Simon at Sepilok

Just to let you all know that i made it home safely to a very warm welcome from everyone here.

It feels so strange now, not being able to put on the green shirt and just wander down to see all the Sepilok orangutans. Looks like i'll have to make do with cuddling the one that had been smuggled in to my house and was waiting for me when i returned... :-)

To the other volunteers:
Good luck everyone with your onward travels, it was a great working with you and an experience that will live with me forever.
X

A sad day for all of us. It's been a wonderful 2 months working here and at Rasa Ria but i'm sure the bonds between us and Sepilok will remain strong forever.

We had an early rise so that our group could get a photo with all 11 of us pictured together. Copies of this will be printed and distributed to all the various people here and at home who have helped run the project for us.

Then our first farewell, as Yvonne left the group to start her further adventures. If i had to describe the air at the moment it just feels so numb. So many people to see before we leave and so many farewells to make. Including the orangutans of course! It might be my imagination but some of them appeared to sense this was our day to leave. I guess they've seen it all before, every couple of months to be precise. One final play session with Eniro and Merudo and a little time with the new boy Ufuk who moved into Quarantine yesterday from the Clinic. From the doorway of the Clinic I spent a little time watching Sogo Sogo. She's on her own in there now Ufuk has moved. Get better soon my little one... X

A quick packing exercise then off to Sandakan Airport and back to KK and Rasa Ria for our final night together. A meal at the Coffee Terrace and some drinks afterwards at Aromaitie with the Rangers and our final farewells. Vicky and I leave at 5.00am (!!) for home while the rest of the group will be sleeping.

So that's it for now. No further blog updates until i get home. Hope you've enjoyed reading about my time here (almost) as much as i've had being here. Feel free to leave a comment or email me soon...

Love to all of you for now,
Simon XXXXXX

Very lazy day, it really feels like this chapter of our lives is coming to a close now.

Most of us took a trip into Sandakan town centre in the afternoon for some food and last minute DVD buying etc.
On the way back i finally made it to "7 Heaven" for a smoothie and we picked up a big chocolate cake as a thankyou to the staff at the resthouse.

Our last night at the resthouse, spookily subdued. A few of the Rangers dropped in and we just played cards over a few beers...

Not too much I can say really - I've got so many wonderful memories of Sepilok, i'll let some of todays pictures do the talking...

Bathtime with Reto:


The new Play Area:


Babies at the Play Area:


Outdoor Nursery:


Juveniles at the Play Area:


Group 1 - mission accomplished:


Tonight was our official farewell BBQ with the Rangers and friends down at the jetty. It was a beautiful night, great food, lots of Oranjeboom and we were all presented with certificates and signed books to remember our time here.

We all had to say a few words to our hosts - when i spoke i hoped they would never forget how important their work is with these beautiful animals, to continue to look after them for the good of our world and then thanked them all for the privilege of allowing us to become a small part of the efforts. Quite emotional of course!

Later the heavens opened up with a massive thunderstorm which lit up the whole rainforest for the rest of the night. Amazing...

Salina was moved from Quarantine to Outdoor Nursery today (Ruby went yesterday), leaving just Naomi in there needing to "complete her time" (90 days in total) before release.

Sogo Sogo continues to be isolated in the Clinic so there's little chance of me getting a farewell cuddle with her now :-(

Our "authorised" group photo day is tomorrow, so hopefully the sun will shine and i'll get plenty of time with all the others to make up for that disappointment. Not sure if i mentioned there is a Sea Eagle here too, recovering from an injured wing - beautiful bird...

Back to the small mammal traps again this morning and a prediction of 9 trappings from me proved to be a tad over confident.
There were in fact just two, one of which (a large tree shrew) was new to us and therefore needed to be weighed, measured and then released.

After that it was back to the new play area to hang up some more rope and chain swings and to tie a long rope ladder to a nearby tree.
The first few youngsters seemed to love it, even though construction was still going on all around them!

Our final small mammal trap visit (in fact our last real work day!) followed some torrential rain.
After this mornings dismal effort I predicted zero trappings, but we had two.
One was new, a Lows Squirrel. It was an adult but they are very small.

A little more drilling and final fixing of the ropes and we are as complete as we can be with the play area now - all we need now are the remaining coconut leaf roof panels to arrive and to put up a big scramble net at the back of the area.

Then we can stand back for a final "coat of looking at" and give ourselves a big pat on the back.
Here you can see Nick and I are not playing, just "testing the ropes for strength"...

If we get a dry morning tomorrow we hope to get some of the babies and youngsters out for an official opening and inaugral playtime on there - fingers crossed!!

As evening started to draw close we were allowed up to the Outdoor Nursery to see some of the older ones building nests in the trees around the area.

It was great to see Tompong, one of the newly released orangutans, happily breaking branches and settling down for the night.
Most of the others are still content to sleep on the roof of the nursery or under the water tank(!!) but they'll get braver and more used to living outside over the next few weeks and months.

Even allowing for a lack of experience, Kimbal's attempt at a "nest" on the ground with just a single leaf was still pretty poor though... :-)

Becky's birthday tonight, then our Sepilok farewell party night with the Rangers tomorrow. Some serious Tiger taming in prospect methinks... :-)

This afternoon went early to feeding platform to watch the early arrivals and was rewarded to see Mr.G and Guramboi play fighting for 10 minutes solid.
Then there was a rustle in the branches high behind me and Mimi with her baby son Roni started to descend down the trunk, across the viewing platform within a few feet of me and some other early arrivals and over to the feeding platform.

I think you see a lot more of the orangutans natural behaviour by coming early and watching them play. Once the food is out on the platform all the other activities apart from munching and stealing cease for a good while, as you'd probably expect!

This afternoon a return to the traps saw us with two more catches. Just one was new (a common shrew) and was duly recorded.

After that i helped Nick some more with the nursery play area which is nearing completion. Two hammocks are now up (probably will be used by the volunteers as well as the orangutans!) and a length of old rope ladder is being used for a climbing area and swings. Here is Gangi being an early test pilot...

More to do tomorrow but big grins starting to appear on Nick and my faces as we can see the finished product starting to emerge. A nice little legacy for Sepilok to remember us by... :-)

During the early part of the evening we went on a short night walk. This started by main reception where at about 6.30pm every night a flying squirrel emerges from it's nest in the trunk and climbs up to near the top. Then it jumps and drifts off like a hang glider over to another tree maybe 100m away. Amazing sight and worth the long wait.
Then we continued onto the boardwalk with torches looking for signs of life. Our sightings included large spiders, lots of fireflys, two vipers, a furry caterpillar, several tree frogs and at the end of the walk a small leopard cat. It never ceases to amaze me the huge variety of life that lives in the rainforest.

And that was pretty much that for the night. Saving our energies for the farewell parties on the 30th here and then the 1st April back at Rasa Ria... ;-)

Sunny day today, everything looking bright and fresh after the recent rains.

This morning was time to check the traps again and see which of the night mammals had been tempted by the ripening banana bait inside.

My guess was 5, Gabili said 6, Vicky said 3, Nick plumped for 4 and Irwan went for 2.

This time we were all wrong, we actually managed to trap 7 mammals. Four of them had been caught before (we could see the patch of fur had been clipped already) so we only needed to record data about the other three.
There was another type of shrew, a spiny rat (I think) and something else i can't remember.
When we input the data onto a spreadsheet later this week i'll update the blog maybe. I'm sure you're dying to find out (not!).

Back at the Indoor Nursery we bumped into Kath and Rebecca from the Outdoor Nursery group.
More great news on the release front:
Marsha, Amos and Nonong were moved from Quarantine to the Outdoor Nursery this morning and this afternoon (or tomorrow) Ruby and Salina will be joining them. All bar Nonong came in as rescued wild orangutans and have now completed their 3 months in quarantine. So that makes a total of 11 released during our final 2 weeks here and fantastic way to finish up our time on the program!

The night cages in the Indoor Nursery and are starting to look really, really empty - the next group certainly won't have so much to do as ours has!
That just leaves 10 babies and juveniles in the Indoor Nursery (Ruben, Reto, Merudu, Eniro, Ampal, Annekara, Lipong, Naru, Rosalinda and Gangi) and 2 isolated in the Clinic (Sogo and Ufuk). Plus just Naomi in the Quarantine area. Good work guys!

Carlos (who works at the resthouse) surprised me by wearing a Chelsea shirt today - he's a Manure fan really.
Not the only person i know who has seen the light and developed a soft spot for The Mighty Blues too...

Tonight was our group Culinary Night with Sylvia. As mentioned before, the idea of these sessions is to help her prepare our dinner using traditional methods and local ingredients.
Some of the earlier groups said they'd needed pretty strong stomachs (and that was just the preparation!), but with Vicky in our group being a veggie that meant our meal plan had a leafy vegetable bias and thankfully we were spared the chicken feet soup recipe the last group suffered (that time there were clipped chicken toenails all over the floor...yuk!!)

No, ours was actually really good. I liked nearly all of it.

We started with:
- soup of chicken cooked in rice wine

Then the main dishes were:
- raw mackeral marinated in lime juice, ginger, chilli and onion (which was delicious!)
- pumpkin with pumpkin leaf and coconut milk
- plain steamed tapioca leaf
- papaya buds softened with tamarin
- tapioca leaf fried with salted fish
- lemon leaf with chili, garlic, salt and lime juice
- blanched sweet potato leaves
- blanched pumkin leaf
- chili, shrimp paste and garlic dip
- rice

All washed down with copious volumes of Oranjeboon and rice wine.
Bon apetit!

All is still going well at the Outdoor Nursery. All six of the new releases spent the night outdoors and were there this morning waiting for some TLC. Gradually they will get used to the idea that such attention will be limited from now on. Direct contact human will be minimal and highly discouraged. It's quite hard to abide by that rule at times but we know it's in their best long term interests. Some will probably stay close by the security of Outdoor Nursery for many months (or even years - like Doggy) but others will soon venture out into the depths of the reserve and enjoy full lives of their own.

For Group 1 today was the start of our Small Mammal Survey period. Nick dropped out so he could continue with the play area roof so Vicky and I went with Rangers Gabili (the machete man) and Irwan out into the reserve with 30 small traps and some bananas for bait.

The idea is that we leave the traps spread out in lines of 10 along 3 different transects of the forest and then monitor what (if anything) is caught in them over the next two days.

Checking the traps in the afternoon will show us the daytime creatures and checking them again in the morning will hopefully catch us some night animals. Here is a picture of Vicky and Gabili setting a trap...

Just in case you are worried by the ethics of us trapping animals, the traps are not designed to hurt them and after the classification data and size and weight has been recorded they will all be released again.

So after lunch we head back out into the forest. I predicted 5 trappings, Vicky said 2, Gabili said 1, Irwan said none!
It soon became clear that i'd been a little over optimistic, with all the rain this afternoon nothing much had fancied venturing out of cosy nests and burrows! But then after visiting 26 empty traps we had one - a large tree shrew had been caught. Gabili put on a glove and held her up for inspection. We measured the tail length, foot length and body length, then slipped her into a muslin bag for weighing. After that we just snippped a little hair off her left hind leg (so that if we trap the same one again tomorrow we won't double count) and it was time to say goodbye.
Her little jerky movements and beady eyes reminded me of the little squirrel at the start of Ice Age as she ran off into the trees. The rest of the traps were empty so maybe we'll have better luck with the night mammals in the morning...

Tonight is our group Culinary Night with Sylvia. The idea is that we help her to prepare a dinner using some of the many local ingredients. Hopefuly we won't get the chicken feet soup recipe the last group had... :-0

Another 3 points for the Blues last night, still cruising towards back-to-back titles - just hope we can get past Liverpool in the FA Cup to complete a centenary year double. That would be so sweet!

Anyway, that's the important stuff out of the way (just kidding...) so on with the Jungle Trekking adventures.

Another day with Rosali today, but pretty lousy with the nest spotting for the first two-thirds of the trek. We were on a route heading for the Water Hole but despite the recent rains there wasn't too much flooding on the trail, just lots of sticky mud. For some reason the leeches were keeping away from me today, maybe they could sense i was still pretty angry about the one on Friday!

As we neared the Water Hole the nest count started to rise and we ended up with a total of six, including one very fresh one. Not too bad after all.

The Water Hole itself is very pretty, a couple of small waterfalls with a deep plungepool in between. Across the first fall is a big fallen tree. Of course, me being me, i wanted to pose on it for the obligatory photo. But I nearly didn't make it on to the log at all as i slipped on the rocks at the top and only just managed to stop myself from sliding down the waterfall by grabbing onto a loose tree root! With pride hurt almost as much as my bum, I regained my composure and eased myself out along it. Very impressive, eh? Whaddya mean "NO"??!!

Oh well, the water looked even more inviting after that, so Nick and I left Rosali and Vicky in charge of the camera and dived in.
Plenty of time there for swimming and diving (and more posing of course!).

Boy - was that refreshing, after getting so hot and sweaty on the trek.

Eventually it was time to get out, check for leeches inside wet boxers (just in case...!!), drip dry, get dressed and then squelch back along the route home.

This afternoon worked with Nick on the new play area again. We are starting to put up the roof panels and coconut leave thatching, but with the days ticking by it could be a close call as to whether we get it all finished and kitted out with scramble nets and ropes in time to see some babies playing on it before we leave here.

Time has flown by so fast - i can't quite believe that this time next week i'll be on my flight home!
Then what will i do?
Maybe i could start up an Orangutan Sanctuary near Brighton??!! First i'd need to import a rainforest from Borneo (shouldn't be too hard if they still carry on logging here), but then would have to do something about the weather.
Hmmmmm.... This plan needs a bit more thought.... :-)

Release Progress: Well it's a BIG up for the girls this afternoon - i just heard that Annelisa and Susanna both ventured away from the Outdoor Nursery for the first time today and then showed up at the feeding platform this afternoon, after spending most of the day doing their own thing in the forest. This is great news, another step taken to living free in the Sepilok Reserve! Way to go girls! The four boys (Tompong, Kimbal, Toby and Brock) have hardly ventured away from the holding cage, even though all six of the orangutans from Indoor have been free to wander during the daytime.

Well, it's going to be an even bigger step for all six in the group tonight as they are ALL going to be left outside the cage for the first time. I'll try to find out how they fared and give you an update ASAP later...

Trekking with Rosali today - he took us on a much tougher route with lots of obstacles to climb over and some serious log balancing needed to cross the many streams. Vicky performed a couple of great dives into the mud, shame there were no judges nearby to score them - she missed out on a certain gold medal!

Six nests were spotted in all. In one tree there was an old nest and then just above it a brand new one. I tried to photograph it but in the low light it's rather blurry. Sorry...

The picture of a spiral spiders web is much better :-)

(BTW - in case you didn't know, you can click on the small thumbnail here to get a bigger version of any of these blog pictures...)

Quiet for the rest of the day, just reading and movies as the rain was so heavy well into the night.

Batteries fully recharged with a good nights sleep because, shock of shocks, todays Chelsea game was not live on TV for the first time since i've been here!!

Group 1 was one volunteer short again today after both Vicky and I failed to rouse Mr. Mabuk from his drunken snoring for the second time in 3 days. Not that he missed too much as it was a very short jungle trek with Silih.
The route took us through the Outdoor Nursery area, where it was fantastic to see the 6 youngsters (Kimball, Toby, Susanna, Brock, Annalisa and Tompong - the ones who moved up there from Indoor Nursery last Monday) wandering around outside while the girls of Group 2 cleaned their temporary holding cage. The new arrivals are reportedly adjusting well to the extra freedom up there, although they still hug each other for support when some of the bigger ones try to muscle in on their food. Since being orphaned they would only have mixed with orangutans of their own age and size, so suddenly seeing Mr.G or Guramboi approaching must be absolutely terrifying to them!

So on with the trek and within 20 minutes we had spotted 5 nests. All quite old. It's much harder to see a new nest because the leaves are still green and matching the rest of the tree, whereas the old ones have turned dark brown. Surprisingly few leeches today. But as i'll explain later it only takes one to inflict some serious damage...!

At the end of the trek we watched some of the orangutans start to assemble at Platform A. I didn't have my camera with me which was a real shame because Mr.G, one of the big males, casually walked up and across the platform among all the tourists. At least one woman had a real shock when she turned round to see him standing right next to her!

After lunch Vicky and I went in to help out with the Indoor Nursery (Becky and Elle had gone to Turtle Island). It was great to be back in there with all the little ones, although after all the recent transfers to Outdoor it was a lot less hectic.The rains stopped and we were able to take Naru and Gangi out for some exercise.
On the way up to the trees we passed Nick. He was looking a bit flustered and no wonder - as he'd lifted up an old cement bag a big scorpion had run out and was now hiding in a crack in the ground - lucky escape! See below for more about the scorpion...

So into the woods we went with the orangutans. Naru had mostly been ill when we did our stint in Indoor so it was good to spend some quality time with him. He is the other orangutan that can be adopted (like Sogo Sogo) via the Sepilok Orangutan Appeal UK scheme. Hint Hint!

He is not as confident in the trees as Gangi but he still managed to do plenty of climbing. Up there in the woods must be where i picked up a "special forces" leech too, although i didn't know it until much later (explicit photo ahead, be warned...)

After returning them both to their cages I wandered up to help Nick with painting some wood roof panels for the new play area. They are going to go underneath the coconut palm leaf thatching, to stop the orangutans from ripping a hole.

Rosali was there with him and by now they had managed to coax the scorpion out into the open. By now it was putting on quite a show of agression for us!

When i got back to the resthouse and peeled off my shirt i had another shock - there was dried blood smeared all around my left nipple. My first thought was leech, but there was no sign of it now. So i looked at my shirt and saw a big patch of blood on there too.

One of the little b*ggers had obviously sneaked under my shirt while i was playing with Naru, climbed up my chest and then been gently suckling on my nice warm nip until it was full, then just dropped off onto the ground for a well satisfied nap! As soon as i washed off the dried blood it started bleeding again of course. Yukky yuk yuk, but I know you'll still want to see the bloodfest...

After about 15 minutes of dabbing with tissues the bleeding had stopped again and i could get changed for Kristina, Kirsty and Sheena's housewarming party. They all work for the Sepilok Appeal and Sheena (the primatologist) and Kirsty will be tracking the new releases once they are let out of the Outdoor Nursey holding cage, hopefully early next week.

After all that drama today i certainly deserved a drink... :-)