The Jungle Report

Just back from 3d/2n in the jungle. I think I probably could go the rest of my life without seeing another monkey and I would still have had my fill. But I'm sure I will see many more on the trip, and that's OK too. In the jungle I saw the following: proboscis monkeys (only found in Borneo), orangutans, macaque monkeys, silver lipped moneys, a crocodile, a pit viper, the biggest butterfly i've ever seen and a zillion bazaar looking birds. No elephant or python sightings, though they were suppose to be around. It was pretty awesome and definitely wild. But I was certainly back on the tourist track. There were more people than monkeys and many sites (and there were alot of monkeys!) so that was a little lame. Where aren't their tourists? Winters, I guess...I did make some friends and nearly got adopted by a very nice Dutch family (wife, husband, 14-yr old son). There headed to Sipidan today for diving and I almost went straight there with them, but some (boring-to-you, important-to-me) logistics got in the way. Might still get there and meet up with them.

Ok, here is the picture of the pit viper:

My favorite part about seeing the viper was not getting bitten by it. The boat driver navigated the boat so that the snake was directly over my head, with the snake about 3-4 feet away. And while I will say that no one probably deserves to be bitten by a pit viper, this French lady in front of me got pretty darn close (to deserving to be bitten and to getting bitten...). The snake is in that attack position in the picture because she stood up when the guide told her to sit down, grabbed a branch about 1 foot from the snake that was blocking her view, then stuck her camera literally less than a foot from it. Holy Maird! Any, if that would have made the snake fall and bite me, it sounds like I would have up to 2 hours to kill her before dying myself.

There were also many many bugs in the jungle, as you might expect. And they also bite me quite often, as you might expect. There are almost always bugs crawling on you and there is always sweat dripping on you, so it is hard to tell when to slap about in a panic. So I just bitten. Its OK, I'm taking malaria pills.

So, the proboscis monkey was really the star of the show. We saw them everywhere. You'd seen pictures of them before I'm sure. They are the one with the really big noses. No? Ok, here are some pictures I took of them:

The are actually quick large. The largest, or one of the largest monkeys on the planet. And they jump around (tree-to-tree) alot. Which is pretty neat.

OK, that's all for now. Need to rest and try to figure out had to get to wherever it is I'm trying to go now.

Oh, BTW, today is my 1 month SoliDuding anniversary. So far, so good. Definitely looking forward to Katie's visit though. Getting adopted into a Dutch family would have been nice, but there is no substitute for real family...

Talk at you all soon...

-erik