A TRIP OF A LIFETIME: PART 4 (TRAVEL DIARY IN BORNEO)

Last year we hosted a major competition for “A Trip of a Lifetime” with our friends at The Orangutan Project. In October 2018, our lucky winner, Cathy Parker, went on an 8 day Orangutan Odyssey Riverboat Adventure in Borneo hosted with Sumatra Orangutan Odyssey Tour!

In our Part 3, the Parker Family documented more monkey sighting, re-planting trees in the rainforest and releasing baby turtles! Follow along for Part 4 of their amazing travel experience…

Day 6

Today we are back to the Pangkalan Bun airport to fly to Ketapang in West Kalimantan. Here we get to visit a local school and share some gifts of school equipment which we brought from home.

Tate and Bronte were a hit as all the girls and boys wanted their photo taken with them. They were a bit embarrassed but I’m sure it was great for their ego.

Day 7

Today we visited the Indonesian branch of the International Animal Rescue. Here we see orangutans that have been rescued from people who have illegally kept them as pets, or rescued from rainforest clearing. There are also many orphaned orangutans (and other animals like this nocturnal glider monkey).

We also got to see first hand some of the great work done by Leif and The Orangutan Project. They funded the building of cages and fencing in the compound.

The compound has several ‘islands’ which are separately fenced areas where they release animals into to prepare them for re-integration back into the forest. We walked the length of one of these islands (the fencing was donated by TOP) and could see just how big a project this is.

A highlight of the trip was to see the baby orphaned orangutans coming back from their daily play time to their cages.

Once they were back in their cage, they each received a baby bottle to settle them down for the night.

Our last day ended with us watching the sunset over the beach…

Thanks to Aware Environmental for allowing us the opportunity to experience this diverse and unique part of the world, made extra special by the fact that we were able to share this experience with our children.

Cathy & Brian Parker

The End!

What an amazing 8 day experience for Cathy and her family! We are so happy to have provided this experience for them, along with the hard work of our friends at The Orangutan Project, Leif Cocks and Orangutan Odyssey Adventures. A big thank you to Cathy for taking the time to document her experience so that we can live through her lens (seeing a barrow full of adorable baby orangutans made us melt!)

Did you enjoy following along? Read our last blog post entry for Cathy’s key learnings from her experience.