Hi All,
Long drive from Semporna to Maliau Basin. We made an early start
and knew that it would be a long day to drive to Maliau Basin but hoped
to arrive in time for a walk in the rainforest. Unfortunately our
scenery was Oil palms as far as the eye could see for most of the
journey. Not exactly wild Borneo. We drove to Tawau before following
the sketchy signs towards the park. We filled up and I estimated that
the car was getting 20km per lt and with a 30 lt tank should get about
600km under ideal conditions. This was important as the park was
another 180km away and we didn't know where the nearest petrol station
would was located. It looked like it was going to be an easy drive on
good bitumen until the 80km mark and we reached a large roundabout. The
rest of the journey was on a reasonable quality dirt road but was slow
going and the palm plantations slowly gave way to rainforest after
about 50km. The last fuel station we found was about 50km from Tawau.
It took about 3hrs to reach the park gate and then we had to deal with
their bureaucracy before heading the next 30km to the accommodation at
the research centre. The couple of wasted days at the start of the trip
were costly so we only had time for an overnight stay. Quite
frustrating. I noticed that there were relatively fresh pygmy elephant
droppings on the road and a large flying squirrel ran across our path
before Vanessa spotted, what appeared to be a rhinoceros hornbill in
the trees, as we drove along. The accommodation was very good but it
felt more like a resort than staying in a wilderness area which annoyed
me. Additionally the staff were not overly helpful in advising us about
walks and we were told that we needed a guide. Not impressed. We found
our room and dropped off our bags then went for a drive, found a nice
creek about 10km away and went for a walk along it without a guide. I
was a little concerned about the amount of fuel in the vehicle so we
didn't venture too far but did find the river with a swing bridge and
an unlocked gate near the accommodation when we returned. We went for a
walk along the river path and realised that we could have walked to the
waterfall in the afternoon if we had been told about the path location.
We went to the room and enjoyed the balcony watching fireflies for a
while before heading out looking for wildlife from the car.Half expecting to find elephants so I was a bit
nervous about bumping into one along the way as they seemed to
have been using the road as a path but we only found a few bearded
pigs. We returned and went for a walk with our torches and found a
civet hunting near the road A what? Looks like a cross between a domestic cat
and a ferret.Heard the rain coming and only just made it back to
accommodation.
Day 7.
Got up early to spot wildlife and listened to the jungle waking up.
Found
a bearded pig but no other wildlife on the way. We head a whooping and
popping call but were not sure whether it was a bird or monkey and
found out days later that it was gibbons calling. The number of calls
and volume increased dramatically as the dawn broke and despite that we
could hear them call we couldn´t find them even though we knew that
they had to bee relatively close by to our position We listened to a
woodpecker hammering out a tune in the distance as we walked back to
the accommodation block and packed the car to leave.
It is a little frustrated as we have not got enough time to stay and
walk deep into
jungle for a few days we would have needed a week in the rainforest to
explore but not on this trip.Time running out too quickly.Maybe next
time?
Bye for now
David and Vanessa
