It was raining this
morning when we got up. My first job of the day was to set about
re-packing our bags – we'll be using the Nova Hotel as our base in
Kuching over the next week or so, so we can leave a big chunk of our
stuff here to save us having to lug it around. My cold has really
settled in now – searing pain at the back of my throat and a big
throbbing lump in my sinuses – so before we had breakfast we looked
around for a pharmacy or similar to get some cold and flu tablets.
Unfortunately, the best we could do was some paracetamol from a
7-Eleven. And the best we could do for breakfast was to go back to
our funny little alleyway place, where we got some won ton noodles and
a couple of pork buns.
Afterwards, we went
back the room, where I finished up the packing. We had organised a
taxi through the hotel and it was waiting for us when we went
downstairs and dropped off our spare bags and checked out. Our
destination for today was Bako National Park, the oldest park in
Sarawak. It's located on a peninsula and is only accessible by boat.
The drive out to the pier and national park office only took a bit
less than an hour. After handing over our booking details and paying
our entry fees, we moved across to the boat desk, where we were given
two options – we could hire a boat just for us, or for quite a bit
less, we could just pay for four seats, but we would have to wait
until the boat filled up before we could leave. As it was
mid-morning, we assumed that no-one else would be going out now, so
were about to pay the higher fee when a middle-aged European couple
suddenly appeared, closely followed by another. We quickly switched
options and not long after were pulling on our life jackets and
climbing aboard a small boat with the first of the European couples.
The boat took us up
the river and then out into the open ocean. We turned right and
followed the coast for about a quarter of an hour and then the driver
turned us towards the beach. The boat started to slow down and then
stopped. The driver revved the motor and we went forward a bit more
and then stopped. It was low tide, he explained, and the water was
very shallow, so we were going to get stuck a few times before we got
to the beach – and would have to get out and wade the last part.
After a while, he signalled that this was as far as we would be going
and Kate and I took our shoes off and climbed into the warm water,
which reached up to our knees. Under a light rain we ferried the bags
across to where another boat was sitting exposed on the sand, but
when I went back to get the girls, I found the driver already
carrying Zoe to the beach. I grabbed the last of the bags and he
grabbed Sarah and soon we were all heading across the sand to the
park headquarters (we were lucky – the other boat, with the other
European couple aboard, got stuck well out to sea and was still out
there as we were sorting out our accommodation).
When we got to the
main building, we found the national parks office and showed them our
booking details. They gave us a map and some orientation information
but informed us that our room wasn't ready yet, so we put our bags in
the (hopefully) secure luggage room and wandered over to the
cafeteria, where we had some tea and cake and the girls watched some
Madagascar 2. While Kate and I sat out on the balcony sipping our tea
and eating somer pretty good banana cake, we heard a commotion nearby
and looked over to see a macaque (Boo! Hiss!) sitting in the middle
of a table quickly shovelling in food from a plate as two tourists
stood watching, mouths agape. Someone ran over and shooed the monkey
away and the tourists grabbed their plates and moved inside.
By now it was
lunchtime for us, too, but we were keen to eat the food we had
brought with us, rather than eating the cafeteria food. However,
there were signs up all over the place forbidding the consumption of
'outside food' at the cafeteria tables, so we walked over to a small
shelter near the beach and constructed our sandwiches – Kate and
the girls keeping a sharp eye out for macaques the whole time. We
wolfed them down quickly, still scanning the surroundings for
marauding monkeys, and then headed out for a short walk.
The trail, when we
found it, was along a raised wooden boardwalk, and took us through
some nice rainforest. Several sets of wooden stairs took us higher
and higher, and eventually we emerged on top of a rock outcrop, where
a little shelter had been set up. The view looked out over the beach
and national park headquarters, but we had eyes only for the
stunning little red and black bird that flew into a tree beside us.
We saw some nice
pitcher plants on the way back down and as we walked back towards the
cafeteria, I observed that the ground had been extensively dug up and
remarked to Kate that if we came out at night, there was every chance
that we would see the pigs responsible for the digging. By the time
we got back down to the office our room was ready, so we grabbed our
bags and set off along a path that ran adjacent to the beach. (It
turned out that we wouldn't have to wait as long as I had expected to
see the pigs - as we walked past the cafeteria, we saw a large
bearded pig standing, unafraid, on the grass.) Our room turned out
to be one of about six in a very basic concrete block. It consisted
of four beds, fan, toilet, sink, cold shower. As we were settling in,
Zoe called us outside and there on the grass was another of the pigs
– another big male that was soon joined by three smaller females.
The others were
feeling a bit tired, so they all lay down for a rest. But we were in
Borneo (!) and I was keen to stay out to see what I could see, so I
left them and continued down the path away from the headquarters.
After passing through a forested area, the path opened out and
crossed a bridge beneath which the tide was coming in, flooding a
muddy mangrove forest. I scanned the ground, the bushes and then the
trees – and did a double-take as I spotted a large, dark shape high
above me. This was what I had been most hoping to see here at Bako –
a proboscis monkey – and there was another, and another. There were
four of them lounging around taking it easy, looking like proper
couch potatoes with their round, distended bellies.
After taking some
photos I continued on, finding a raised wooden boardwalk through the
mangroves. There were several macaques on it, but thankfully they
scampered off without giving me too much grief, although a few of
them did hiss and bare their teeth as they left. I walked to the end
of the boardwalk and then turned around and headed back to the room.
When I got close to where I had seen the proboscis monkeys I heard a
noise and, rounding a corner, surprised a female quite low down,
close to the path. She quickly leapt away, crashing into the
undergrowth, before picking a spot to sit and eat some leaves not far
from where I was standing.
Back at the room, I
gathered the others up and we headed out for another walk through the
forest. We headed back past the headquarters and onto another
boardwalk, where we came across another of the bearded pigs – this
time a female accompanied by several very cute striped piglets. We
hadn't been on the boardwalk for long when we spotted another group
of tourists up ahead with a guide, all looking up into the trees. I
asked what they had found and they pointed to two brown shapes high
on one of the trunks – flying lemurs! Looking up through binoculars
and telephoto lens we discerned that one of the them had a baby that
was peering out from the protective embrace of its mother's 'wing'.
Continuing on, the
path headed uphill and then down again towards the coast. As the
closed rainforest gave way to a more open coastal forest and the
boardwalk petered out. Almost as soon as I left the walkway, I saw
and heard some movement in the trees to our left. I ran ahead to see
what it was and caught a glimpse of a proboscis monkey but by the
time the others had caught up, it had disappeared. We kept walking in
that direction and were soon rewarded to an awesome view of several
monkeys swinging from vines and leaping between trees. When they had
moved out of sight our attention switched to the water's edge, where
we noticed numerous small mudskippers skipping about on the mud.
Making our way back to the boardwalk, we found a path heading in the
opposite direction that eventually took us to a beach, where we saw
many more, larger mudskippers.
On the way back, we walked along the beach and I took the others out to the boardwalk, where we saw a few more proboscis monkeys.
In the evening we
had dinner at the cafeteria and then headed back out onto the
boardwalk to do some spotlighting. On the way out, we didn't really
see very much, but on the way back, we spent a bit more time trying
to locate some of the frogs we could hear calling and soon enough, we
managed to find a few, including an interesting little red-brown
toad. While Zoe and I stopped to get some photos, Kate and Sarah went
on ahead to see if they could find some more. As they scanned the
vegetation, they were joined by an organised night walk group, which
was Sarah's cue to step into a gap between the wooden boards of the
boardwalk and get her foot stuck, leading to hysterics for both of
them as the tour group was forced to navigate around them.
When we got back to
the room the others went in for some cold showers and sleep while I
continued on to the mangrove boardwalk, were I came across some
geckoes and a constellation of fireflies in the mangroves, winking on
and off like Christmas lights.
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