Borneo, Sepilok: Orangutan

We got up early, crossed the river and hopped into the minivan for our drive to Sepilok to visit the Orangutan Sanctuary.

As we were driving down the dirt road to take us back to the main highway our guide pointed to a concrete building and asked us to guess what it was. Being non-descript and in the middle of palm plantations we both went for something "palm-y". Turns out it was a fake cave for swifts to nest in. There is a cave nearby that is harvested twice a year for the "edible" birds nests and this was a way of getting more nests for harvesting as they are worth a fair bit of money.

We arrived at Sepilok Orangutan Sanctuary in time for the audiovisual show, a documentary on their work, before moving to the viewing area. This was in full sunshine and stiflingly hot so we slinked off into the shade to wait for the feed. Our guide said to us that if the sanctuary was doing things properly no orangutans would show as this means that they had successfully worked out how to feed themselves. However, he said with a grin, if no orangutans show they get one out of their nursery to show the waiting crowd, quite a size by now, to avoid disappointment as this is what they had paid to see.

Sure enough, 5 minutes after the designated feeding time the staff showed up carrying a baby orangutan. He had obviously done this before and seemed to resignedly take a piece of fruit but ate it with his back turned to the crowd. The rest of the crowd were quite thrilled but we found it all quite underwhelming after being fortunate enough to see them in the wild. We were really quite pleased that none showed up because we are in favour of the orangutans living without supplementary feeding, and knew that our entrance fee would help to rehabilitate more orangutans.

I suspect our guide knew that we wouldn't care much for what we saw so we were the first to leave. Turns out this was a good thing because right beside the track in a palm tree was one of the female orangutans with her baby. We were much closer to her than the punters still back at the viewing platform were to the young one!

We checked into the Sepilok Jungle Resort just around the corner from the sanctuary and spent the rest of the day at the pool, resting up before tomorrow's travel day. Mind you, did seem a bit weird sitting undercover in our bathers when it rained!