Great Apes

Friday 3 September 1999 – Monday 6 September 1999                                       

From Yogya we took a plane north to Indonesian Borneo, known as Kalimantan.  Borneo is the world's third largest island, and until recent times it was chock-full of headhunters and trees.  The 20th century was kind to neither.  While it's a lot tamer than it used to be, Kalimantan remains one of the least visited parts of Indonesia, as it is an expensive and time-consuming place to explore.  This was no deterrent to Pippa when she learned that Kalimantan harbors the world's premier orangutan reserve and rehabilitation centre.

The orangutans living in the forests of Borneo and the neighbouring island of Sumatra are the only great apes outside Africa.  Due to widespread deforestation perpetrated by the (often illegal) logging business, their habitat is rapidly being destroyed, and these beautiful and intelligent creatures are now in real danger of extinction in the wild.   Led by a Canadian researcher, Dr Birute Galdikas, the Tanjung Puting researchers study orangutan behavior, and also take in orphaned, homeless orangutans confiscated on the black market.  (Orangutans can fetch $30,000+ apiece in Europe, and although it is illegal to own one in Indonesia as well as in many other countries, with such a hefty price tag the practice of shooting mother orangutans in order to capture and sell their babies is still a thriving business.)

As the only route to Tanjung Puting is a crocodile-infested river, a sturdy boat is generally advised.  We duly negotiated arrangements with a local skipper and spent the next three days on boat safari, waking up to the chortling of gibbons before sunrise and eating dinners on our candle-lit deck accompanied by every kind of flying insect imaginable.  Fortunately, this was not the extent of the wildlife:  gibbons, beautiful blue kingfishers, enormous red dragonflies, crab eating macaques, long-nosed proboscis monkeys, large monitor lizards and even larger crocs were plentiful.  Baths in the river were conducted in record time.

We paid visits to each of the three centres in the park during the course of our stay, usually timed to coincide with one of the feeding times where fruit and milk are left out on a wooden platform for those former orphans who are only partially integrated back into the wild.  (Orangutans spend at least eight years with their mothers learning how to survive on their own; when the mothers are murdered the youngsters rarely manage to acquire the skills and knowledge needed to live as nature intended, even with the help of well-meaning naturalists.)  Contact with the animals is not encouraged, but because a number of them are used to the presence of humans, they are not at all shy about coming down to the feeding stations if people are around. 

Perhaps the most striking thing about being in such close contact with these animals was how eerily similar they are to us.  Orangutan is Malay for "man of the forest", and the local tribesmen have always been fascinated by their orange-furred neighbors.  Their fingers are just like ours, complete with fingernails (they even pick their noses!) and the mothers care for their young very much as we do, while the males can be exceedingly protective and territorial.  One of the oldest residents of the reserve, “The King”, is a legend and even the rangers keep their distance when he struts into Camp Leakey.  Not that Eric was to be dissuaded from such an incredible photo opportunity when he had the chance!  Two of our most endearing memories though will be of an early morning visitor who actually ventured onto our boat before breakfast one day and, to Pippa’s horror, found a bottle of mosquito repellent, unscrewed the cap and proceeded to chug!  (A quick-thinking park ranger immediately washed his mouth out, and he was none the worse for wear.)  The other encounter was a slightly older female orangutan who stole our bar of soap from the jetty one morning whilst we were bathing in the river and decided she too would soap herself down.  She worked up a beautiful lather on one of her arms, but instead of rinsing the suds off she proceeded to lick it off with relish! 

On our last evening, we wound our way back downriver as dusk arrived and stopped to watch yet another group of proboscis monkeys gathering in the treetops next to the waters edge.  As the sun began to set, we watched the silhouettes of their long noses and even longer tails waving among the branches whilst sipping beers on deck and munching appropriately named monkey nuts. Pure heaven.