And so to the Jungle...

Finally the Borneo we had imagined was almost in our sights. After an early pick up from Panglakan Bun a short drive took us to the small port town of Kumai, our hopping of point for Tanjung Puting National Park. Soon we were aboard our wonderful Klotok, a sizeable traditional wooden boat where we would be spending our next few days. Hello's were said to the crew, to Mr Majit and his family and our captain set off. Our guide was another familiar face, he'd stopped us in the street the night before in Panglakan Bun for a chat - it seemed everyone was in on the action! But no bother as they were all lovely

Leaving port we were struck by the number of large ugly windowless buildings lining the river, chatting with our guide we discovered these edifices were not for people but for the local bird population, they are encouraged to nest in inside where it is easy to collect their extremely coveted nests, a lucrative commodity used to make birds nest soup.

Soon we left the main shipping route out to sea and took the river to the entrance to Tanjung Puting National Park. Nipa palms lined the brown murky water stained that colour due to a gold mine further up stream, unfortunately the process has left this part of the river polluted with mercury so now shower for us for a couple of days! The river meandered on for a couple of hours, with Nipa palms giving way to Pandan the further upstream we travelled. Mooring up next to the only village in the park we were served a delicious lunch on deck. How on earth our cook managed to create such a feast with limited resources I'll never know. Our main reason for visiting the park was of course to see some Orang-utans and after a reasonable experience in Malaysia we were excited at the prospect of seeing something a little more natural and further off the tourist trail. We were warned that this first feeding station, Tanjung Harapan, was also known as mosquito hell, dressed in full jungle paraphernalia and as much deet as we could muster we set off on a short jaunt through the jungle, following a chap with a large tub of bananas. Along the way we could hear Orang-utan's crashing through the trees. Arriving at a small muddy clearing we met our first large male and a number of females. It is so hard to explain here quite how majestic being up close and personal with these large creatures is. They were happily munching away maybe two meters away from us. It was a serene experience as only a handful of us were there. Tranquillity was disturbed somewhat by the obscene number of mosquitoes, they were prehistoric in size and armed with extremely sturdy suckers which managed to munch through clothing! Our first camp could not have been more perfect and we couldn't believe we had two more to go over the next couple of days.

Back on our trusty boat the bug cream came out yet again as we set sail up river. We counted over 16 bites on one of James' upper arms alone! The park is not only home to Orang-utans but a number of other monkeys including the Proboscis monkey which is native to Borneo. During the evening these strange looking monkeys with their large noses make their way to the trees at the river's edge to cool off. Chugging along slowly we were soon monkey spotting as large family groups played in the trees. Dinner was another feast and it became clear the crew were trying to make us fat. Our bed was made up on deck and covered in a mosquito net where we settled down for our first night in the jungle.

Day two and more sailing up stream, after a few hours we turned off to a smaller river, heading for camp Leaky. The change in water and riverscape was instantaneous. The mucky water gave way to clear tea coloured river which is apparently the natural jungle colour, made that way by all the roots and vegetation. Camp Leaky was established in the early 70's and is the original research station here, a board walk took us to camp and along the way we were met by Siswe the dominant female in this area. She came out of her tree and began striding up to us, as she was a rather large mama I was a little daunted that she was getting so close! She was incredibly inquisitive and began playing rough and tumble with our guide. Soon she was holding my legs and having a big cuddle with James trying to take his sunglasses! Cuddling both of us she held on rather tight to my side and was pinching more than an inch with extremely strong fingers. We were both utterly flabbergasted to have had this unbelievable encounter; no amount of adjectives can do it justice. After a little while Siswe tired of us and was back up a tree making a nest to shelter from the rain.

The camp has a great little information centre perused at our leisure. One of the most striking aspects was the sheer destruction caused by the palm oil plantations, we'd certainly been forming a rather negative view over the couple of weeks and seeing the evidence only confirmed it. During the afternoon we were back at camp for feeding time and were greeted by Siswe and others all making their way to the feeding station, a line of Orang-utans were leading the way. Over the next couple of hours females with their babies clinging fast were feeding and swinging in the trees around us. They came from all directions and were often less than an arm's length away. Many that come to feed are re-habilitated and some are semi-wild having been born to rehabilitated mothers. The day was topped off with seeing a Gibbon, another rare monkey! He was incredible to watch, swinging in true Tarzan style on extremely long arms through the trees. He was fabulous and James fed him a banana for being so cool.

Another chilled evening on board gave way to our third and final day. This was to be our last feeding station in another area of the park. Having been treated to a wonderful spectacle over the last two days in which the previous Orang-utan encounter in Sepilok, Malaysia has paled into insignificance we felt rather ungrateful to be hoping to see a large male on this final visit. As they mature, if the hormone levels are right the males' faces change shape completely. The surge in hormones causes their cheeks to balloon into large pads and the area at the throat also grows allowing them to make their territorial long call. Nature was on our side as on arrival at the feeding platform we were greeted by the dominant male for this area, aka the King! He was vast, huge shoulders, big belly and powerful arms. Our guide had been telling us lovingly about Tom, the King of the camp Leaky area, apparently the huge 140kg male in front of us was no match for Tom. To be honest he was big enough for us and everyone soon moved swiftly out of his way as he took a walkabout to stretch off after consuming a large amount of Cassava.

Heading back towards Kumai we were also lucky enough to see three or four truely wild Orang-utan's in the trees. A perfect end to a wonderful few days!

We were both ready to chill out for the evening back in Panglakan Bun when our guide asked us along to his English class for the afternoon, I happily signed us up as I didn't feel I could say no! So the late afternoon was spent being guinea pigs for a large group of students to practice their English on. They were surprisingly good! Our time in Kalimantan is now drawing to a close and I know we are both incredibly lucky to have seen this slice of Borneo that remains unspoilt.