Up early Saturday morning, we were ferried across the river for a 2.5-hour van ride to the town of Lahad Datu.

There, we switched to a 4-wheel drive Landcruiser for another 2-hour drive to Borneo Rainforest Lodge in Danum Valley, deep in the heart of the Borneo rainforest.

I booked this part of our trip through Borneo EcoTours and said “yes” when given the option to upgrade our stay here. But I did that months ago and had forgotten all about it.

Suffice to say that we were pleasantly surprised to find out about the upgrade and what it included; for one, a private villa on the river with a plunge pool:

Since we arrived just after lunchtime, we still had enough daylight to get in a little hike in search of orangutan.

We were assigned a private guide for the duration of our stay, Farah. She helped us get suited up with “leech socks,” loose fitting cotton “Christmas Stockings” that leeches have a hard time clinging to.

Sooner than expected, Farah plucked a leech off Dale before it was able to latch on and start bleeding her.

The trailheads for most of the hikes here begin from the road into the lodge. Away we went, stepping off the road at the “Natural Trail”…

but quickly going bush once Farah confirmed by radio that the research team tracking “Kate,” a 14-year-old female orangutan, was nearby.

We found them well off-trail and watched Kate build her nest for the night high up in the trees above.

The orangutan researchers (that’s one of them on the right, below) record their subject’s activities every two minutes, from sunrise to sunset. They do this for 3 weeks, then get one week off, then they’re back at it. What a job! My neck was hurting from looking up after just 15 minutes.

The next morning we were up early for another hike, deeper into the forest, on the other side of the Danum River that runs alongside the lodge.

The tall trees in the rainforest have a surprisingly shallow root system; instead, they are stabilized by buttress roots spreading out horizontally. Farah explained that the soil more than a few feet down is of poor quality, plus there’s no need for a deep root system to get to water.

The two tree trunks below, though they look similar, are from different species on hardwood. I don’t recall the name of the one on the right, but the one on the left is a mengaris, one of the tallest growing species in the tropics, reaching as high as 280 feet. Its branches grow above the surrounding canopy, making it difficult for the sun bear to climb; consequently, honeybees make their hives in it.

We hiked to the Danum River,…

… crossing it on a cable-bridge…

… from which I took this photo, looking downstream. Later today, we’ll be doing a rafting trip and will pass by here.

Made it to Jacuzzi Pool waterfall!

Here’s a sampling of what we saw along the way. That’s a bat sleeping inside a palm leaf on the bottom right.

After lunch, we went for a short hike to the raft launching area upriver where we joined another couple and our river guides. We climbed aboard the raft and pushed off into the current.

Here’s our villa from the river as we drifted by:

And here are two happy rafters together with our Malaysian power paddlers.

If was a relaxing float down the river. Our river guides did all the paddling; I never even dipped my oar into the water.

But we didn’t see any wildlife, which was surprising after all that we had seen on the Kinabatangan River.

Then it occurred to me: there’s no development here, deep in the Danum Valley Conservation Area, a 169 sq. mi. tract of relatively undisturbed lowland rainforest (gold star on map, below).

Here in the Danum Valley, there’s forest and water everywhere, so the animals have no need to go to the river or congregate near the lodge.

But on the Kinabatangan, where timbering and plantations have encroached, the wildlife has been pushed toward the river. And being swampy, the Kinabatangan River provides the animals with not only water, but food, as we saw with the pygmy elephant on the boat ride in, munching happily on elephant grass.

Let’s see what we can find tonight.