Jungle Adventure to Kalimantan Borneo

If you've seen our facebook pictures, you probably have a good idea of what our Kalimantan trip was like, but I'll give a little recap that includes more details.
I've realized that a lot of the blogging we do will actually be great for us years down the road, since this has kind of become my form of journalling. I'm assuming that 50 years from now [ pending that we can still see ;] Chris and I will be able to look back at our adventures and all that God as brought us through, via this blog! That is my motivation [ and sharing with all of you of course ] for keeping up on it!

Now, about our trip!
We flew with 30 other teachers from SPH [ Kemang and Lippi ] to Kumai, which is a city in Kalimantan, the Indonesian half of the island of Borneo. There were six klotoks
[ river boats ] in all, each housing a family, or in our case, the two of us and our "basically family" Erik and Amanda. We lived, slept, and ate on the boat except for when we docked at random places along the river to go on hikes or go Orangutan searching. At night and when it rained, our guide would pull tarps down to cover the sides of the boat, and set up mosquito nets to sleep in.

one of the other boats in our group

Amanda and I getting settled in

our two 'hotel' rooms

Here's a pic of our guide {left} and captain {right}

They took good care of us! We didn't have air conditioning or walls around us for four days, but they served us every meal, cleaned up, and had lots of river knowledge and humor to go around!

Our main destination and stop along the river was Tanjung Puting Reserve. It was about four miles down the river and then a 1 kilometer walk into the forest [aka, not just anyone can go see them ] That was the coolest part about this trip: We didn't go to a zoo and see Orangutans in cages or any form of captivity. We got to see them in their own habitat! Borneo is the only island where Orangutans are still living naturally. 

They were pretty funny, and definitely had their own personalities!

Here's the big guy swinging in to say hello.

Fruit was set out for them to eat which helped guarantee visitors to see them, but we also saw them outside of this time as well. A female on one of the paths walked ahead of us as if she was leading, and then she'd stop, look behind her as if to make sure we were still following, and then continue to walk. We had our own tour guide!

This one gets me every time!

We also saw Proboscis monkeys in the trees as we'd float along. Our captain would stop every now and then for us to observe and take pictures. There were three groups of monkeys in this one tree -- each led by one male that you can pick out by his long proboscis [ nose ]. If you look closely, you can see there's a little bit of tension going on, and the guy on the left is about to invade the other guy's territory.

If we weren't animal observing, we spent our time relaxing on the boat. Chris and I did more reading for pleasure than we've done in a long time! That was refreshing in itself! Chris read a book given to him by one of his favorite college professors, and I almost finished the second book in the Mitford series. Floating through the jungle, soft breeze blowing by, good friends, good books. . . relaxation at its finest!

beautiful reflection

favorite adventure buddy

 Besides seeing all the Orangutans and other monkey species, I think there were two other main highlights to our trip.

{showering in jungle rain}    
Tropical showers come in an instant and then downpour! As soon as the guys felt one drop of rain coming, they hurried to put on their swim trunks and headed for the back of the boat with shampoo and soap in hand! It was their first and only shower of the trip - with warm tropical rain! They were seriously having the BEST time. I would have joined them, but there was no way of knowing how long it would last, so I just knew the second I got a good lather going, there wouldn't be enough water to rinse my hair out. I made a good decision. I was happy to be the photographer and also snag a quick video.

 {catching fire flies}

I wish I could capture the beauty I witnessed in seeing fire flies that night. I was the only one who'd never seen them before, and couldn't take my eyes off them! How incredible! As we were floating down the river at dusk, with the silhouetted jungle on each side, small sections of it started dancing with lights -- as if they were giving us the Christmas lights that we never saw in Jakarta. You could see faint colors of blue, green, yellow, and even purple. It was pure joy. I LOVED it. Then we caught some in a water bottle :] When we opened it to let them out, some stuck around so we just left the bottle on the table. By the time we went to bed, we had about five fire flies in the boat with us for the night. . . I didn't mind one bit! 

Last picture together on our boat! We were sad to leave, but excited for AC and a nice shower!