13 Sep 08

The generator provides electricity for several hours a day, during which Chloe and I have been getting on with our orangutan reading, which is stored on the computers. After lunch, the generator goes off, and we take the opportunity to read, walk in the jungle or learn some Malay. The other day I’d opted for a few more of Phileas Fogg’s adventures from ‘Around the World in 80 Days’. I was sat outside the station and had just reached a planned rescue attempt involving an elephant and some angry religious fanatics, when I realised I’d been listening to a crashing noise in the trees for some time. On investigation, it turned out to be an orangutan, so I ran in to get the others and dashed back to my room to get ‘jungled up’, ready to follow it into the forest if that was where it intended to go. It was indeed heading into the trees, so Dave and I followed at a respectable distance. Quite liking the great apes, I get a little excited when we see one, especially so close to the field centre. I don’t know if you can then imagine how it felt to realise that there were in fact three travelling a few trees apart!

Following orangutans in the forest involves a fair amount of scrambling through stubborn undergrowth, a large amount of sitting around whilst they plough through a particular tree’s supply of fruits and a huge amount of swatting at mosquitoes, but we followed them until the sun started to lower itself and we thought it best to head back to a path before darkness fell. Unfortunately, we under-estimated the amount of daylight we had left and it was dark before we knew it.

I’m quite forgetful, and there’s always something I forget to put in my pocket before we set off. Sometimes it’s my penknife or a notepad. This time it was my head torch.
As a teenager running around Wareham Forest on cadet night exercises I’d had a bit of experience navigating around pine-filled obstacle courses in the dark, but that was a piece of proverbial cake in comparison to our walk back to camp. I challenge anyone to follow a trail marked out by green (what a stupid colour for a forest…) dabs of paint on tree trunks in a pitch black forest using the light of a battered old Nokia mobile phone. However, not having another option, this is what Dave and I did, and after losing the trail again we headed north knowing that a yellow trail would fall across our path at some point. Amazingly we spotted a ‘yellow’ tree and followed the trail back to the jetty and from there, the field centre. Four and a half hours after we set off, we arrived back just in time for dinner, which Chloe had been helping to cook all afternoon!

Just to make the evening a little more eventful, on returning to our accommodation, I realised that I no longer seemed to be in possession of my video camera. Overriding the panic, I remembered that the batteries had died shortly after leaving the field centre and I’d hung it on a branch to give my neck a rest whilst we were stood under a tree, dodging bits of falling fruit from the orangutans’ afternoon-tea. I honestly thought I’d never find it, or if I did it would be in the morning after an enormous storm would have rendered it useless. Either that or an inquisitive macaque would have acquired it as a new play-thing. Dave and I each grabbed a torch and headed a little way into the forest and tried to remember which tree we’d been stood by. This was obviously a ridiculously impossible task. We split up and I desperately shone my trusty headlight around muttering ‘Please let me find my camera. Actually, please let me find it this evening. Well really, I’d like to find it quite soon, otherwise I’ll be lost before I know it and then I’ll have an even bigger problem. Please, please can I find my camera so we can go and have dinner?’ And just as I thought those last few words, I walked into my poor video camera, left dangling on the least noticeable tree in the jungle, with an incredible looking moth perched on its case.

Lessons learnt:
1. Always carry a torch.
2. Never hang photographic equipment on a tree, unless there’s only one tree in the area.
3. If you don’t ask, you don’t get!