I'll Be There Dreckly: Big Nose Monkey

Saturday, 26 April 2014

Big Nose Monkey

Baku National Park, Malaysian Borneo (map)

In this blog: a gentle jungle walk, rare monkeys and a whole load of insects.

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Proboscis monkey heading out for lunch

Borneo is known for it's jungles - one of the big draws for visiting - and the small National Park of Baku seemed like a nice gentle introduction to the wilderness, so since Christian, the German traveller I'd met in Kuching was heading there I thought I'd tag along.

Despite it still being on the main island, there's only one way to enter Baku and that's by boat - a pleasant half hour journey up a river estuary then along the coast, a fun start. Being just an hour from the capital of Kuching the park is quite popular with tourists and therefore reasonably commercialised which kills the adventure a little - the paths even have distance markers every hundred metres - but it wasn't enough to ruin it. Christian and I set out straight away, walking a four mile loop through the trees, my first experience of proper tropical jungle. We crossed a wooden bridge with wild bearded pigs rummaging in the mudflats below, as well as a plethora of brightly coloured odd-looking mud crabs. The path through the jungle was well kept and very clear, but the vegetation dense, lush and exotic. The whole time I was spotting new and interesting things which were larger, more colourful, or more weirdly shaped than anything I'd seen before. It was however pretty humid though, which made it much harder work than normal over such a small distance.

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Back at the park centre we sat down for a drink and a rest. Christian opened a can of Sprite and took a sip, and we watched a rehesus monkey rummaging around in the grass outside. It looked our way then away again, slowly walked towards the cafe, climbed a wall, and before we knew it grabbed the can of drink and quickly scurried away, leaving Christian a little dumbfounded and heading back to the fridge. The jungle in Baku is also home to the Proboscis monkey - found only in Borneo and very unique with it's big nose. We were fortunate enough at dusk to see them hanging out in the trees nearby, picking leaves and buds, swinging between trees and just hanging out, unphased by all the camera lenses around. Fantastic.

We went on an organised night walk that evening along wooden boardwalks, hoping to see a few animals, but were largely disappointed on that front instead coming across heaps of creepy crawlies - stick insects, millipedes, frogs, and some pretty large spiders. Seeing a circada hatching, leaving it's old skin on a tree before flying away was particularly good.

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We went on an other jungle walk the following day, ending up at a small beach where we discovered we could climb the climb a little way up the cliffs and jump back into the deep water below; great fun. After a couple of hours of turning red, forgetting I was so close to the equator where the sun is strongest, I left Christian dozing in the shade and headed off alone a couple of miles further into the park, passing spiky-limbed palms, roots everywhere, peeling bark trees, before reaching a waterfall after an hour or so. The water below was a deep shade of black, surrounded by mossy rocks and even lusher vegetation than before. It was absolutely beautiful, reminding me of the movie Avatar, and a perfect place for a quick swim to cool down.

Some other folks we'd met at the hostel in Kuching showed up that night which was nice, though tainted by an rather odd short bald guy from Israel. This guy was something else, from the off argumentative, rude, annoying, arrogant, butting in constantly and very pedantic - it was hard to get rid of him. It was a shame as travellers I've met on this trip have been nice, but later all these character traits made sense. He was a lawyer. Still, it didn't ruin the experience, and Baku was the perfect introduction to wild Borneo.