Thursday, 9 July 2015

A REAL LIFE WILD ORANGUTAN!!! (And a very cool little Tarsier!)

Oh my wow, what an awesome 12 hours!! Last night one of the guides spotted a Western Tarsier in a tree so we all bundled out to see him. What a little gem!! HUGE round eyes and funny little feet and just such a cutie!! It’s very rare you get to see one of these so we were totally stoked! That alone would have made my week!

Then this morning….
We were out on the lake about 6am with our cameras hoping to catch some of the early rising birds on camera for our crowd-funding video (nb. watch this space)…For what it’s worth, this kind of thing is definitely one of those things where you think…I’m sat in a boat, on this incredible lake, in the middle of a jungle, and this is actually blowing my mind!

Now here we arrive at the point in the story I’d rather not share, but it probably needs to be included to make your image of our situation more complete….

We’re sat on the lake, in the middle of this tranquil lake paradise, when suddenly nature strikes, and I suddenly need to go to the loo. Incidentally we’d been out there 45mins and had just spotted our first kingfisher of the day, but when needs must….so we rapidly turned around and paddled in to shore so that I could run to the facilities. On my hasty way to the loo I passed a tourist fresh back from a trail with a big grin on his face…”We’ve just seen a mummy orang-utan and her baby just beyond the end of the camp!”…SAY WHAT?!!!!!! The first sighting of an actual wild orang-utan and I have to go to the loo!! There was no way I could stop so I shouted out “THAT’SAMAZINGCALLBRODIEANDTELLHIMTOGETTHECAMERASANDGOANDI’LLCATCHUPWITHHIMAFTERTHELOO!!” as I scurried past!

Of course the message was lost in translation…Brodie thought I’d ran on ahead so only brought his camera and disappeared off into the jungle so by the time I was out again there was no sign of anyone. The tourist pointed me in the direction everyone had headed, and I (thank God!) eventually found them. And it was incredible!! We watched mummy and baby for a good 15 minutes as she bashed around above. Needless to say, day, week, month, year absolutely made! J


No camera for me though, so here’s a little Tarsia photo of Brodie’s so you get a taste. 

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