Borneo 2015 – day 10

Wednesday 8th July

The next morning, we headed out in the boat again, nice and early at 06:30. I asked yesterday afternoon if it was safe to swim in the river. I was given a very definite no, there are crocodiles in the river. Right then! No swimming, it is. So, I was pretty keen to see a croc. As we cruised down river, Liam suddenly swung the boat in toward the shore, pointing. I didn’t see it until it moved, and unfortunately, I had my camera on all the wrong settings. By the time I’d got my settings right, the croc had slithered into the water and disappeared. He was big, too. Probably 9-10 foot long. I made a mental note to constantly be aware of what settings I had dialled in on my camera. If we were cruising in a shaded area of the river, I’d alter my white balance settings to ‘shade’. If we headed back into sunlight, I’d switch it back to ‘daylight’. Some of the time, I’d shoot on manual exposure, and some of the time, I’d shoot in aperture-priority…
The rest of the mornings cruise turned out to be a non-event. We didn’t see anything of great interest at all. Eventually, I gave Liam the signal to swing the boat around and head back to the village for breakfast.
The day was much more pleasant than yesterday, although it was still warm and humid. We ended up wandering up to a resort which was located at the end of the village, and getting ourselves a cold drink and buying an hour of their wi-fi. This enabled Cath to book our accommodation for Saturday, Sunday and Monday nights, and for Max to download a couple of podcasts to listen to. No, we haven’t booked everything up front on this trip. We deliberately decided that we would “wing it”. That way, we’re not locked into a rigid schedule. And in all honesty, it’s been a great way to travel! It adds to the adventure because every day has only been planned a day or two prior. Most nights, we are happy to ‘slum it’ in 2 and 3 star accommodation, knowing that our last 3 nights in Kinabalu will be in abject luxury.
We wandered back to our homestay around 15:00 and Liam announced that we would leave on our afternoon boat trip at about 15:30 today. We figured he wanted to allow the extra time to get further up river to find the elephants again. We headed off at the allotted time with a young couple from Belgium on board with us. We told them all about what we’d seen yesterday and they were quite impressed. I noticed that Liam wasn’t puttering along the banks as we’d done on our previous two outings. This time, it was full speed up the river. Half an hour later, we came up on the same stretch of river we’d been at yesterday, and there they were! But they had actually moved back DOWNstream toward the village by about half a kilometer. And unlike yesterday, today there were a couple of young elephants actually playing in the water!
The herd had split into two groups, one on either side of a small tributary that ran off from the river. We moved past the first group (where the two juveniles were playing in the river) and approached the second group, a little to Cath’s dismay. She wanted to watch them in the water. But to our astonishment, Liam aimed us at the bank, cut the engine, and we slid right up onto the sand! The elephants in this group were again about 10 metres back from the shore, munching on the grass. At this point, there was only us and one other boat there. It was super quiet. Thankfully, I had my Tascam pocket recorder in my camera bag, so I gave that to Max and had him sit there recording audio for me. He looked at me kind of quizzicaly, until off in the distance, we heard one of the bulls roar. He ended up recording for about 14 mins and I think I got some good sounds on there. Can’t wait to get home to check it out!
Naturally, more photos were taken, with some great close-up shots of faces possible, and lots of images of interaction between members of the herd. I love the community-mindedness of these animals. They are so family oriented.
Later, we moved down to the other group of elephants, but the youngsters had since got out of the river. However, as freakishly lucky as it would seem, while we were there, two more young elephants (might have been the same ones, might have been different ones) came down and started playing in the river right in front of us! Cath had a smile a mile wide, I swear.
Again, we headed off downstream feeling particularly blessed by what we had witnessed, and how close this herd had allowed us to get. On one hand, you understand their need for personal space, but on the other hand, you had such an urge to get out of the boat and stand on the river bank. Of course, to do such a thing would be inviting trouble, and as nature-loving people, we know better. But geez, you kind of wish you could!
We were headed back to the village, this was our last boat trip, and I had yet to get a photo of a crocodile. In all these river trips, we had seen so many pieces of wood floating on the river that you kind of became blaise about anything that even looked like a crocodile.
Until… we came around one bend in the river, and about 50 metres ahead and slightly to the left of us, I saw a shape on the water. I immediately dismissed it as another piece of wood. But then, as I watched, it submerged. And as we passed the spot where it had been, we could see bubbles breaking the surface. I pointed and said “THAT was a crocodile!” I turned as I said it, and the girl from Belgium confirmed that yes, she had seen it as well. So, we SAW a croc, but I still didn’t get a picture of one. Oh well, such is life.