Friday October 19

Friday October 19: 5am start, had a quick coffee and toast before heading out in the small boat at 6 for some early morning wildlife spotting. We putted along with our excellent guide Fernando, who seemed able to spot birds and wildlife from afar. We were out for several hours and saw lots of birds, such as egrets, various eagles, hornbills, kingfisher. Also several types of monkeys, including the proboscis monkey, they are quite strange looking, the males having prominent noses. Lots of long tailed macaq. We then headed back to the lodge for breakfast and a shower. After a little rest we set off down river again, just for 5 minutes, and docked at a small village where we got in a vehicle and drove about 20 minutes to the Gomantong Caves. Swiftlets and bats reside here (many thousands), the centre was literally full of guana (poop), several feet thick, we walked around the outskirts on a boardwalk which was also covered in lots of spots with guana, this made walking slippery and we certainly didn't want to slip on our ass! There were centipedes, and loads of cockroaches walking on the boardwalk too - pretty gross! This is another location for collecting birds nests (for the Chinese soup lovers). Then it was back to the lodge for lunch. Then we went to the lodge next door (by boat) for a slide show about the Eco lodge and their conservation methods, how they support locals, and wildlife photos. Next up was a boardwalk through the rainforest looking at plants and trees and their medicinal uses. We had afternoon tea and the rain really came down, we sat for another half hour until it cleared enough to go on our afternoon wildlife spotting. Only 4 of us went, the others were too nervous to go in case we had torrential rain again! They missed out because it was a good afternoon, we saw loads of monkeys and just before we set off back to the lodge we came across a tree with a large platoon of monkeys of varying ages jumping around and playing. We sat watching them for about 10 minutes, they were quite acrobatic and comical. We saw a couple of very young ones who were so small they were having difficulty climbing the trunk, every now and again they just slid back down. It was now getting almost dark so we headed back. Dinner and another early night.