Orangutans, Elephants and more — Lisa's (& Steve's) Travels

Our days on the river were very busy and long. We’d join our guide in the boat by 0600, and motor up or down the river looking for different wildlife for a couple of hours before returning to the lodge for breakfast. This will give you a taste of a morning boat ride (to see the video, be sure to open the email in your browser by clicking the link at the bottom of the post) -

There’s no audio on that because the wind noise was just too much.

Down smaller tributaries of the Kinabatangan River were “Orangutan bridges”; these great apes cannot swim. Normally, these were empty ropes strung across, but one morning we watched a Pig-tail Macaque crossing…

…and he took a couple of breaks along the way.

Our fullest day had us heading back out to the river at 1400 (the sun is really hot and bright then) to motor upstream for nearly 2 hours (62 km) in search of Pygmy Elephants. Along the way, we finally saw some orangutans…

…enjoying a fruiting fig tree -

We realized how close the encounters we had had at the rehabilitation center were, and how lucky I was to have gotten those great close-ups. This is the best I could get at the extent of my long lens -

Sure makes you think of Bigfoot, doesn’t it? :)

Well, we did find elephants…

… and boy, did they look small (even with my zoom lens) -

When I looked up stats, I found that Pygmy or Borneo elephants are under 8 ft tall, while African elephants can be 10 - 12 ft tall. This adult and youngster looked much less than 8 ft, but we had to stay across the river so we didn’t bother them.