First item on our our itinerary for the second day was a 3 – 4 hour walk on the “Coffin Cliff trail” (named after an ancient burial site in the mountain face along the trail), followed by a swim in a jungle pool. Sheila didn’t go — she didn’t enjoy the short walk the day before, and didn’t think a longer walk would be better. She didn’t think we wold see very many animals, and she was right – we caught a glimpse of a gibbon troop that passed through, but that was about it.
We didn’t see any animals in the jungle, but we did encounter plenty of leeches. While we were waiting to climb onto the platform at the overlook, one fell out of the sky (or possibly a tree?) onto my hand. It was very hard to flick off – they do latch on.
I had long pants, and leech-proof socks, but when we stopped at the pool and I zipped off my cargo pant so I could go wading, I found blood on my leg. Somehow, a leech had gotten in, sucked some blood, and then escaped. (I didn’t feel a thing.) While we were hiking, Sheila had explored the area around the lodge, and got a leech as well.
I think everyone at one point or another found a leech on them.
Sheila and I had seen a lot of the famous Borneo wildlife (Bumphead Parrotfish, Barracuda vortexes, Orangutans, Proboscis monkey, Cloud leopards, Sun bears, and more), but we had not seen the Borneo Pygmy elephants. They had been sighted recently, but were moving away. So instead of a canopy walk at dusk (to see flying squirrels), we opted to pay extra for a private tour to find the elephants.
We drove back down the road for almost an hour – most of the time it was pouring down rain. Occasionally our guide stopped a driver coming to ask about elephants, and once we were told they has been spotted. We were almost back to the entrance when we got out of the truck and sat in the seat on top — fortunately it had stopped raining for the moment.
It was just dusk when they drifted out of the jungle onto the road. (They kept their distance and shied away when David shone the light on them, so these photos are pretty grainy.)
Although they are the smallest elephants in the world, they are still pretty big.
It got dark, we turned around and drove all the way back. When we arrived back at the lodge we ran into the rest of our group coming back from the canopy. Evidently it had rained hard. “I’ve had showers that were drier than this walk” one of them said.