hello!

things could not have worked out better the past couple of days..... we wanted to do a jungle tour but didn't want any of the lame, cruise-ship-type tours offered as basically the only option.... we finally broke down and decided to go with a tour company our hostel recommended because it was cheap... turns out, it was perfect! we were the only people going into the jungle that day and had the camp all to ourselves... just us and the three guides!

it started with a seemingly never-ending carpool drive that took about 4.5 hours dropping off/picking up others.... finally made it to camp.... we had paid for the cheapest of the cheap tent set-up, but since we were the only guests, we were upgraded to a private cabin! we settled in and then got in our private (i'll stop saying that, ya'll get the point--it was private!) river-cruising boat and went for an evening animal-viewing ride. pretty immediately we saw tree limbs shaking and without much strain saw more monkeys than i knew existed! long-tailed macaques, silver langurs, proboscis monkeys everywhere!! saw a ton of birds too--nice colorful ones with names i can't remember... we saw the sunset and headed back to camp for dinner. that night we did a night hike through the jungle to look for nocturnal creatures. saw a couple of cool birds sleeping, some bugs and leeches, but i was too worried about crocodiles lurking in the swampy areas to ever really get into it! we had a visitor in the middle of the night in the form of a nasty giant rat that wanted to let us know he knew about the oatmeal matt had in his bag, but thankfully we all lived through that.... the next morning we took another boat cruise up the river--saw a lot of monkeys again, but more excitingly we saw 3 HUGE crocodiles!! by no means were we close enough to measure them but the smallest was at least 4 meters long..... and that's only what we could see out of the water! we also saw a wild hog that morning the size of a nice, large market-ready cow... after that cruise and breakfast we headed back to town--this time the drive only took nearly 2 hours since we didn't have to pick up anyone for carpool.

no orangutans and no pygmy elephants... hopefully they're around, but just hiding from humans.... one sad note about borneo is that a LARGE majority of the rainforests are being cut & burned to make way for palm tree plantations used for palm oil production pushing the wildlife into smaller and smaller areas without adequate habitat.... seeing the hills full of palm trees is sort of pretty until you see a lone, decrepit rainforest tree standing meakly, but taller than all the newly planted palms teasing you of what a more beautiful drive the same road must have been in the past....

alright, sorry about that! just something to think about.... all in all a successful borneo trip! until next time..... love--cat (& matt)