Woke up a 5.30 for our morning river cruise at 6am. We got in the front seat of the boat again which was great for wildlife spotting and taking photos. We saw two different eagles and horn bills as well as the odd monkey sitting in the trees. We returned to the lodge for breakfast at 7.30. The plan for the morning was a jungle trek to ox bow lake but since it was so muddy the trek was reduced to an hour and a half to somewhere else in the jungle. We had planned to go kayaking during the free time after the walk but we decided to skip the walk and take the kayaks early instead. After last nights muddy night walk we decided we didnt enjoy walking in muck up to our calves especially with the added fun of tiger leeches (which are found on leaves in trees instead of on the ground and will drop from above and can get you anywhere) which we thankfully didnt encounter on the night walk.
We went kayaking with another couple Marie and Yoni who were from Canada. The current was quite strong but we slowly managed to make our way up river seeing some birds nests in the reeds and trees. We saw some very large storks flying in circles overhead - about 12 of them -which was very cool. We kept paddling up river until we came to a small tributary which we decided to go up.
There was no current in here and it was quite narrow with lots of plants/trees hanging into the water. We heard lots of noises around us including something crashing around in the vegetation and something else climbing a nearby tree very loudly. We kept an eye out for crocodiles as we were told that when the river rises ( which it had ) the crocs swim into the tributaries & Tim spotted a couple of things dip below the water as we approached.
A boat came through from the other direction and he told us ox bow lake was just a few minutes up the river!! We continued paddling to the lake which was flooded and was fabulous. It was a huge lake surrounded by trees. We paddled around it looking at the birds and monkeys and heard something large in the tree beside us but since the trees were so dense it was difficult to see what it was. We headed back to camp and made it back in time for lunch. The people that had gone on the walk were talking all through lunch about the leeches they had how muddy it was so we were so glad we kayaked instead!
After lunch we had another boat cruise at 4pm which was amazing. our guide went speeding down the river ignoring any monkeys or birds we came across - we were obviously on a mission to see something further down stream.We came across an orang-utan which was climbing up a tree near the river bank but it was difficult to see it properly. We sped off again further down the river and eventually came across about 40 pygmy elephants along the bank of the river and extending back into the jungle. They were gorgeous especially the babies and the ones in the water. We watched them for a good while before we continued on to see lots of different types of birds including one of the large storks, we had seen flying earlier, sitting in a tree.On the way back we saw 3 different types of macaque monkeys playing in the trees very close to us and some had babies. We saw more proboscis monkeys and flying hornbills too. We returned to the lodge for dinner.
After dinner we skipped the night walk and instead swapped photos with Marie and Yoni.
No comments:
Post a Comment