Return to Borneo - Day 8

A PERFECT DAY

We both agree that today was one of the best days of our entire lives. Neither photos nor words could possibly express what a fantastic thing it is to be here.

Our group shrunk this morning as Maria took Jane & Roger back to Sandakan. The rest of us headed out on an early morning boat ride heading towards the ox-bow lakes. We took our time looking out for more wildlife along the way. As we were nearing the lakes we found that a huge tree had fallen and blocked our path so unfortunately we had to turn back. Some really cool wildlife can sometimes be seen up there, such as otters and elephants.

A week before we got here some tourists spotted a dead elephant floating in the river. It had obviously been killed by a human. Sadly, there are issues with poaching here. It's also possible that the elephant could of been killed for causing damage to a plantation. Much of the natural habitats here have been destroyed to make way for palm oil plantations.

Since the lakes fell through we went for a walk in the jungle behind our lodge instead. We didn't see much besides some massive spiders and an impressive owl, but we could hear proboscis monkeys crashing about in the trees nearby. Going for a jungle walk is a bit of an ordeal though. You have to be covered in insect repellent as the mosquitoes can carry malaria, among other things. You also have to tuck your shirt in to protect yourself from leeches and tuck your pants into your socks so you don't get stung by fire ants.

Stefan & Caroline left after lunch. It seems not many people stick around for the full 2 night tour as everyone else at the lodge left today too. Only 6 new people arrived in the afternoon, and since the lodge has 40 rooms it felt so wonderfully empty - our own little paradise on the river.

We thought yesterday's afternoon cruise was great, but today's was even better. The weather was perfect and there were monkeys EVERYWHERE which we could get really close to. We had Rose, a boatman, and a massive boat all to ourselves. The other guests at the lodge seemed a bit miffed that we got this special treatment! The other lodges must of been pretty empty too as we only saw a couple of other boats. The whole afternoon was wonderful, wonderful, wonderful.

As we were making our way to our room to get ready for dinner my dream of walking in a jungle surrounded by monkeys unexpectedly came true. A large group of long-tailed macaques were making their way to make the area between the main lodge and our rooms their home for the night. It was hard to tell in the near-dark, but I'd say there would have been about 50 of them all around us.

Note that we have very few animal pictures from our river trip. Being wild they don't exactly stay still for photographs, and much of the time they're not close enough to get a good picture anyway.