Simon at Sepilok

The final feeding session at the platform was a good one this afternoon.

Once again today i was the Ranger who led the guests to the platform, walkie talkie in hand. This time though I had Francesca following me up and as she was at the front of the queue with me she got pole position on the viewing platform too!

Fran has been really lucky with all of the 3 sessions she has gone to and her photos are really good.

Shame my 7-in-1 memory card reader isn't an 8-in-1 that handles Fuji xD media or i could have posted some of her pics here.

She was allowed to stay a bit longer at the end with us while we took our final photos of Joey, Mowgley and Siti playing with us all - so some wonderful memories of Borneo for her too...

After that it was time for us to say our final farewells to the staff at the NIC and at the Coffee Terrace restaurant where we'd had lunch every day. Although we were all really happy to be heading back to Sepilok and meeting up with the rest of the groups it still felt a bit emotional to be leaving Rasa Ria. All our experiences here, good and bad, have helped to create a good bond between all 3 of us in Group 1 which hopefully will survive the more intense work coming up at Sepilok.

That sad feeling was ten times worse for me of course because it also meant it was time to say goodbye to Francesca. I knew i wouldn't be seeing her again for over 5 weeks which is longer than we've ever been apart before, but we've both got good memeories of Borneo now to keep us going.

So off to the airport we went, traffic lighter than expected so we had 2 hours to kill before the short flight back to Sandakan. Tried once again to sort out my "Sepilok" Celcom SIM card at a phone shop at the airport but it still won't send or receive texts. Bummer. After that a quick KFC and then a boring wait for the little Fokker once more. A little "Fokker 50" aircraft to be precise.......

Bit of a turbulent flight but got down safely, and it was kinda cool to watch one of the aircraft wheels right by my window as it touched the runway.

Our ride was waiting for us outside and soon we were back at the Resthouse. Expecting a big welcome back from the others we were greeted with SILENCE!! They had all gone out to dinner at the Banana Cafe up the road!
About an hour later they returned and we were all swapping stories.
The shock news was that one of the young orangutans, Akut Boy, had died today after a short period of fever. No one is sure what the cause was. Everyone understandably depressed.
From what we hear it seems that our suspicions are confirmed that the work at Sepilok is much more real and "hands on" and the Rasa Ria experiment is not going to be popular with the others...

Early-ish night back in an air conditioned room and a rest day ahead for most of us tomorrow, so drifted off to sleep dreaming of my first lie-in for ages..... total luxury!!!

// posted by storri @ 11:37 pm