Honeymoon Day 6 – Orangutans

This has been just the best day ever!

The first of three excursions into the nature reserve was to view the orangutans at feeding time. There are four orang-utans in the reserve but it is only Katie and Reg, the two younger ones, who come down to the feeding platform. The other two tend to fend for themselves more. So the two youngsters came out but tended to stay up in the tree tops and didn’t seem to care for the food that was put out for them.

At one point while swinging round on a solitary tree Reg decided to urinate on the people below. He first did this by accident slme time ago but because ofnther eaction he got, he tends tom do it on purpose now!

When everyone else had left we hung around and Katie and Reg came down to the platform and we watched them being hand-fed and got to stroke them. They are quite strong as I found out when Reg tried to grab my camera from me! Afterwards we went back down to the clinic to watch Tenten get fed in the little room that she calls home. It was really great to see these beautiful creatures up close. A truly memorable experience!

The next trip was after lunch, a canopy walk in the reserve guided by Leslie. There was some interesting flora including the porcupine tree and shy fern. We got some great views of the resort on the canopy walkway which was 15 metres above the ground.

The rest of the day was spent sunning ourselves on the beach and then our final trip was a night walk, guided again by Leslie. Torches were a necessity as it was pitch black in the reserve. As we made our way around through the jungle we came across some scorpions, tarantulas, giantants, cockroaches and sleeping macaques. Sadly no mouse deer or other nocturnal animals that can be seen at times.

When we got back to the reception, one of the rangers had captured black spitting cobra which had been spotted on the nearby golf course. Beinbg very careful not to get in its way we watched as it was released into the reserve.