Borneo
We arrived into the tiny airport of Pangkalan Bun on Borneo shortly after 8am, after an early flight from Surabaya. Disembarkation was a casual affair….
Our guide, Jekki, met us at the airport and a 20 minute taxi ride took us to the port of Kumai to board our boat, which would be our home for the next three days.
The boat sleeps 6 guests, but we were the only 2 guests booked for this trip so we had an extra cabin to use as a dressing room and the services of our 4 man crew all to ourselves. In addition to Jekki, the crew consisted of a skipper, Eson, and two cooks, Vivin and Dewi. We were very well looked after, with breakfast, morning coffee, lunch, afternoon tea and dinner all served on board. We are going to skip dinner on our arrival in Jakarta this evening!
On the first day, we left the port shortly after 9am, cruising down the Kumai river and then turning into the Sekonyer river which borders the Tanjung Puting National Park. This is home to the largest surviving population of orang utans - about 6,000 of them, up from around 3,000 15 years ago. We were served coffee and then a delicious lunch, whilst travelling to our first stop - a feeding station at Tanjung Harapan.
This used to be a rehabilitation centre for orangutans rescued from captivity, orphaned through hunting etc but the need for that activity has thankfully reduced. Nonetheless, both the semi-wild orangutans released from earlier programmes and the wild orangutans seem to welcome some dietary supplement! The feeding stations provide easy opportunities for tourists to see the orangutans close-up, the tourists provide lots of jobs for the locals, and the locals now have a reason to help protect the orangutans and stop destroying their forest habitat. So I suppose it works. We only touched the surface of the national park (1,000,000 acres) and probably ‘only’ saw 30 orangutans at these feeding stations, so most of them are off in the forest doing their own thing well away from the tourists. We certainly saw about another 10 orangutans in truly wild situations - they’re just a lot harder to photograph, particularly with just an iPhone camera to work with!
Anyway, back to Tanjung Harapan. Rangers arrived with baskets of sweet potatoes and bananas. The alpha male arrived first and hogged the bulk of the food. They are enormous - up to 120 kg. Others hung out in the trees around and about, waiting their turn. The trick seemed to be akin to the worst behaviour at the breakfast buffet, with each orangutan quickly loading up with as much as they could stuff into their mouth, one arm and one leg and then scarpering up the nearest tree. Some photos below.
After watching the orangutans for about 2 hours, we returned to the boat and headed further up the Sekonyer river to moor up for the night. We stopped opposite two trees full of proboscis monkeys, settling into the tree tops by the river for the night, but not without a fair amount of kerfuffle to start with! Difficult to photograph against the darkening sky but you will get the general idea…
We were early to bed, about 8.30pm and up early the next morning, with sunrise around 5.30am. The river was beautifully still and we had a lovely blue sky.
After breakfast, we continued our cruise up river arriving at Pondok Tanggui feeding station.
More time with the orangutans…
…before continuing up river to Camp Leakey. We were lucky enough to spot another group of proboscis monkeys en route. The male is really quite extraordinary. Grey trousers, white pants, a brown jacket and some rather fetching epaulettes to go with his enormous nose!
Camp Leakey was set up in 1971 by Biruté Galdikas, one of the “Trimates” mentored by Louis Leakey, alongside the much better known Dian Fossey and Jane Goodall. It has operated as a research station ever since. Little was known about orangutans before she started her work. More orangutans here, including another massive male and a mother and baby stocking up before they climbed back up a nearby tree. We also saw our first gibbon but no good photographs.
After visiting the camp, we turned back downstream heading for our overnight mooring. This morning we had a chance just to enjoy being on the river, seeing what we could see. There’s lots of bird life too and we spotted three groups of orangutans close to the river. Two large males were boldly challenging each other from trees either side of the river but given they can’t swim there was little chance of a serious confrontation. We then saw another large male, making mating calls to a female up in the trees. She plainly wasn’t interested and just kept on breaking off branches and throwing them at him. Very amusing to watch. And after much searching, we finally saw a small gharial, lurking in the muddy water amongst the roots.
We had lunch as we cruised down the Sekonyer river and then back up the Kumai river to the port. A similarly relaxed boarding process, and a short flight brought us to our hotel in Jakarta where we are spending two nights.