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Published: November 3rd 2008
Did you know the word 'Orangutan' means 'Man of the forest' in Malay?
So after a whirlwind few days of brilliant diving and a spot of romance we packed our bags and set off back north to Sepilok, home of the Orangutan Rehabilitation Center. This is a place where rescued and orphaned Orangutans are brought to be looked after until they can be released back into the wild, in a sense they are semi wild here as they have the Sepilok surrounding Jungle to roam and are not restricted to certain areas.
At visiting times the keepers put out some milk and banana's onto a platform a couple of times a day and if your lucky these amazing Ape's come swinging in for a feed and do some funny things.
Nic - Apparently the keepers only give them small amounts each time and is limited to milk and bananas, which they find really bland, this encourages them to forage for more exciting bugs and bits from their surrounding environment....this way they learn to become independant.
It was really amazing to watch these beautiful creatures swing into view, along ropes and through the trees. I hadn't realised quite
how graceful they were until now, but they swing so elegantly between their arms and then, just when your totally amazed they'd switch to using a leg or two as well!
Dan - Not much else to keep us here so with that in mind we decided we'd better not hang around, just a quick change of underpants and a splash of talc and off we go.!
Nic - Not quite as easy as that though.......From here we were planning to go on a river tour into the jungle but changed our minds at the last minute and chose to climb Mt Kinabalu instead. You'd imagine it to be easy to arrange but in actual fact you aren't allowed to climb unless you have accommodation booked half way up the mountain on the first night - just a minor problem then!! We took the chance and called the lodge with our fingers tightly crossed!
Only 1 bed available - gutted! - but we were told to call back that evening in case of cancellations. Slight problem with that, we needed to know before 11.30 so that we could jump on the bus, otherwise there'd be no other
way to get there in time (and we didn't want to get the bus anyway and be stuck there if we couldn't climb either....aaaarrrrgghhh, dilemma!)
Umming and aaahhing for the next couple of hours, we tried to come up with an alternative plan, but the only one we could think of would mean backtracking and wasting loads of time and money!!!
Luck was on our side and when we called at 11.20 another bed had come up!!! We booked it straight away and then sprinted (well, waddled as fast as possible with a 20Kg pack!) to the main road ready for the bus!
Back soon,
xxxxx
PS...Pics aren't great as camera doesn't zoom well!!
xx
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Ryan
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The jungle VIP's
Dan, I hope that the change of underwear and splash of talc had nothing to do with the swinging?!!