Days at Danum pt.1

Arrived back in Sandakan at about 8:30pm then had to wait bloody forever for my checked baggage. which put me at about 9:15.. Now almost midnight and i have a few minutes before i turn in. I'm deciding to start writing about my experiences at danum valley while they are still somewhat fresh in my head.

March 22nd, 2012

I left that morning from the BSBCC staff house with little enthusiasm..i had really gotten used to living and working with the staff..and i still do miss them :( however, i had to move onto different things to broaden my experince range. And so, I boarded a bus to Lahad Datu that morning. the bus ride was long and boring as most are, but eventually we pulled to a stop on the edge of town. I got down, a promptly bought a 10rm phone credit so i could call the man who was to make my dream of visit danum possible. this lovely gentleman, by the name of Andrew Hearn. Andy for short. hes currently working on his PHD studies at ocford university..and i was allowed to tag along! I cannot say enough good things about Andy. very Polite but still a bit whacky..never loses his cool, even in the most frustrating of situations. top guy. i was also introduced to the 2 research assistants Gul and Gilmore. they gave me a lift from lahad datu all the way to danum valley field center..a two hour drive or more..gul and gil sat in the back of the pickup truck, while andy and I made chit chat inside.. Along the way, i saw my first leopard cat and masked palm civet. that night as we arrived i found at the hostel some swedish students who were visiting. that night they had spotted and photographed a tarsier..and so close to the hostel! i spent the next few weeks, almost nightly, searching for this creature but never found any.. the next morning 23rd,i was briefed as to what we were doing. Andy's research required him to have a plausible number of the population of clouded leopards within Sabah..so here in Danum we were going to set camera traps in hopes of making positive IDs of the cats and counting them from a sampled area..the entire range to be sampled was about 100 square kilometers.......yep.. thats alot of jungle trekking and camping..we set about testing the cameras he had brought from his last survey..we filled them with new batteries and cleared the memory cards. the two kinds of cameras used were the panthera brand and the reconix brand. reconix being the better quality and by far the most numerous..bythemselves, the cameras weighed almost nothing.. maybe a few ounces.. but coupled with is steel casing.. they got heavy very fast..ontop of that we were to lug all our camping supplies and food aswell untill some of the backpacks were over 20kg.. however it would be a few extra days of preparation, before we actually set out and camped for more than 1 night..its now getting late a i will continue this at another time.. stay tuned :)