Our 3 days with Mr. Aji started today . I was not sure what to expect exactly as he had no website , I found him via TripAdvisor reviews .
His son , Jerry , picked us up and gave us a run down on Sabah . It has been taken over by Palm trees . Over 60% of the forest is now Palm Trees , the law changed in 2004 to stop further deforestation but sadly it was too late .
We arrived at Mr. Aji’s B&B and then went on a 3 hour river cruise along Kinabatangan , a 560km river ( longer than Sri Lanka) . Within 5 minutes we saw a gigantic crocodile on the bank and it slid into the water towards us . That had Aanya wanting us to turn back and then we spotted a baby crocodile that she was sure was eyeing her , luckily for her no more crocodiles after that .
We were very fortunate, we got to see 3 Orangutans including a mother and a baby . The baby was jumping between trees while the mother was resting in her nest . We could see the mother slowly adding more leaves to her nest . I never knew they had nests and they make a new one every day !
We saw heaps of monkeys including the Proboscis monkey with its phallic nose , a few hornbills, herons and kingfishers . The kids did well with being so long on a boat and were singing Christmas carols on the way back .
After dinner we headed for a night trek in the jungle . It was very muddy and honestly a bit scary . Jerry had a machete with him which instead of feeling protective had me more worried of what we might encounter . We also heard growling, hissing and then sounds made to scare the elephants from the Palm plantations . Luckily we encountered nothing other than some beetles, spiders and scorpions .A scorpion made its way on to me , Jerry made us check our pants before getting in the car otherwise it would have surely bitten my butt !
Lived to see another day .
Keep posting! I love reading these.
ReplyDelete