Megamoon

From Sandakan port, we took a 3 hour speedboat ride down the Kinabatan river. A lot of the rainforest here was logged in the 1920-70’s,  but conservation projects have restored a ‘secondary rainforest’ very successfully with lots of animals returning to the river area.

Sukau Rainforest Lodge was our home for the next few days. Accessible only via the Kinatabolan river, Sukau was a simple ecolodge but with some comforts including a satellite internet connection, which took several minutes to load a single page. Ouch! The food was impressive given the isolated location and we ate in a decked area over the water reached via a candlelit walkway, with meal times announced by three strikes of a gong. We were given room 17, the room which David Attenborough stayed in on his last visit to Borneo in 2014 to film his BBC2 ’60 Years in the Wild’ series, which compared his visit to this part of Borneo in 1956 to today. We slept in the same bed as David Attenborough!

We took several boat trips up and down the river, wildlife spotting. We were really lucky with our sightings too – wild orangutan, proboscis monkeys and pygmy elephants topping the list of the many aminals we were lucky to see.

We also took an afternoon trip to the the Gomantong caves. This was an entirely different experience… worthy of nightmares! The cave is full of swiftlets who build nests out of their saliva.  The local people climb 90metres high on rickety rope ladders to harvest the nests to sell on for ‘birds nest soup’,  believed by some to cure diseases.  Two harvesters fell and died last season.  Along with swiftlets the cave houses over 2,000 bats, together creating a several metre high pile of Guano (poo), which STINKS and also attracts masses of cockroaches and spiders which are everywhere including you if you stop walking or touch anything. Yuk! Every night a ‘security team’ sleep in this cave – the worst job ever. At sunset, huge flocks of bats emerge from the caves, with eagles and bat hawks encircling, waiting for a tasty treat.

Back in Saku, after a long shower and a lounge by the ‘pool’ (where yesterday a snake fell out of a tree onto a poor Russian girl), we headed off by river and land to Lahad Datu. From here, we piled into a jeep which took us on 2.5 hour drive on a bumpy gravel path further inland and into the primary rainforest, where the tree canopy is extra high (80 metres) and there’s continuous noise. We stayed in the Borneo Rainforest Lodge in Danum Valley where we learnt to accept being in close proximity of every kind of insect, from our breakfast table to our bed. We had 2 days in Danum valley, where after a slideshow telling us all about the huge varies of flora and fauna, we spent 12 hours trekking through the rainforest: a) trying not to touch anything and b) sweating! We saw quite a few animals, but sadly no cats/leopards – they were around, but masters of hiding.

A list of our sightings (for our photos see our gallery):

• Viper snake
• Mangrove snake
• Slow loris (v. cute)
• Flying lemur
• Flying fox
• Proboscis monkeys with their big long noses (only found in Borneo)
• Crocodile
• Long tail macaque (very common!)
• Liz thinks she saw the behind of a bearded pig!
• Red leaf monkey
• Pygmy tailed macaque
• Many many insects!
• Leeches (one climbed its way up to Chris’ belly!)
• Monitor lizards
• Orangutang (wild males)
• Silver leaf monkey
• Pygmy elephants: 6-8
• Sambal deer
• Mouse deer
• Fireflies
• Black squirrel
• Civets

And many birds including:

• Hornbill (many): Asian black, crested, rhinoceros….
• Oriental darter
• Borneo spidercatcher
• Buffy fish owl
• Serpent eagle
• Kingfisher