apes and monkeys

It is possible to do a 3-day trip up the river, African Queen style.  Wooden boats with a couple of loungers on a high deck to watch the view pass slowly by, beds are mattresses on deck with a mosquito net, food is cooked on board.  They can sleep 6, but we mostly saw just two passengers with a cook, driver and guide.  Very cheap for what you get.  We had decided to do a 1-day trip in a launch, partly because we were a bit short of time, but also we spend a lot of days on board just travelling very slowly.  Not such a novelty for us.  We were very happy with our choice.  A boat boy sat on Pegasus for the day to look after it.  And on our rather ropy little launch we had a driver and guide.  Off we went down a narrow tributary of the main river.  Quite a lot of floating branches and plants so every now and then the outboard would cough, and with a grinding of gears Anwar would reverse then raise and lower the engine to clear the debris.  He enjoyed his driving, curving round obstacles, zooming up the straights, and slowly passing other boats.  Our guide, Jenie, was great, he noticed all sorts of things, a fresh water crocodile, a large water snake, a monkey in a tree, various birds.  He was brought up in the area on a small farm in a family that knew the jungle and its plants and animals from lifetimes of family experience.

A station was founded by Richard Leakey up this river to rehabilitate the many orangutans found in captivity.  It has been such a success that 2 more stations have had to be opened to give the apes the area of territory they need.  Baby animals are still caught by local people to keep as pets (illegally) but they are usually not wanted when they grow and need half their body weight in food per day.  Also smugglers are caught trying to export orangutans.  We stopped to take a walk to a feeding station.  The apes are given bananas once a day and a plastic bowl of milk - not enough for their daily diet so they still have to find their own food.  Being very intelligent animals (97% same genetic code as humans), they know when it is food time and gradually appear swinging through the trees.  Some mothers with little babies hanging on.  Some younger ones with attitude.  And a dominant male who arrived last, and all the others disappeared from the table, a couple of submissive young females edging on the table ready for flight, grabbing a mouthfull of bananas to skin and eat later, and scampering away.  We stayed and watched for a couple of hours with about 20 other people, mainly European, including several British.

Lunch was on our launch, tied up to a tree on the bank.  A ready-prepared lunch box of rice, spicy veg. and chicken, then bags of little bananas and a small fruit like a lichee.  Jenie asked if we would like a walk in the jungle, and if so how long.  We said couple of hours and he was really pleased as he usually gets people who only want to sit at the feeding stations and on the boat, rather boring for him.  He pointed out food plants, plants used to get water to drink, and medicinal plants.  Also poisonous plants either to touch, or that could be used by the dayaks (who still live in remote areas) for their poisoned arrows and spears.  He was a mine of information, only 29 yrs old, and rather worried that he wasn't married, very unusual in his community.  He has a girlfriend, a photographer, but says they are too different to get married.  Maybe social background we felt.  They go trekking in the jungle and sleep out and both obviously love it.  We saw and heard orangutans sucking termites out of lumps of nest which they have to dig out of the ground.  Also a family of wild boar.   At this point it started to rain, a real tropical downpour.  We had macs with us, but just put them over our heads and shoulders, much too hot and humid to wear them.  Soon we were paddling along streams rather than walking the paths, and soon we had little leaches attaching themselves to our ankles.
So we arrived back at a second feeding station rather wet and muddy, and orangutans weren't very forthcoming in the rain either so we headed back to our launch.

Late afternoon is the time that monkey congregate to feed in the trees beside the river.  Jenie had promised that we would see plenty and he wasn't wrong.  Probiscus monkeys are only found in Borneo.  They are strange looking creatures with huge noses and bulging stomachs.  The males have noses that hang over their mouths and they swell and turn red when angry which must be quite a sight!  They only eat leaves and unripe fruit and have developed special stomachs which have cellulose digesting bacteria.  They can swim quite well, and have partially webbed feet.  Not surprisingly these monkeys and the orangutan are threatened with extinction because their habitat has disappeared due to clearance for the palm oil business and logging for timber.  Only 6.500 probiscus left, 4,000 of those in Kalimantan.

We had expected the trip to be much more commercialised with stalls selling postcards and tat.  Not at all, there was nothing, not even an information centre.  A few buildings used by rangers, and boardwalks to the feeding stations.  We were just in the jungle.  A great day.