Blog for 2009-07-11

From BiodivBorneo09

Shana

Last Day of Maliau Hike

PHEW! Today was the last day of our 4 day trek around Maliau Basin and we just had to power through it. It was truly wonderful to have had the opportunity to hike through this forest and see everything that we saw.

We woke up (some of us after a more restful night of sleep than others- sharing a piece of plastic stretched between two logs with another person isn't totally ideal for sleeping even though the cuddling is cute) and grabbed some fruit for the final few km of our trip. Most people had a relatively easy hike down, complete with lots and lots and lots of slipping and sliding down muddy slopes. Team Sick (Abby, me, and Cam to keep us company) took our time hiking and it was totally worth it. A pig-tail macaque walked right in front of us as we emerged from the forest and not two minutes later a huge black hornbill flew overhead. Another group of hikers had an intense human-primate interaction: some irate long-tail macaques threw sticks at them.

Showers were taken by all us stinky intrepid travelers, and people generally relaxed for the rest of the day. After dinner Cam showed the tropical rain forests episode of Planet Earth. Watching that is a totally different experience after you've spent time hiking through an undisturbed forest: you appreciate all the hardships the filmmakers went through in getting footage and you realize just how special all those amazing shots are since things in the rain forest are less apparent than you'd imagine based on nature shows (several weeks of observation go into one 2 minute clip).