So I have to come to end of my first nine days of trekking without as much as a mosquito bite. I managed to escape all leech bites which I am very happy about. So all of you who were excited to hear my funny leech stories...there aren't any (for now anyway!) Trekking involved five days of counting orangutan nests and another four days of mammal tracking. For mammal tracking we set 30 traps in the jungle and checked them twice a day to see which kind of mammals lived in the jungle...we set them free once we had collected the data, don't worry no animals were hurt in this process. In the four days we were tracking mammals we must have caught about 7 common tree shrews and 1 tortoise. We would have caught more if it wasn't for the horrible macaques eating all the bananas in the traps. The tortoise was amazing though, it filled the whole cage that the trap was made up of and somehow had eaten the banana at the far end of the cage but was facing the entrance of the cage. Not quite sure how it maneuvered that one. We took the tortoise out to let him free and he did a number two all over us, nice...poor little thing must have been terrified. Gabili (our trekking ranger) was so lovely, he even bought us taffata cake for our rest in the jungle. Gabili also handcrafts machettes and engraves them so we all bought one. On our last two days of trekking he taught us how to use them. You have to cut with the knife at a 20 degree angle, I wasn't very strong with it though and didnt get many clean cuts. I think I need some more practise. Gabili also let us play rangers for a day which meant we took it in turns to lead the way through the jungle. He has taught us lots of interesting facts about the trees, medicines, animals, birds and insects and so as I played ranger I pointed out everything he had taught us. It really showed me how much I have learnt about the jungle and the confidence I now have. We saw an amazing robin on our of last morning that when you whistle it a tune, any tune, it sings it back to you...it was so cool.

We also had two nocturnal walks in the jungle which were really interesting and quite scary when all the torches were off. It is really incredible seeing animals in their natural habitat. We saw lots of pit vipers, flying (gliding) squirrels, tree crabs, wild cats, stick insects and lots more. Half way through our last nocturnal walk it began to rain, thunder and then there was lightning and we were stuck! We waited in the jungle until the rain got lighter and then made a run for it.

One of the orangutans - Cheria - was really cheeky the other day. I was walking past the jungle gym and he was up high on a rope. He pointed his penis at me and aimed his wee right at me and wherever I ran he followed. I swear previous volunteers have been teaching them all sorts. Another orangutan the other day as I was walking past the jungle gym - I wasnt looking at him and he blew a raspberry and made us all jump. It was very funny.

We have 3 days off now - I am going to turtle island tomorrow to see the turtles hatch on the beach. On friday we are doing a river cruise where hopefully we will see lots of wildlife and then on saturday I am off to live on the other side of Borneo for 9 days. I will be working at the Rasa Ria Nature Interpretation Centre where we will be feeding, bathing and teaching the baby orangutans lots of enrichment actitivites to rehabilitate them back into the wild... so I am sure there will be lots of great stories to come.

Bye for now! love Alexa xx