Hello All,
It was a bit of a hassle trying to find where the bus was located but thanks to the help of some friendly locals
we eventually managed to locate and catch the bus out to park.The Sepilok Orang
utang Rehabilitation Centre was set up in 1964 to
rehabilitate orphaned baby orang utan. Set in the lush 4,300-hectare
Kabili-Sepilok Forest Reserve, the Centre is under the administration
of
the Wildlife Department of Sabah A boardwalk leads you to a viewing
gallery and
feeding platform where the apes are fed milk and bananas twice a day.It is not a Zoo and
Feeding time also attracted long-tailed
macaques to the area and from what we witnessed it seemed that the
Orang utan were mainly interested in the milk on offer and were happy
to let the macaques eat more than their fair share of the fruit on
offer.
Seeing the relatives has always been high up on the ´must´ see list
along side the Big 5 in Africa ,Gorilla´s in Uganda, Polar Bears and
many others so it was something that we had been looking forward to for
a long long time.As you know Orang-utans are the closest living
relatives to humans and it was
extremely easy to see a close physical resemblance between orang
utans
and humans.They even share some very human traits like cleaning
their fingernails with their teeth ,picking their noses and scratching
their arse´s.
During our time at the Orang utan Rehabilitation Centre
we had the opportunity to get quite close to a couple off the
orang-utans because
after the initial feeding people seemed to immediately leave the area,
which as we were too learn was a big mistake as two orang utans
stayed around and this allowed us to get quite close to them.Often the
Orang-utans, which were walking along the board walk railings, would
stop
and look over their shoulders at us to see if we were still following
and it seemed to me that they weren´t concerned that we were following
them they actually seemed to want us to continue on
the slow journey back into the jungle.On several occasion the young
female Orang-utan would stop and sit on the railings and as a
consequence we would stop as well so at times she was no more
than
a couple of metres away from us.They say that looking into the eyes of
a orang-utan is like looking into the eyes of a human.Not sure that I
would go as far as to say that but I do think that they have very
soulful eyes and MOST seem naturally shy and gentle very similar to me
in nature I think!!!
We obtained our permit from the rangers and set off on our 5km walk in
the rainforest but didn't find any big wildlife just small insects and
bugs. It was
oppressively hot and humid in the rainforest so we were glad to be out
again soon. We checked our legs for leeches but couldn't find any but
later whilst watching a documentary about the centre we had to laugh
because some else who had been walking in the rainforest seemed to be
continually removing leeches from himself during the initial part of
the documentary. Later it seemed that we may have been a little hasty
in
thinking that we had survived the leech infested rainforest unscathed
because
Vanessa had just had a shower and was sitting
in
her pyjamas when I noticed a growing blood stain on the leg of her
pants and
upon closer inspection we discovered that a blood thirsty
leech had
obviously attached itself to her thigh , filled up and left unnoticed
just leaving a
bleeding hole which thanks to the anticoagulant was bleeding like a
stuck pig.
Anyway back to the story .Between the first and second feeding sessions
we had several hours to kill .We did contemplate going to the
Rainforest discovery centre but decided that it was just too hot so we
sat watched ,waited and listened whilst eating our picnic
lunch of tuna ,crackers and apples that we stole from the orang utan
fruit bin. We saw a wild horn bill in the trees and we watched a
beautiful butterfly ballet before deciding that it was time to get up
and wander around. Found a black and white banded snake near one of
the buildings but it sped off before we could capture
the moment on film ,watched monkeys hiding from the sun under the
quarantine
section of the complex and after numerous watching lizards scampering
off in every direction when we approached we discovered that it was
time to re enter the centre.
afternoon session
Got in early and it wasn't long before a couple of orang-utans turned
up with mischief written on their faces. They climbed onto the board
walk and approached us and another person. There were no staff around
at this point. We avoided the orang-utans but the other person ended
up with one
clinging onto his leg and then it proceeded to unzip his waist bag and
try
and pull out the contents. He ended up giving me his camera and waist
bag to me but then the orang utan decided to suck on his knee before
heading down
and biting one of his shoes. It was funny watching him try to peel the
orang-utan off as each freed hand was replaced with a foot or another
hand but eventually he freed himself. We had no intention getting
involved. Then two more tourists turned up and got chased around by the
orang utans. We were doing circles around a partition keeping it
between us and them but for some reason a couple of older asian tourist
decided to stop. Not a good idea. One orang-utan grabbed the ladies
backpack and proceeded to open zippers and remove items from within
the bag.At one stage one of the orang utans had a USB cable in its
mouth and a camera case between its feet. The orang-utans then turned
their attention to her husband his big SLR camera and his camera
bag.They tussled with the SLR camera for a while and when it became
evident that they were not going to win that new play toy the
camera bag became their next target.Unfortunately for the two tourist
the naughty orang utans managed to acquire the object of their desire
and to our horror and amusement one of them managed to unzipped the
bag pulled out a couple of expensive looking camera lenses and
commenced banging them together whilst the other zipped the padded
lining out of the bag.Thankfully the rangers eventually showed up
and the two orang utans were taken away with big grins on their faces
to sit in the naughty chair and calm was restore.Another orang utan
was also removed for some demeanour and it was carried away by another
two rangers . This was about the time the the masses arrived and the
official feeding session commenced only to discover that they had
missed the main.Only two orang-utans came to the feeding platform and
neither seemed overly interested in eating the fruit on offer but
yet again the uninvited macaques hooked into the fruit with gusto.The
event was over with 15 minutes as the orang-utans disappeared back into
the jungle.I think that some of the tourist that came too late for the
main event ,the naughty juveniles, walked away a little disappointed
but we certainly weren´t.
Bye,
David and Vanessa
