Orangutan

Since I arrived in Indonesia I have always known that orang means 'person' and hutan means 'forest' in bahasa indonesia but I had never realised how impressive those forest people were until I saw them for real for the first time in my life today. They are simply amazing creatures with long arms, reddish-brown hair and a human look. We even had the chance to see an imposing flanged adult male and quite a few offsprings. I learnt that the females usually stay with their babies until the age of sevn and that the males are quite independent from the women generally only meeting to mate. They also spend nearly all their life in the trees. I am still stunned by the experience.

Nepenthes Ampullaria

What a day! It was absolutely gorgeous! We left in the morning to Kampung Bako to catch a boat to go the river to Bako National Park. Leaving the jetty we were already graced by the sight of a crocodile. In the park itself we decided to make the 6 kilometers Lintang trail. We are relatively good walkers having walked places like the Cradle Mountains in a record time but I must admit the heat killed us and I personally ended the trail on my knees! But it was very rewarding. Regarding the fauna, we first saw dozens of common macaques and just a few hundred meters into the trail we saw the famous proboscis monkeys with their funny noses which are quite a rare and unique sight. And for the flora, we are not specialists but we obviously encountered some interesting species including many different types of nepenthes. The ones above are the nepenthes ampullaria which are very distcinctive from any other species in the genus and they also probably are the only ones to have moved away carnivory.