ok, i'm out of the rainforest now and it's time for another bumper email!I realised, having re-read my previous post that i actually did say any ofthe stuff i meant to at all.... oops... so below is my top 5 jungle things,which just about sum up the last few weeks in the jungle!!!1) Leeches!!!! How could i have forgotton the delights of leeches... i mean,they're really quite harmless, but thaey're absolutely everywhere!!!! Iswear, they drop from the skies and attack you from the floor and then someof them just magically transport themselves to all sorts of crevases andcorners... amougst the team we had at least one leech on absolutely everybody part - not joking. And given that we averaged at around 40 suckingleeches each, between us we must have been bitten more than 1200 times!!!!!and that's not counting the ones that were just crawling around either....hehehe.... wouldn't have been the same without them...2) Water/mud/sunshine... - well, it did finally stop raining, infact, about2 days after i sent my last email... which was really cool - but camp neverreally dried out.... hohujm.... sunshine was good, but i got possibly theweirdest tan in the history of sun tan!!! A nice tringle on my neck andlower arms, where my shirt was; a tan from above my ankles (jungle bootline.,..) to my shorts; then a really stroing tan for about 3 inches aboutmy jungle boots to where my 3/4 lenths were.... not a good look!!! Although,i have now got rid of that in favour of a lovely short wertsuit shaped tan,which is very impressive i must say!!!3) Thunderstorms - we had a whole week of thunderstorms everyother night,which was quite cool until one night where a thunderstorm came right overhead to the extent that thew thnuder and lightning were together, thenground shook and it sounded like someone had let off a shotgun beside youear - noooo exageration!!!!!! i've never heard anything like it ever in myentire life!!! And then you just have to bear in mind that we're all sat ontop of the highest point in hammocks attached to trees.... perhaps not thebest plkace to be in a thunderstorm.... hohum....4) food - it's surprising how much you can do when all you have to eat fortwo months is pasta/noodles/rice with spam/corned beef/tuna and about 6typoes of tinned vegetable... and also interesting how appealling crackersand cheese become after carrying planks of wood for 6 kms into the jungle,even when that's lunch every single day 60 days running.... i still hateporridge though, and am never ever going to willingly eat it again :$5) wood!!!! - we carryed hundreds and hundreds of planks uphill into theforest... don't think i could leave a plank lying stiull any more - haveundeniable urge to carry it in and make a house out of it....hmm.... ohdear...anywayz, i had a really brilliant time here in Borneo, iu would recommend itto absolutely anyione!!! Trekforce in particular werre excellant, nocomplaints at all... v good. After we trekked out the jungle we first headedto Sepilok Oranguan rehabilitation centre. For those of you that don't know,basically, our project was to get the ball rolling on a new orangutanrehibilitation and release site, as the more touristy one at sepilok is atcapacity and they can't add any more tot he forest there; so we've beenmaking a couple of storage houses, clearing the trail there and creatingsome feeding platforms for the orangutans, who, after carrying sooooo muchwood, we began to resent just a little.... However we visited sepilok andgot thanked by the Chief boss vet guy there, as well as the woman who willbe carrying out the main reseach at our project site wqhen it's finished,and also got a look behind the scenes at the baby orangutans, which made thewhole project sooooooooo absolutely worth it. It also made us appreciatewhat a worthwhile project it was. :D We were smiling all day afterwards,they just sooo cute!!After Sepilok we headed to Pulau Tiga which is the tropical island that theyfilmed the reality series "Survivor" on. It is absolutely thre miststunningly beautiful island where me and a couple of others trekked throughtthe forest to a dormant mud vocano (saw 2 huuuuge moniter lizards and a veryinteresting snake) then walked the 3.5km back along the beach and in the seaand saw many many fishes and a huge blue-spotted ray about 2 feet away.(although that wasn't quite my wqildlife high light, as i had a cloudedleopard walkj across the path 10ft in front of my when i was in camp!!!!sooooo coool!). Then we went to an active mud volcano and suspendedourselves in the stuiff -weirdest feeling you can stand without touching thebottom...Main focus of the eveing though was our final party which was on a hugeplatform at the end of the pier, and on the beach. Won't bore you withdetails, but it was an absolutely wicked night! And just to make you alljealous, have a look at these pictures...http://www.sabahtravelguide.com/images/mapguide/tiga/ptiga.jpghttp://www.passport.nu
/Portals/4/asien/borneo/bilder/pulau_tiga_park.jpg:Danywayz, after some teary good byes, half the group went off todo teachingin borneo, while the rest of us got to our hostel and had a pizza (soooo soonice after two months without) in preparation for a week diving.... whichi've now just completed - Quite scarily, i'm now qualified to dive anywherein the world :o) It was really quite relaxing though (well, until they makeyou take your mask off 15m down and then put it one again. that's just downright scary...) and our lunch breaks were taken on another tropical beachhttp://www.sanmicheletravel.com/images/borneo/sapi_island.jpg
http://homepage.ntlworld.com/harry.wickens/borneo/borneo-101.jpg - v nice and good snorkling too :Dand i guess that takes us to here and now. Dunno exactly what i'm doingnext, but we'll be climbing mount kinabalu in a few days (highest mountainin SE Asia) then maybe some relaxing beach time, after that i'm off up tothailand :D
11 years ago
