Thursday, March 23, 2006
Trekking and Watching
It had been my plan to get up for the Chelsea v Newcastle FA Cup tie at 4am today. I set the alarm on my phone, even crashed out on the sofa downstairs so as not to disturb Nick. Unfortunately i left the phone on silent and woke at 6am just to catch the final score. Doh! Oh well, it's the result that matters most of course - bring on the Double!
More jungle trekking with Silih today. This route was a lot more interesting, even though we only managed to find 2 nests. He took us off the main paths and had us scrambling over, bending under, squelching through and hacking past some much thicker vegetation.
Yesterdays rains also seemed to have woken up the leeches, they were out in real force today and i had to remove an incredible total of 34 of the little beggers! Mostly they were just subbuteo-flicked straight from my boots and trousers, but 2 of the leech SAS did manage to get under my shirt and find flesh. The bravest of them was happily diving into my belly button, though i think it was struggling to get past some barbed-wire fluff by the time i located it!
Along the way, Silih showed us a how a certain type of branch could be used to get drinking water. He cut a horizontal length with a machete then from its core clean drinking water just poured out.
Further on we saw two wild gibbons playing in the tree tops, then still later we thought we'd caught sight of a wild orangutan, but it turned out to be just a common monkey.
After lunch it was pretty quiet everywhere, i just spent time at the feeding platform watching and photographing as both mothers came with their offspring (Mariko with Mais and Mimi with Rony) and all three of the big males (Mr G, Guramboi and Miskam).
Here's a few more shots from today for you to savour......
...including one of Ranger Awang (aka Awang-utan!) looking his usual busy self at the end of the session...
...also a very lovely furry caterpillar...
Don't touch it though - the fluffy spines will stick in to you and are mildly poisonous!
It was Amoy's birthday today too, despite her continual claims that it was actually the 32nd (sic) of March. So late evening we took her out for a meal in Mile 4. Some of the group stayed out for a bit of karaoke, but you all know that "ain't ma thing" so i came back in the first taxi.
More jungle trekking with Silih today. This route was a lot more interesting, even though we only managed to find 2 nests. He took us off the main paths and had us scrambling over, bending under, squelching through and hacking past some much thicker vegetation.
Yesterdays rains also seemed to have woken up the leeches, they were out in real force today and i had to remove an incredible total of 34 of the little beggers! Mostly they were just subbuteo-flicked straight from my boots and trousers, but 2 of the leech SAS did manage to get under my shirt and find flesh. The bravest of them was happily diving into my belly button, though i think it was struggling to get past some barbed-wire fluff by the time i located it!
Along the way, Silih showed us a how a certain type of branch could be used to get drinking water. He cut a horizontal length with a machete then from its core clean drinking water just poured out.
Further on we saw two wild gibbons playing in the tree tops, then still later we thought we'd caught sight of a wild orangutan, but it turned out to be just a common monkey.
After lunch it was pretty quiet everywhere, i just spent time at the feeding platform watching and photographing as both mothers came with their offspring (Mariko with Mais and Mimi with Rony) and all three of the big males (Mr G, Guramboi and Miskam).
Here's a few more shots from today for you to savour......
...including one of Ranger Awang (aka Awang-utan!) looking his usual busy self at the end of the session...
...also a very lovely furry caterpillar...
Don't touch it though - the fluffy spines will stick in to you and are mildly poisonous!
It was Amoy's birthday today too, despite her continual claims that it was actually the 32nd (sic) of March. So late evening we took her out for a meal in Mile 4. Some of the group stayed out for a bit of karaoke, but you all know that "ain't ma thing" so i came back in the first taxi.
// posted by storri @ 10:25 am 
