Orangutan sighting!

The jungle at night. There is a tree squirrel in there somewhere.

The rainforest is a symphony at night. Each insect, bird, and nocturnal animal has their instrument and they play it loudly. The sound can be almost deafening and simultaneously the most peaceful thing you have ever heard.

As much as the actual wildlife can frighten us at times (like the 4 inch red critter that got into our room last night), there is really nothing quite as serene and beautiful as the jungle.

The river in front of the lodge.

Borneo Rainforest Lodge is located inside the Danum Valley Conservation Area in Sabah. The Conservation Area is about 48,000 hectares and contains the oldest rainforest in the world – it is more than 130 million years old. There is a terrific range of biodiversity – with more than 110 mammals, 320 species of bird, hundreds of reptiles and countless (probably unfortunately) insects. It is also one of the few places on earth that you can still see Orang-Utans in the wild.

The view from our room.

The lodge was established in 1994. Before that, it was just a research center. Now, it is literally a jungle safari. Imagine all of the trappings of any standard African luxury safari lodge, and they have that here. The place is utterly fabulous after Sarawak and two days climbing the mountain.

We were picked up from the airport for the 3 hour transfer to the lodge by our guide Ryan. He is extremely passionate about the wildlife in the area and hopes to eventually work at WWF – he has gained familiarity with them through their research trips to the lodge. At 25, he was the perfect guide for us – energetic, funny and ready to haul us through the jungle.

During the heat of the day, they recommend that you just hang out at the lodge or in your room for a bit. It is blazing hot with 100% humidity. We have a small Jacuzzi pool on our deck overlooking the Danum river and the jungle, so we just laid back there and watched the strange world around us. It was great.

Fresh orangutan! Only about 2 months old.

Then, Orang-utans!!!! It is only about 50/50, they say, that guests get lucky and get to see them and we were very, very lucky. As soon as we started our afternoon trek, we were running through the jungle at a breakneck pace about to a place about 1.5 km from the lodge through the Valley floor to where the sighting took place. We arrived dripping with sweat to the site of a mother, child and baby Orang-utan. Not in our wildest dreams did we think we would have an encounter this close. We watched them play and eat within 30 feet of us – maybe less – for the next 45 minutes. We felt almost like Jane Goodall. This was the one thing from the whole trip that Ms. Cupcake looked the most forward to, so it was a remarkable treat that within 30 minutes we found 3 (!!!) Orang-utans.

The whole family. Children stay with their mom until they are about 7 or 8.

Orangutan!

It was extremely hard to break away, but after our commune with nature, we were alerted of another sighting by the ranger at the lodge. Red-Leaf monkeys – lots of them – about 1 km back on the trail. We ran to the spot and were bombarded by falling branches and leaves as the monkeys hopped around. There were maybe a dozen flying from tree to tree and causing chaos all around us.

A red leaf monkey.

We arrived back at the lodge for dinner feeling incredibly accomplished with our wildlife sightings. The food was great – I got to eat Malay food that I love, including stir-fried jungle ferns, rendang, etc. and Ms. Cupcake ate some western food.

However, our night was not over.

Our chariot.

We had arranged for a night safari. Just our guide and us in a pick-up truck on the dirt road spotting animals.  It was a full moon, so we were actually going at a terrible time – during a full moon animals tend to hide to avoid large predators.

This is what a hornbill looks like when he is sleeping.

Nonetheless, our success continued. We saw a leopard cat, samba deer, multiple types of flying squirrels (we even got to see them glide), two types of civets and, the clincher, a rhinoceros hornbill sleeping in a tree within 10 feet of us. We really had incredible luck.

A leopard "cat", not to be confused with an actual leopard.

Danum Valley is a magical place. We thought that the Singapore zoo was cool because the animals were free to roam, but here they are really free to roam and we saw almost as many animals as at the zoo. We felt like kids running through the jungle to find the animals – in fact, we were so excited that both of us managed to forget that the legs we were running on were still sore from climbing the mountain!

Now, to bed we go, with only the soundtrack of the jungle in the background.