WanderingWhy…

On this trip WS has been obsessed with seeing animals.  First it was the turtles in Costa Rica.  Then it was the penguins in the Galapagos.  Then it was a whale on the Great Barrier Reef.  Then it was monkeys, anywhere and everywhere.  I thought after we saw tigers and elephants in Thailand, that he would be obsession free.  Oh how wrong I was.

In Malaysian Borneo, there is a rehabilitation center for Orangutans.  I could not believe he had developed a new obsession, but when I found out there are only four centers like it in the world, I relented.  Okay, let’s go see some Orangutans.

The Sepilok Orangutan Rehabilitation Center opened in 1964.  It is used for animals who were orphaned, injured (such as from logging), or wrongly kept as pets.  It can take as long as 10 years to return the animals to the wild.  The rehabilitation is a careful step by step process, starting when they are infants, teaching them how to climb and swing, teaching them to hunt for their own food (fruit), and then either returning them to another reserve, or having them live on their own within the Sipilok reserve.

The center is only open to visitors when the Orangutans (translates Men of the Forest) are living on their own within the preserve, but are still being supplemented with milk and fruit.  There are two feeding times a day to see the Orangutans, and we attended both.

Feeding One was at 10am.  As we stood in the viewing area waiting for the feeding time, one of the ropes in front of us started to vibrate.  Out of the trees swung an Orangutan.  This was the first one we had ever seen in the wild and it was amazing.  He swung so gracefully on the rope, gliding his way to the feeding platform, his red fur glowing with the sun behind him.  We were mesmerized.

The feeding took maybe 20 minutes, and in that time we saw about a dozen Orangutans.  Accompanying them on the feeding platform were some monkeys who knew the Orangutan was the boss.  Hooray for WS, a double primate whammy.

Got milk?

The center closed for a few hours for human lunch, then reopened for a second feeding in the afternoon.  We returned at 3pm for round two.  Feeding Two was much less touristed.  There were maybe a third of the number of people, but also only a third of the orangutans and no monkeys.  With that being said, it was also the best viewing.  Because there was less noise and less people, the Orangutans came a lot closer to us, walking on the boardwalk, sitting on the railing, and climbing the trees right in front of us.

We tried to keep back from the animals, but at times it was hard.  One ran right into the back of WS as he was watching another Orangutan in a tree.  Watch where you are standing, WS!

It was an amazing, indescribable experience.  The Orangutans look at you with such intelligence, with their hands and feet so humanlike, you can’t help but being taken by these animals.  I know we were.  But we also thought, wouldn’t it be nice if we did not have to have rehabilitation centers for human caused problems?

It costs roughly $1500 a year to rehabilitate one of these gentle creatures. If you are interested in sponsoring an Orangutan, please visit www.orangutan-appeal.org.uk or call 089531180 for more information.

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