Ambles & Rambles of Newt and Julie: Trip to Borneo

We spent an amazing four days in the Kalimantan province of Borneo, exploring the wildlife there, mostly primates, birds and butterflies, flowers and trees. We were in and around Tanjung Puting National Park. We stayed in Rimba Lodge, part of the Eco-lodges of Indonesia system. The lodge was rustic but clean and comfortable, with air-conditioning for nights, mosquito nets, hot showers and good food. One will never go hungry as a tourist in Indonesia. We were fed breakfast, morning tea (always with snacks), lunch-a full meal with rice, vegetable, meat, fruit, etc., afternoon tea, dinner . . . We met people from England, France, US, Australia, Netherlands, Canada, all there to see the wonders of the area.

Camp Leaky is the old research center, established in 1971, by a German doctor, who still continues her primate research and treatment, but now in Kumai. Researchers and graduate students come from all over the world to train, observe and participate in the programs here. This NP is the center for care, treatment and research in the field. She started by taking in infant orangutans that had been orphaned by poachers, those found for sale in markets, those found sick or injured. There a now multiple generations in those family lines. They all have names and the rangers and guides who are daily in the area know them by sight. They observe their health, chart and name their off-spring. If they are too ill or injured to be in the wild, they are taken to the center to recoup, and then are released back to their habitat. These are the orangutans at the established feeding stations that tourists can observe. There are wild orangutans living on the many varieties of fruits found natively in the Borneo jungle. There are also long-tailed and pig-tailed macaques, proboscis monkeys, gibbons, and probably others. The birds species are too numerous to name, but seeing a storm stork, hornbills, and beautiful bright blue kingfishers were highlights.

One of the most wonderful parts of the experience is that once you get into the harbor of Kumai after your flight in, you do not get into another car until you are brought back to the harbor by boat and are driven to the airport again. The river is the only “road”, with klotok boats, little motor boats and row boats. Otherwise, you are walking on boardwalks or trails through and around swampy areas. In one village, there was a cobbled, brick street through the small area of houses, and we saw a couple of motor scooters, that workers would ride to work at the palm oil plantations. There was one larger village of about 300 people, and a couple of smaller villages. The palm oil companies are a big employer. The companies are either Indonesian or Chinese, and employ villages in manual labor. The other big employer is the tourism industry, both the NP and the eco-lodge, ands tour boats. Borneo is threatened by deforestation and loss of habitat for its precious wildlife because of the palm oil companies wanting more land to remove jungle and plant palms, and from timber harvesting. There are gold and zircon mining camps threatening the rivers with silt and chemicals. Education and modernization threaten the way of life of the villagers. These people live with a foot in each of two very different world.