Sukau River Criuse; betrayal of last years Valentine

I returned to base non too anaemic to find we had many visitors; Daniel, the Ecoteer founder and his new assistant Charmaine, along with a Danish family, friends of Tobin the Humana director. It was great to have a little euro conversation. So it was straight off for a river cruise along the Kinabatangan River which is a reserve and wildlife corridor through the plantations. It is about 10 km away from the plantation and we all boarded the school bus to get there.

I am currently working with Hutan which is part of Kintabatangan Orangutan Conservation Project, see link on the left, who are bringing an exhibition to the schools here and we hope to visit with the older students to do some conservation work with them.

The river is the second longest in Malaysia and this reserve only one of two, home to 8 different species of primates.

Yes you have guessed it we did see another Orangutan, but again not very photogenic it was busy making a nest in the tree and all we could really see was an occasional long orange arm reaching out for another branch, apparently they make up to three nests a day and we could see many along the river bank trees.

We saw macaques too, performing startling acrobatics as though trying to get a better look at us!

The area is also famed for 

its bird life variety and I managed to photograph 2 varieties of hornbill, one of which is called the rhinoceros hornbill for obvious reasons.

We were really privileged to see 5 elephants having their afternoon bath, this is how I prefer to see my elephants, during day light and the other side of a river.

But here is my new Valentine, I think we are well matched, the Proboscis Monkey. One of the things small children are fascinated with me is the size of my nose, they always want to touch it, perhaps they think I have strayed from the jungle, but at least here I have met my match.