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| Author : sue_and_nathan | Diary name : yearaway | ||
| 9 Jul 2001 : Sukau, Sabah - Malaysia | |||
| Into the heart of Borneo | |||
| We flew into Sandakan on Borneo in a twin propellor Fokker aircraft, which was adventure enough for Sue as she hates flying at the best of times! We then headed out on a boat with Wildlife Expeditions to an island in the Sulu Sea called Selingan. The neighbouring island is Phillipino territory so we were just about as far east as you can get in Malaysia. Selingan is truly a paradise island - very small, surrounded by turquoise blue seas and with beaches of fine golden sand. So, we took this opportunity to have our first swim in the sea since the jellyfish incident in Thailand and tried out a little snorkelling. There was some pretty good coral to see and plenty of beautifully coloured fish swimming around us. But, we didn't come out all this way to sit on a beach - we came to see the islands famous visitor, the greenback turtle which returns to where it was born to lay it's eggs. Selingan has 5 - 15 visitors a night, but you have to wait for them cos' they only come on to the beach when they are good and ready and will only dig their nest when they feel secure. Anyhow, we were sitting digesting our dinner when one of the rangers ran into the restaurant to call 'Turtle time'. This meant that the first turtle had landed and we could go and watch her laying her eggs. We rushed down to the beach in the moonlight and got to the turtle just in time to see her laying her eggs. The ranger collected as they dropped into the nest, all 93 of them! But, she didn't seem to notice and at the end still filled the hole up with sand to protect the eggs. When she had finished we got a closer look at her - she looked so tired and then the ranger tagged her which she didn't seem to like much at all so we left her alone. For her, this was the end of parenthood. She will never return to the eggs or see her hatchlings ever again, which sounds extremely convenient to us! Next stop was the hatchery where the 93 eggs were buried in the sand to await hatching in about 4-6 weeks time. A few batches of eggs had just hatched. The 'turtlings'(that is possibly not a real word!) were tiny and scrabbling like crazy - apparentely they do this constantly for the first few days of their lives and it's called the 'swimming frenzy'. The sound of 100 or so 'turtlings' all trying to make their way I can't describe, but it was something we both liked very much. Finally, we got to experience parenthood for a few minutes (long enough for us!) We each took a 'turtling' and held it for a while before putting it out to sea. Our two were named 'Groober' and 'Scoobie' and we gave them a few words of wisdom before waving goodbye. Only 1-3 percent of hatchlings survive to maturity so those words are extremely important! We took them down to the beach where we released them. One of the wardens stood in the water with a flashlight to guide them. This is a crucial moment in the 'turtlings' life as it is when the imprinting happens. The imprint will tell the female turtle where she is so she knows where to return to lay her own eggs in 20-30 years time. The next two days were spent in a lodge on the Kinabantangan River in the middle of some amazing secondary forest. On the way we stopped at Gomantong Caves where crazy men climb right up into the tops of the cave on bamboo ladders to collect swifts' nests to make soup (the nests are made from their saliva so we decided to give that delicacy a miss!) The caves were gruesome. The floor was covered in guano (bat poo) which in parts made the wooden walkway extremely slippery, but you couldn't hold onto the handrails as they were covered in it too. And, where the guano was at its thickest it was crawling with cockroaches - in fact, it looked like the floor was moving because of their sheer numbers. We went out cruising the river on a number of occasions during the next couple of days and got to see loads of proboscis monkies (the ones with the big, pendulous noses). They are really weird and look like they are wearing black tights and white pants and their tummies are so huge that they look like they're pregnant. We were told that the bigger their nose the more attractive they are to the females! We saw numerous birds of paradise during our time on the river, long tailed macaques, silver langurs and lots of crawlie things. On our last night we went on a walk in the jungle and as our guide, Dione, was a super insect spotter we got to see a poisonous spider, a water scorpion and plenty of leeches. It was a great experience to walk through the jungle in the dark and the rain with all the night noises surrounding us. We had been a little worried when we booked the trip as the guidebooks all said that guides on the jungle trips are a real hit and miss thing, but Dione was a real star. She knew tonnes about animals, birds and plants and taught us so much during our 3 days with her. We were dropped off at the end of a long bumpy coach ride (we were experiencing a Borneo massage we were told!) at the Sepilok Orangutan Rehabilitation Centre, but we'll tell you all about that in the next installment. . . | |||