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 :)