Kinabatangan River Cruises

After a two hour bus ride Andy, Suzi, Kate and I arrived on the banks of the Kinabatangan river. We were ferried across to our lodge, given our welcome schpeil and a welcome drink and then showed to our cabins. We went with a company called Nature Lodge and their set up is pretty nice. Outdoor lobby and front desk, tiny little dorm like cabins (6 people in each) that were pretty clean and comfy and a really nice outdoor dining hall. We set off on our first river cruise at about 4pm and saw some great stuff: long-tailed macaques (there are so many that by day 2 none of us even wanted to stop the boat to look at them any more. zoom in on the pictures and you should be able to see at least 5 in each shot if not more), pig-tailed macaques, hornbills (which thrilled my travel buddies/bird lovers), monitor lizards and probosis (aka big nosed, as in 4-7 inches long, monkeys). Also, got some amazings shots of the sunset over the jungle. Later that night we set out on our first jungle walk. It turned out to be rather boring, with all 12 of us sweating like mad, tripping over logs while searching the trees for interesting animals and coming out of it only having seen insects. Very disappointing considering the group the night before managed to find a slow loris. Clearly luck plays a huge factor in it and we had none that night.

The next morning we were up by 5h45 and in the boat by 6h. We had much better luck and spotted all the animals from the day before AND a lone orangutan, crocodiles, snakes and 3 different types of hornbills, including the rhinoceros hornbill which even I found interesting.

The rest of the morning was spent lazing around in hammacks, reading and playing cards with some guys from sweden followed by two more jungle treks, which were slightly more successful and two more river cruises.


Now I'm back in Sepilok at the same hostel (Paganakan Dii) with Kate from England. Tomorrow were off to Semporna and are going to try to get in to scuba in Sipidan (if there are any spots left). I'm going to try and get my open water course done there so that I can dive more easily for the rest of the trip. Then I'll be off to Mulu to see the famous caves and then I'm not sure where from there. Maybe mainland Malaysia, maybe the Philipines... Will keep you all posted!