Victor and I were fortunate enough to be able to attend a teaching conference in Borneo, Malaysia last week. We stayed at a beautiful 5 star resort in a city called Kota Kinabalu. Four pools, bowling alley, tiki bar, incredible food you get the idea...However, what was even more fortuitous was that a short 45 minute flight across the island brought us to a nature preserve for endangered orangutans to which Renata has been buying trees since she was in 2nd grade. Cool, huh? Because to be honest, when you live in Portland, Maine, there are not many locations that are more remote or exotic than the island of Borneo.
So we took a 7 am flight across the island and were able to hire a van and driver to ferry us around two nature preserve. Not surprisingly, lots of folks visit that part of the island to see orangutans. What we learned we arrived was that the trip can be a bit of a two-fer or, in our case, a three-fer. First, we drove out to the orangutan preserve and arrived in time for 10 am feeding time. As we and the crowd of about 100 folks there learned, orangutans are kinda shy, so they take a while to show up for their snack of fruit and milk. Macaques, other hand, are happy to put on a show and eat orangutan leftovers. The bottom picture
features a mom and baby grooming. Of course, she just said, "Lift your arm, for god's sake." Meanwhile, behind the macaques, three orangutans were swinging down ropes and filling their bellies. Finally, fifteen minutes into the side show, the big daddy orangutan featured in this second photo lumbered onto the stage about 10 feet from us. He was majestic. When I smiled at this beautiful 200 lb creature, Renata corrected, "Don't smile, Mom, he will think you are challenging him and attack you." Well, there is that.
When we returned to our taxi, our
driver brought us to a neighboring nature preserve that protected proboscis monkeys. These are the funny guys who are featured in the other two photos. According to my biologist husband, the males with the biggest noses are the ones that get their own pack, get to eat first, get groomed the most frequently because, "turns out the ladies like the big noses..." Really? Here is one of the dominant males in picture three. Just fabulous...
