Lightning and Elephants but Rescued by Peaches

After 2 weeks on expedition I joined Naomi in the forest for Banteng night watch duty. Naomi had already been in the forest for 2 weeks when I joined her but thunder and lightning every night had put night watch duty on hold nearly the entire time. This stormy weather continued for the duration of my stay in the forest meaning Night watch duty turned into some much-needed hours of work being done!

The lack of night duty meant we could get some running done in the early mornings before the sun got too high in the sky. On the second run the early morning and I didn’t get along too well as I stumbled, nearly saved my fall, stumbled again, nearly saved it again and then fell over, much to Naomi’s entertainment but resulting in a cut hand. Luckily we were running back towards the house so we our run wasn’t ruined. Back at the house we put our first aid certificates to use washing my hand under the tap, and putting on antiseptic cream and a plaster, it got my out of washing up for a few days too!

Post run picture complete with bad hand!

On one morning Naomi and I went for a walk logging for Banteng signs and dung, we walked along  the path by the house and just when we were about to turn around I spotted a large flattened patch of grass where a banteng had been resting the night before. So we decided to walk a bit further and found a really fresh massive banteng dung, most likely from a very large male that morning, unfortunately, or maybe fortunately we didn’t manage to see the individual. I love being up and awake in the early mornings here, all the insects are busy, the birds all waking up and the weather still cool, walks at this time of the day are truly beautiful. On a walk one morning we found a large fresh banteng dung and very close to it a very large flattened patch of grass, where are banteng had be lay resting only a few hours earlier. 

The weather was very dry and a few groups of elephants each with tiny new born calves moved into the area below the house to be close to the river, the elephants stayed around for over a week holding Naomi and I hostage in the house and putting an end to our running. The group of elephants came to graze by the house every evening,giving us some great opportunities for pictures, when there weren’t ferns in the way, and to watch the amazing behaviour of all the individuals in the group. The adults pull long pieces of grass and swing them in their trunks to get flies off their head and back and the tiny baby copying the bigger youngsters and suckling from the mother. Luckily the house is surrounded by a fence that can be electrified if needed and the elephants foraging can be seen from the safety of the house.

A plus side of being house bound was that my banteng forage project finally got some attention, I managed to get all my plant specimens mounted and get on with my write up, this also meant I had to get to grips with R, the software for my data analysis. Here is a picture of me taking over the main room as I sorted through all my specimens checking I didn't have 2 of the same, not that easy when you have 70!

Insanity-10 days of being stuck. After 8 days in the house with a few hours of laptop battery to get work done in the day, the genset running all night and food down to rice, eggs, baked beans, sweetcorn and sardines, Naomi and i reached the point of crazyness. Luckily we had for seen this point and warned Jo who had sent a huge tin of peaches into the forest with the forestry staff. The peaches arrived complete with label “In the event of insanity open and consume Immediately”.. so when the point of insanity was reached we did as was instructed.. serves 7... more like gone in 7 minutes!

The end of my time in the forest saw some spectacular thunder storms that light up the room and shake the house whilst deafening you with the rain hammering the roof. It rained so hard that the rivers were impassable meaning Naomi and I packed up all our things to leave and then had to unpack for the night and pack up again the next morning. Luckily after 10 days of being house bound we managed to pass through the rivers and get safely back to Lahad Datu.

One night in Lahad Datu is all we had before catching the night bus to KK the following evening, for our flight to Australia and our final visa run of the year. How time has flown.

Below is a picture of the washing line at the forest house, something strange had found its way onto the line that day... Piggy's bath time, brown pig is now pink again :)

Expedition and Bye Bye Sipitang

The arrival of the newly modified car meant that we could get March’s expedition underway, the objectives for the month we to check cameras in Sapulut Forest Reserve and Maliau Basin and to take down all the remaining cameras in Sipitang forest reserve as our study period had finished.

We started off with the seven hour drive from our base in Lahad Datu to Sapulut forest reserve where we stayed for a few nights. Here we stay in a contractor’s camp with electric, beds, fans, running water, a toilet, a tv and even internet! Luxury accommodation!

For the first day of expedition I always feel like a drunk person, wobbling and tripping all over the place, while my jungle legs come back. Our first day was 10kms of walking along old logging roads and also replacing some cameras which were stolen in February. An early start meant that lunch was eaten at the typical 11am and we were back at base camp by 1pm!

The next day of walking wasn’t as successful with 2 of our 3 stations of cameras having been vandalised, the camera cases had been bent and the cameras removed and burnt.

After 2 days in Sapulut we headed for Sipitang Forest Reserve. Enroute to Sipitang we stopped for lunch in Keningau and whilst Jo and I were waiting for the boys the shop in front of us was receiving its rice delivery, the workers were being stacked up with 10x 5kg bags on their shoulder and on top of their head and moving them into the shop, no hands needed!

We arrived in Sipitang in muggy damp weather and left the nice new tarmac road for the dirt tracks, arriving at the plantation workers camp in the late afternoon.

The first day in Sipitang was a dry day, so we decided to head to the cameras across the river, when we set these cameras up the river level was really low but the rainy season has prevented us accessing them since. Luckily some tree trunks had become lodged across the gap between the river bank and the broken bridge allowing us to cross, just. The boys braved the walking across while Jo and I went for a lady like crawl along the trees! Some of he camera traps were put high up in the trees to get a better view of the area but this made it very difficult to get them down, especially as a colony of ants had made their home in one.

On day 2 we split into 2 teams, Rusdi and I went off on the motorbike to collect in 2 camera stations and Jo, Lee and the 2 SFI staff headed to another area to take down the cameras there. Rusdi and I had a 10km walk along narrow paths with steep landslides on the side and over the top of a crest and then down the other side of the hill and back, with some great views out over the hills.   

On other days in Sipitang we had to negotiate big landslides and broken bridges. Some of the broken bridges had been precarious in previous months but heavy rain and the digging out of the ditches turned a fairly short walk into a long day. The walking starting with a 2km uphill climb with a 300m gain in elevation, thankfully at the end of the day when our rucksacks were full of cameras it was all down hill.

A few days later we had to go back into the area with the broken bridges and ditches to access some more cameras, this time we managed to get in on the motorbike preventing an 18km walk. Rusdi and I managed to negotiate 3 ditches, the steep hill full of ruts and the remains of 2 bridges in order to get to the point where we leave the bike for the 6km round walk to collect the camera traps. At the final ditch the mud was really slippery and we had to push the bike up the bank, Rusdi asked me to push it from the back while he steered the front, this ended in a comic scene moment when the back tyre spun mud all over me!.. but we got the bike out of the ditch!

The Banteng teams long days of walking proved too much for the SFI staff who were following us, as they both fell asleep in the car journeys on the last few days.  After many long hot day of walking, carrying heavy rucksacks and pushing the motorbike out of numerous ditches Sipitang was done, all cameras removed and all our stuff packed up. Goodbye Sipitang, high altitude chilly nights, getting the car stuck in the mud, interesting encounters with hunters but lovely days walking with great views of the mountains and great camera trap photographs.

We headed back to Sapulut to stay for two nights and to go to Maliau Basin and check the cameras there and for me to assess the plants at the banteng foraging sites for my project. When expedition was done it was time to head back to Lahad Datu, from Sapulut its about 6 hours drive and after some lunch in Tawau the only way to top of another great expedition was with MacDonald's Icecreams!

Expedition might be over but my project involved surveying all Banteng foraging sites, this included revisiting previous foraging sites. So as I had a free day  after expedition we decided to head back to Tabin to revisit some sites. The first site was meant to be about 45 minutes walk up a hill, but the site was last visited over 2 years ago and the vegetation was extremely overgrown making a 2 hours walk. When we arrived at the site the site was too overgrown to be of any use to my projects, very frustrating. Luckily the other 3 sites that I visited that day provided some great information for my project.

Whilst in Tabin one of the boys, Lee, wanted to visit his brother at Borneo Rhino Alliance (BORA). The Sumatran Rhino is critically endangered but the arrival of a newly captured female Rhino from Danum Valley had been an exciting event for the BORA team during the previous weeks. Whilst we were visiting at the BORA site I was extremely lucky to be able to see this gorgeous new rhino in her mud wallow, they have her called Iman, meaning Faith.

What a busy month, I had one day off before heading back into the jungle and on the top of my to do list was Sleep!

Here are a few more of my expedition pictures.
6am starts are not bad at all when this is the view from the kitchen.

Right- A view from the motorbike along the valleys
Below left- A great view whilst walking.
Below right- I'm glad Rusdi has good balance, I would have fallen off that plank!