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Published: March 4th 2009
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Tuesday 17th February 09:
Today we headed over to the hostel to wait for the transfer to Sukau for the jungle river cruise and trek. The camp we were supposed to be staying in (in Bilit) had flooded so we were transferred to Sukau instead. We had a quick spot of lunch at a cafe round the corner and tried the Nasi Goreng Kinabalu seeing as it was named after the mountain we'd been to see - fried rice with chicken - nice. It took us 2 hours from Sandakan to Sukau and the bus driver explained the process of making palm oil to us as we passed through all the palm oil plantations. Our first river cruise was at 4pm and we got into a little wooden boat and motored quietly down the river. We saw a tree full of white Egrets then Proboscis monkeys (also called Dutch monkeys due to both their big noses and their guttural calls like the Dutch language!). The proboscis monkey is only found in Borneo. We also saw 2 types of Hornbill - enormous birds and Longtail Macaques and one solitary Orangutan. He was much darker in colour than the Orangutans in the zoo
and he even raised up his arm to give us a wave! As we headed back along the river towards home, we saw an enormous herd of pygmy elephants. There must have been at least 20, munching away at the long grass. They had two tiny baby elephants with them. As I was stood on the front of the boat taking photos, they were eating their way closer and closer to us and they started making loud calls so the guide said we should all step a little further away from the front of the boat as they would defend the babies if they felt threatened! Imagine the shame of being smacked into the water by an elephant! There were even a couple wading in the river itself and we sailed the boat right up next to them. Went back to the camp for dinner then we had a night trek. We went, armed with torches and insect repellent, into the jungle just behind the bungalows. It was totally pitch black without the torches and we went looking for nocturnal animals such as wild boar, deer, snakes and frogs. The most numerous creature we saw was definitely the mosquito! We
saw a frog, a fan tailed bird, 2 other birds that I can't remember the name of and a few butterflies and a crab, a firefly and a grasshopper. That was about it. Was fun wading about in the jungle in the dark though, and it was really muddy so we were up to our ankles in mud in some places. We saw more wildlife in the porch of our bungalow - a dragonfly, a couple of giant Hunstman spiders, a bat that flew through every 15 seconds, a giant moth and a preying mantis. And our beds were frequented by red ants.
Wednesday 18th February 09:
Got up at 5.30am for our early morning river cruise. A dense fog had set in overnight so there wasn't much to see first thing in the morning. The guides said we needed to wait for the fog to lift a little bit (and the other 3 people on the cruise hadn't actually got out of bed yet anyway!). We waited until it was light then got into the boat. We sailed out into the middle of the river and the fog was so dense we couldn't actually see the trees either
side of us. Once we were up close to the trees we could see a few snoozing monkeys. We went into a little side river and saw a little green chameleon that was so well camouflaged in the leaves that most people couldn't even see it when they were right up close to it so we were very impressed our guide spotted it from further away at speed! We saw a few Hornbills then turned around to get back onto the main river. We took a side river again to the Oxbow lake. Due to the river receding, there was a lot of plant life sprouting on top of the river which was very dense in the middle so we couldn't pass through the middle of the lake and had to turn around to rejoin the main river again. The fog didn't really lift at all in the time we were out on the river but it was exciting and eerie chugging along in the mist. Came back to the bungalow for breakfast. Our transport back to Sandakan didn't arrive till 2pm so we snoozed to catch up on sleep after getting up so early. Then we went to Gentingmas
Mall which sold everything you could ever need and was cheaper than cheap!
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