We arrived at the Lodge after winding down more muddy roads, and crossing a river in a rickety old boat that took us away from all civilisation as we knew it. We checked into our rooms and had lunch. It was quite a quaint little lodge, particularly in comparison to how much we have been spoilt at our superfluous hotel.
We met a couple of Aussies, Debbie and Simon, and Jenny from Manchester, and spoke to them over lunch.
****Chelsea moment #7? Chelsea was feeling a little too isolated at this lodge, as she likes to have the freedom to come and go as she pleases, which wasn't possible at this lodge, and was commenting on this to our fellow countrymen. 'I just get really anxious, you know, like I found Perth really claustrophobic because it's just so isolated from everywhere else, you know? So, where are you from?' Yep. Good one Chels. At least Debbie and Simon gave her hell for the rest of the day.****
After lunch we went out on a river cruise to view the 'amazing wildlife'. Saw a few birds, a snake, and an ant's nest, courtesy of Jenny. A competition started up whereby if you spotted something, you got to have a glass of wine, and Jenny felt very firmly that her crappy ant's nest counted. Simon felt otherwise, and, well, it passed the time.
It was actually quite pleasant and relaxing just cruising slowly up the river. We saw a couple of long-tailed macaques (monkeys), which was pretty cool. Then we struck a family group of LT macaques, of around 20. We sat there for about 20 minutes watching the family interact and crash through the trees, foraging and bickering with one another. The babies were particularly cute. We kept cruising and saw a smaller family group numbering around a dozen. We then turned around and went to the bigger river to look for proboscis monkeys, which I was desperately hoping that we'd see. Proboscis monkeys always make me laugh, the males always remind me of old men, perching in a branch with their pendulous noses and beer bellies, just watching the women scurry around. All they need is a remote and a beer than they'd be set.
Fifteen minutes later and we found a small group of them. Hurrah! It was pretty damn cool, despite four other boats hovering around to have a look. We watched for about another 20 minutes. The photos probably won't work very well as they were too far away, and to get a good view of them we used binoculars.
We scooted back to the lodge and prepared ourselves for dinner. We sat with Debbie, Simon and Jenny and chatted over very long tables whilst we ate tea. Yep, rice, meat and sauce. If I don't eat rice for, say, a year, I will be okay with that. Anna: no rice. I don't want any more rice. We discussed the night walk that was to take place after dinner, and Chels discovered that we were to encounter many leeches. She was NOT okay with this. We could buy leech-proof socks which prevented them from crawling up our pants and choosing a particularly warm part of our upper leg to fed on, but for some reason she still did not want to come. It could have possibly been my lengthy description of their jaws and how they work, or maybe she just felt tired. Who knows?
So after din-dins she retired to our room and I went out walking. The first thing I noticed in the forest is how incredibly humid it was, it was quite cool at the lodge and it was increasingly hot and sticky the further we wound in.
It was very muddy and there were leeches everywhere. Millions of leeches, leeches for me. Millions of leeches, leeches for free...... Thankfully they weren't the fat little bastards we have at home, they were very thin and red, which made them less scary, despite their tendency to hang off leaves and wave at you like an inching worm everytime you walked past.
We only saw a few things on the walk, a few spiders, a few harvestmen (like huge daddy-long legs), a snake, stacks of leeches, some bugs, stick insects. You know, jungle stuff. It took about an hour, and I quickly returned and had a shower and went straight to bed. I was tired, but Chelsea was grumpy. Wow, poor Kano. She is mega......uh.......tetchy when she is tired. We at least got to sleep with mosquito nets over our beds. Nice.
So to sleep and ready to start at 6am for day two....
