patches of jungles of its kind. The park cover 3040 squarekilometers, but it only reaches 30 meters above sealevel. The other remaining forests are mostly in inaccessible areas where the loggingcompanies still haven’t reached. In Yanjung Puting they openly do their business, and sometimes one can see logs beeing floated down the river. They have also buildt primitive roads where trucks can go in. The timbermafia feel safe-certain authorities in Jakarta have their hands in it. Corruption. Police, military and the forestrydepartment are all involved. Not only here, but all over Indoesia. EIA, the Environment Investigation Agency in cooperation with Telapak Indonesia, an environmental organisation, made a report about the loggingactivity. It was presented to the press, the provincial governor and the forestrydepartment. The minister arrived. His conclusion was “here it was green and beautifull”. Nothing was done. A few months later some members of the organisations went into the area to investigate the current situation. They were kidnapped by the Tanjung Lingga, the timpercompany delcared as the worst of the companies. They were forced to write a letter stating their report as bullshit. But they refused to go to the media to appoligise. Then the timbercompany reported them to the police for tresspassing. The story ended with the police putting the trespassers on a plain to Jakarta.
Before i could enter the park, several things had to be arranged. First of all i needed a permit. I went to the local police to get some directions. The constable on the street was happy to talk to a stranger, and took me inside the microscopic policestation to see the boss. He was nice and helpfull-but the permit he couldn’t do anything with. I had to go to the mainstation in Pangkalanbun 30 kilometers away. I said goodbye to the local authoritiy witch at least was entiteled to flag down a Pangkalanbunbound bemo for me.
In Pangkalanbun there are two policestations on oposit sides of the street. Of course i first choose the wrong one. The normal policestation. Here people waited outside to get their business done. Some of them looked like they were waiting for some harsh treatment at a medeival dentist. I was directed to the other station witch have an officebuilding and a barrack. I got a look inside the guardroom where rows of automatic weapons were lined up. To me it looked like the quarters of an armyunit. And until a few years ago, the police actually was an integrated part of the military forces.
In the officebuilding i was received by a young official of the careerjumpertype. I had to fill out several forms asking abouty exactly the same, only in different order. When the finished form was delivered to a secretary writing the policedocument, one of the highranking officials came into the restroom where i was placed. With routined interrogationvoice he started to practice english. He really needed that practice, i would say. But he tried eagerly and deserve some plusspoints for that. But he managed to give me the uncosey story about the tourist who was eaten by a crock in Tanjung Puting. He pointed towards the graveyard. There he is, he said. Now i had to go to the nationalparkoffice, witch the police don’t exactly know where is-only that it is not close. They stop an ojekdriver-ordering him to take me there. Eventually i got to the nationalparkoffice, just before it closed. By then i had got intimate knowledge about the local countryside. Now the nationalparkoffice demanded everything copied-of course the desired machinery was not to be found there, but at least a copyingshop were nearby. At last i had my red tape completed. Back in Kumai i found Mr Emmeng, owner of a klotok, witch is a primitive houseboat needed for a trip into Tanjung Puting. For 250 grand a day i got the boat with crew and food included. Emmeng was efficient. Five minutes after the deal was made we were at the overbuildt market, buying the food. He wanted me to see the available quality and have an opinion about what was bought. “You see where money go”, he said.

7 am i enter the klotok witch has arrived at the hotelquay. Lot of hands are ready to make sure i don’t fall into the river-thats why i almost do just that. The klotok is about ten meters long. On the upper deck there is a sunroof, equiped with a mosquitonet witch can be rolled down if needed. Here i want to sleep i decide. It is perfect-protection from light rain and insects, and nothing else between me and the jungle. Below deck, there is a big room for luggage and the possibility for seven people to sleep. Also here is a small and primitive galley. In the stern you will find an unroofed room-the toilet and the mandisection. Complete with a bucket to scoop up riverwater. This is what the standard klotok looks like.

We cross the Kumairiver and head up Sungai Sekonyer-the Sekonyerriver, witch meet the Kumairiver a few kilometers downstream. Sekonyer is lined with green on both sides. In ins lower parts one single palmspecies dominate, further up it get more variation. It has its beauty to it, but it is very visible that Sekonyer is a suffering river. The river is infected by a disease common on borneo. I call it the brown plague. It is washed our soil from the logged areas upstream. The water look like coffee with milk. But even worse is the invisible content-mercury released from the goldfield. Despite mercuryfilled water-locals in small boats are fishing there. The tranquility is regulary broken by the speedboats going betwen Kumai and the golddigs. One can hear them long before and after they have passed the klotok. All birds get silent when those monsters pass by. The realities of Sekonyer are depressing.
After coupla hours, the klotok slows down. The captain sitting in his chamber benath me in the bow, heads towards a narrow nameless river floating into Sekonyer. I get on my feet.The teacup is replaced by the camera, and i take position in the bow where a hatch ease the communication with the skipper. I can see how the unpolluted black watrt from the sideriver mixes with Sekonyers brown. Beautifull patterns are created, and black take over more and more. We pass a policepost buildt on stilts-one of the posts looking another way when logs are passing by- and suddenly enter a different world. The channel is 4-6 meters wide. The forrest rise on both sides as a thirty meter high green wall. The river is black and shine like a black mirror of obsidian. The forest mirror itself in it, revealing all details in a second image. In a strange way it feels like it is totally silent, while the forrest actually is filled with sounds from birds and insects witch actually is quite intense in the warm tropical morning. It is like a switch is turned inside me, in a moment i have found the big harmony. Broadlegged and barelegged i stand in the bow, breathing in the warm, humid air filled with aroma from the river and countless plantspecies in the forest. Now and then i see beautifull birds. A few times the proboscismonkeys reveal themselves in the treetops. I feel rich like a king. And i am sort of a king to. The skipper beneath my feet is ready to follow my orders-as long as the boat isn’t put at risk. And in the rearpart the cook already have started preparing a lunch witch soon will prove simple but worthy a king. I stand in the bow almost motionless until we reach the beautifull little riverpool at Camp Leakey-a researchstation deep in the jungle.

In the galley it hisses in kerosenestoves. It knocks in amortar. A knife cut veggies on a plate. A promising smell shroud the klotok. I lie on my back under the sunroof, studying the colourfull dragonflies swarming in the rivergrass. After the lunch i will meet the oranguatan-orang hutan, mean people of the forest.
Plates with food start to come up trough the deckhatc. They are followed by the redboiling face of the cook-with two stoves and the tropical sun to heat his galley, where he have to sit on his knees-it get hot. On the mat-ready for the three of us to enjoy are rice, a selection of five small dishes based on spiced vegetables, egg, cheese and a little meat. There is tropical fruit, a small omelet, a plate with riverfish and finally-the chili witch i am addicted to. It is made up of fresh chili, garlic, tomatoe and salt. The proportions are: “just enough of this, and a suitable amount of that”.

With the belly satisfied, i am ready for adventure. The cook earlier worked in the nationalpark, so now he doubble as ships guide. Between the river and the station it is wetland, so a walkingbridge has been constructed. Without it, access would have been impossible in the rainy season. At the station there is a welcomesign, and there-in perfect photomodelposing one of the most highranking orangutans is standing. It is Uranus. At the time of visit-age 29. A strong collection of muscles with the big cheeks needed to get success with the ladies. Young males without them are usually ignored. Sometimes those actually perform rape when they are unable charm their way to heaven. When i entered the cleared area, he relaxed changed position a little and studied me with a drilling glimpse. We catched eachothers eyes, and i was stunned over how intelligent, awake and humanlike his brown eyes is. Uranus made some indifferent movements-he realised that the newcommer didn’t threat his leading position. I studied his arms, knowing that they harbour a tremendous strenght. He would without hesitation use that strenght if he felt i would make an uprise. Uranus is ranked as number two around here, number one i never saw. He didn’t come in to the station during my days in the area. Uranus hasn’t reached his positon by beeing the nicest boy in the class, thats for sure. Beeing carefull around him is smart. You can make eyecontact with him. Do it-it is an experience in itself. But for gods sake-don’t make a eyeduel out of it. He will take it as a challenge, he will act, and you will be toast!
Just after Uranus, i met a female with a 6 month old child on her arm. This lady has learned a set of handsignals witch she actually use to communicate with rangers. I think it is cetain that orangs have a linguistic sence. The question in my mind is-how mutch can they actually learn? Both she and Uranus has been reahabilitated, but like many other rehabilitated orangs do, they like to visit the station now and then. Orangs one encounter at Camp Leakey these days, mostly were released in the 80’es.

I was registered in the office, and invited to join the feeding shortly before dusk. The waiting were eventfull. Regulary orangs passed by. Some confident, other wre sceptical and kept their distance. But all of them studioed me with their intelligent eyes. When you see them like this, putting them under the general label “animals”, evenranked with crabs and guineapigs is impossible. The humanprimates are in a class of its own, and they are all very close related to us. We should wake up before they all are gone. The orangs will dissappear if todays developement continue. Shimps and gorillas in Africa arent secure either. The mighty mountaingorilla in Central Africa probably are doomed already. Few remain, and they live in a corner of Africa haunted by war. Still tourism go on and the touristdollars is the reason why the gorillas havent gone already.

The treetops start to vibrate. A troop of gibbons in sackingmode is comming in. Funnier entertainers one have to go far to find. They are exellent acrobats performing impressive acrobatshows in the treetops. On the ground, however, they doesen’t impress mutch. They can’t walk properly, instead they jump sideways while their long arms throwing from side to side. There are several species of gibbons. This one has gray fur and a funny triangular black face framed by a whit stripe of beard going all the way to the temple. A more discret line cross their forehead. They stand less than two feet high, their arms reaches to the ground.
The youth were busy fighting eachother. Their ultimate goal seemed to be to make the oponent fell to the ground in the most humiliating and noisy way possible. Beeing the smallest member of a group isn’t allways that easy. The adult were closing in on the obvious target, the foodstoragebuilding behind the office. For a while they gathered courage climbing up and down the buildings before going for an attempt on the door. One by one they tried to open it. No success. The dammed door was closed and it remained closed. The gibbons started to become stressed. Loudly they ran in the canopies for a while to get out some frustrations before making a new attempt. Same resault as before. Then a female orang came in on the square. She looked at the gibbons witch retreated under noisy quarrel knowing their place in the hierarchy. The oranglady actually looked like she was amused over the unintelligent gibbons. With a contemptuous look in her face she grabbed a stick from the ground, walked to the door and lifted the inside lockingbolt. And voila’, the dor is open. Road to heaven cleared. Now the rangers had to act before she created havoc, they drove her away after having let her take her well deserved prize-some fruit. The gibbons were granted some bananas as their consolationprixe.

A typical gibbonday start with a poop at daybreak. After that, the familymother lead the group to a fruittree. Fruit, preferably ripe ones, is-their mainstaple. Insects and leafs are supplemetary food only. Gibbons are small, with a short digestive system so they can’t utilize hardly digestible fooditems properly.They need their food tender. After breakfast it is time for a rest, or sometimes a songperformance. The rest of the day is divided between resting, eating and movement, but in the middle of the day when the heat is at its strongest, they allways have a siesta grooming the fur. Well before sunset they go to rest, on a rainy day up to two hours before. The gibbons are monogamous. A family consist of the parents and immature youngsters. They get mature around six years old. The parents stick together for many years and are usually not unfaithfull. Gibbons are very territorial. It take a lot to drive them away from their land. Therefore they are extra voulnerable to forestdestruction.

While waiting for the orangfeding, i took a little walk in the jungle on my own. It is semidark and humid in there. The air is smellladen, and the sounds are ovewhelming. The concert is best enjoyed with eyes closed. At a distance a woodpecker pecks. An insect to the right sounds a little like a schooter. Another insect remind me about the sound of a jetengine trough a window. And of course the monotonous play of several grasshopperspecies is everywhere. I can hear the jungelresidents, but mostly i can’t see them But some walking sticks i manage to track down. Walking sticks are a group of insects perfectly camouflaged as sticks. Some species look like dried sticks, others are sticks with moss or lichen growing on them. Some sticks have a smooth surface, others are rugged. But they are all very difficult to spot. They doesen’t move, and they blend pefectly into their surroundings. Those i found, revealed themselves by moving just at the right moment. One were flying, the undeside of its wings actually were sharply red, but the underside is hidden when sitting. It was grey and smoothsurfaced, the wings folded on its back perfectly imitated- a loosening piece of bark.

Two rangers with fruitfilled buckets start walking towards a feedingplatform twenty minutes into the jungle. Frequently they shout to notify the dinnerguests about the upcomming event. The guests are orangs released relatively recently, the feeding is a way of monitoring their condition and whereabouts and a little extrahelp during their first difficult period on their own. But smart as they are, also more experienced orangs take advantage of the opportunity to get a free meal. Orangs spend more than half of their time foraging, so the rangers are popular. The orangmenu is varied, containing more than 400 different items. Fruits, leaves, insects, mushroms, bark,flowers. They drink sap from the treetrunks. Sometimes they even raid a beenest to get honey. Occasionally they also eat meat from smaller annimals. One of the big issues in oranguatanconservation is their menu- conntaining items also used by humans. They sack fruitplantations for fruit, and also eat the bark causing the fruittrees to die. This has resaulted in a demand from plantageowners to have the orang removed from certain areas. On top of that, People cut down fruittrees in the jungle, resaulting in no food for the orang, then or later. Sometimes the orangs themselves becomes food. Some places they have been hunted, resaulting in local extinction. Possibly some of this hunt actually is a replacement for the now forbidden headhunting.

I am busy watcing the forest and soon fall behind the rangers. Then a big male, Win they call him, jumped down on the path in front of me elegantly as a falling bag filled with of flour. He is famous for beeing a grumphy one, this day was no exeption. He certainly wasn’t pleased. I didn’t like the situation, this could be unpleasant. The rangers came running with a couple of thick branches. Win retreated into the canopy again, but we could hear him folowing us up there all the way to the feedingplatform. Probably we were guilty of trespassing.

The feedingstation is a wooden platform coupla meters above the ground. Here the fruitbuckets were placed and we retreated a little. Soon orangs of both sexes and of all ages had arrived. This is the only way to see many orangs at a time, at lest orangs acting in their own free will, they are mostly the loners of the rainforest. The reason for their social pattern is probably scattered foodsources and few enemies. They live in establish, often overlaping territories.The females often establish themselves close to where they were born, while males travel furher away. Teenaggegirls sometimes travel in couples if they are of same age, females with childen occationally live in loosely bounded groups. But the males are allways solitary. They don’t like eachother at all. If two males meet in the forrest, they first try to avoid eachother, the alternative is an open fight.The females they visit for one reason only-sex. Childcare is a female business only.
Here on the feedingplatform it was peacefull conditions. Only when a youngster tried to outmanouver an older one and had to be reminded about its number in the line, there were trouble.
For half an hour i had the privillege to study a dozen orangs before they started to retreat into the canopies. There they will make themselves a comfortable nest to sleep in. A good place to observe their nestingpractice is the trees around the foodstorage. Every night orangs sleep there. They make a new nest every evening, and the nests tell something about its builders. Some are more elaborate than others. In addition to the mattress, they sometimes make an umbrella. Orangs hate rain so what can be more natural to do?

For me it was time to return to the klotok where the cook was ready for dinnerpreparations. Before foodtime we moved downstream, found a little pocket in the riverbank and moored in some small palmtrees. Our closest neighbour there was a big grey heron standing motionless at the wateredge, ready to explode into action as soon a unlucky fish, frog or something else came into certain strikingdistance.

Dusk in the jungle. I sit in the bow, with only the bare minimum of clothes on. It is indian summer, and the deck is pleasantly heated by the sunheat stored in it during the day. Some light from a kerosenlamp leaks from the galley from where homely smells and sounds drifts. Judging from the busy sounds, the cook is a hard working man. My stomack is filled with anticipation based on the lunchexperience. In the river, the activity is frenetic. It splashes like when somebody beat the water with their hand. Small stones are dropped, flat stones thrown on the watersurface, light summerrain and a heavy monsunshower. Maybe some hail as well. The sounds in the river are fish, an unbelieveable amount of fish of various sizes. Some places it looks like one can walk on the river. The watersurface is bubbling and boiling. They have a veritable banquet on insects elegantly dancing in a syncroniced ballet over the river. Larger fish have their happy hour chasing the insecteaters. Where the water is calm, formations of metallicshining dragonflies patrol. They look like squadrons of attackhelicopters. The water around the klotok is filled with shining leaf of silver-it is fishfry. Now and then a dark shadow attack the silver and disappear into the darkness in a moment-the raiding hunters.

Darkness move in. From time to time a secretive shout from a unseen annimal penetrate the dark wall. The birds are replaced by frogs. Some have a whisling sound, others a croacking. Some of them are so intense that they almost drill a hole in your head. Others you have to focus on in order to hear at all. From a section of the riverbank, a whole orchestra produce someting i to begin with thought was birdsong. This is one of the oldest songs on the planet, it allrady topped the hitlists several hundred milion years ago. The frogsong is mixed with the grasshoppers singing, witch also has been around for at least 200 millon years. Mindboggling that this music was heard by the long gone dinosaurs, but the musicians still perform. Certain things seems to be an ethernal phenomena. But the frogs are in trouble. Many of those ancient vocalists have gone-their song will never ever be heard again. Pollution and destruction of habitat are the mainreasons. Frogs are very sensitive to pollution, therefore researchers use them as indicators. Simplified one might say that if the environment thrive, the frogs thrive.

Above me i have the nicest roof one can get, and i got it almost for free. My roof is covered in diamonds-the pefect starheaven. A starheaven often seen by our forfathers, but rarely by us. Most of the time we live in a lightpolluted world. Only a little slice of the moon is visible far up there-it seem to be extremely far up tonight. The sky feels so high, higher than i ever have seen it.It give a feeling of having unlimited space. It is not a trace of cluds on my starheaven, so there is just enough light for the forest to produce mystical silhouets on the riverbanks.

Morning in the jungle. The first thing i hear is a bandsaw cutting a plank. Wrong-it is an insect hidden in the vegetation on the riverbank. Daylight arrive, but sun is still below the horizon. Over the forestcanopy and the grass of the wetland the morningmist drift slowly, adding magic to the landscape. It create false movements making me believe there is “something” there, but it is false alarm every time. I am waiting for one of the daily shows in Tanjung Puting-the gibbonsong. The different gibbonspecies all have their distinctive song. They mark their territory with songnumbers lasting as mutch as twenty minutes. Often one family start the show, while the neighbours listen for a few minutes before they too start singing. Males and females have differnt sounds. Young males sound like females until they reach maturity and gets kicked out. I get whaqt i want, after some waiting four or five groups are singing deep into the forest, their penetrating, complaining song drift over the river for at least half an hour.

I took a hike trough the forest with a ranger. I didn’t see any annimals-they allready had hidden from the rising heat, or were too well camouflaged. But i got to study the forest itself a little better. If you take a closer look, you will see that the jungle is an eaborate sculpturepark filled with abstract sculptures. One plant grow around the trunk of a tree, creating almost the perfect threads of a skrew. A liana has created a hanging corkscrew in eyeheight. Several lianas has put their effort together creating the pigtails of a brunet. Grown together branches and trunks make all sorts of shapes and figures, you will for sure find fantasyannimals or mythical creatures among them if you have the fantasy. Big branches form leafdecorated portals over the path. Other brances, themselves big as trunks, form bridges in the sky.Some are light ironbridges, others are heavy stonebridges. The leaf of the jungle also is worth a glimpse.They vary in size from a fingernail to leafs of newspapersize. Those make a solid bump when they fall to the ground. Leaf come in all imaginable shapes. Use your imagination here too. You will find every knifebladedesigne used by man, the leafdistinction of a german general, the footprints of a seagull. A pokerplayer will find the spade. An astronomer will find most of the lunarphases as well as stars represented

The jungle hide a trasuregrove of interresting plants. Along the trail i forexample saw the pitcherplant-or rather one of many pitcherplantspecies. What they have in common is vaselike cups with glands secreting substances attracting insects. The insect then fall down the slippery walls of the vase into a pool of digestionenzymes. Also in this liquid is substances breaking the surfacetension of the liquid making the insect sink and drown. Above the opening is a cover, keeping rainwater out of the cup. Also the pitcherplant produce a supstance that preserve their catch and keeps it from decaying.
Despite the pitcherplants sofistication, there are creatures taking advantage of it. The larvae of several mosquitospecies stay there-how they avoid getting digested i an unsolved mystery. The larvae steal nutrients from the liquid and is a parasite. Anothe creature is even worse, not even letting anything enter the cup at all. A spider has got the bright idea to put its net just above the opening of the cup. That way, the pitcherplants bait make the spiders rather small net into an efficient trap. Nature is amazing!

Early morning and the last hours before sunset are the best periods for wildlifewatching. Around 3pm we slowly go down the river to observe whatever the jungle choose to reveal. Only a few moments after leaving the wounderfull pool at Camp Leakey i se a huge crock in the riversidegrass. I remember thinking that this is the touristeater in person. It happened in the pool we just left. Earlier it was a popular bathingspot, not so anymore. My cook actually saw the incident. Lot of people ws in the water when that tourist suddenly was dragged below the surface. Coupla days later they found part of his body down the river. The rest was eaten. Crocks are teritorial and often keep themselves in a certain area as long as they have enough to eat there. The maneater must have been around this size,so-whats the odds?
Downstream we find a more manageable crock, half a meter long,sitting motionless beween branches and logs submerged in the river. We get it close by and i get a good look at it before it suddenly dive. Those small creatures are sought ater prey by many predators, including bigger crocks. It has a long way to go before it gets the ruler of the river.
There are lots of birds to be seen.Herons, brown storklike birds with a red beak, and metalicshining kingfishers sitting on their branches over the water looking for fish. But what i really want to see is the proboscismonkeys. Soon i got a good look at them. They were sceptical to start with, but soon they went on with their business-leafeating and furgrooming. Their trademark is the male nose, a hanging loaflike thing, the bigger it is, the better luck wigh the ladies for its owner. The natives nicnamed it Orang Bellanda, or the dutch. Probably because its face is similar to that of a sunburned dutch colonist. The proboscismonkey has been a symbol of Borneo, they live nowhere else. A related species can be found on some smaller islands off Sumatra. The proboscis is a mediumsized monkey, the female become up to 10 kilos, the male 25. For the male, the extra weight mean more difficulties travelling in the canopy. For them, falling to the ground where others have passed safely is part of a days work. Usually they are just fine, proboscismonkeys are sturdy creatures. They arent easily stopped, if needed they cross the river by swimming.but they too know about the crockrisk so they prefer to jumpcross. Afternoon is eatingtime in the proboscisworld. One of their most important fooditems is mangrove, but they eat some 90 other items too.They eat tough food, in order to be able digest it they have an enlarged stomach containing bacteria breaking down cellulose and plantpoisons. In addition their microbes produce vitamins and aminoacids the monkeys othervise would be short of. Their potent digestion has enabled them to use resources few other in the rainforest can handle, so from nature their existence is secured. Put agai-man is the problem. Hunting is one reason. Another is the logging creating isolated pockets of forest, thus creating isolated population. Inbreed is the big issue, already now it has started tobe visible in several populations. I saw the proboscis-will my grandchildren have the pleasure?

We stopped for the night in a riverbend. We didn’t have it to ourselves. On the oposit riverbank a group of twenty longtailed makaks were travelling upstream. They decided to stay in the riverbend for the night. They were noisy, and never semed to calm down. The captain lost his patience and ordered them to shut up. Witch they actually did. From now on they kept their voices on a more homecosey level.

After dinner i really wanted to take a dip in the river. Hoping that no hungry eyes were watching. Just to doublecheck the securitysituation, i scanned the river with a torch. Instantly i saw two glowing eyes in the dark less than twenty meters away. A crock observing the boat. No bathing tonight! The deck is too high for it to be of any danger there, but in the water it only need coupla seconds to catch me. I saw several crocks at the same time later in the evening. They had encircled the klotok. Frightening in an exiting way. Those crocks were not on sightseeing-they were on the hunt. Urther upstream, an old crock roared, and i heard splashing from something big in the river. During the night i often heard the cosey croaking from small crocks hidden in the nearby rivergrass. Obviously this is densely populated crockterritory. It is mindbogling how old they are-a threedigit number of millon years old. The way the crocks wait for mammals tonight, they waited fro dinosaurs in a remote past. They even stocked the first forfathers of the dinos. Here they still are, almost unchanged. My opinion is that survivors like that have the right to get big repect from us.We call ourselves the crown of the creations, despite we havent been around for more than 200 000 years. Actually less as an unchanged species.Our earliest forfathers evolved in a time when these annimals already was old as the mountains themselves. Actually-they were older than many mountains. I would say to the mankind-come back in 200 million years looking like todays man. Then we can discuss who is the crown!

Last morning in paradise. The makaks had a noisy start a while ago, and is now gone. Instead i enjoy todays gibbonconcert. After breakfast we returned to Leakey for a last look at the orangutans. I didn’thave to go far, three of them were at the quay. One of them a young and indifferent male, the other two a mother and her wounderfull offspring. I focused on the mother. It is toutching to see how caring mothers they actually are. Few children get as good care as orangkids. Mother and offspring stay together for many years. During that time the mother teatch her offspring all the bushtuckerknowledge that she posess, and thats not little.Orangutans survive more on knowledge than on instinct. Orang life in the jungle require learned knowledge, the reason why rehabilitation take a tremendous amount of time.

For a long time i sat on the plankbridge looking at orang familylife. After a while it was like the mother got tired of beeing the studyobject. With a deep sigh she picked up her offspring from the riverside and sat down just beside me. I could feel her fur against my legs, and her bodyheat penetrated my shirt. Now it was me beeing examined. She checked every pocket, dragged the shoelaces and started biting on the waterbottle in my belt. Carefully i started to save that bottle before it was broken. The cork was leaking afterwars, but i regarded that not as a cork destroyed but as a trophy gained.
His Majesty Uranus also wanted to enjoy beachlife this morning. He sat down at the wateredge splashing wih his legs. Me he didn’t regard worthy a single eyeglimpse. After a while he started flushing his mouth and scoop water over his head in a disturbingly humanlie way. A ranger who wanted to take a bodywash, got his towel confiscated. Uranus wettened in the river and used it as a chilling cover on his head.

We started on the trip back to Kumai. A snake crossed the river as we left Leakey. Thekingfishers were flying back and forth. We left the blck river and was once again in the Sekonyerriver. When the engine speeded up, it waslikewakening to the daily routine from a pleasant dream.

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