Borneo has one of the largest bio diversities in the world, yet I hadn’t had the chance to see its well-known main primates.
As I was looking through a wide range of wildlife spotting tours, one directly caught my eye, the proboscis monkeys and fireflies’ river cruise. Not only were I totally unfamiliar with those two species, it was also only at a two hours’ drive from Kota Kinabalu.
I booked my tour and the pick-up was arranged at 2pm. Once entered the Amazing Borneo van, we were ready to go.
The beautiful scenery crossed during our ride made me forget about the bumpiness of the roads. It was raining really hard so I started to feel a little worried that we might not be able to see anything during our cruise. Luckily, when we arrived at the Klias river the sky cleared up.
We were welcomed at the jetty and directly invited to join a nice high tea. We had half an hour to relax before getting into the boat. It was a good moment to talk with my fellow traveler, all while sipping on a cup of Tea/coffee and munching on a little selection of local snacks.
While waiting, our driver managed to catch a fish, for diner he said as fresh as it can be!
Richard, our tour guide told us that we actually might be lucky with this weather. Due to the early rain, temperature dropped creating the perfect climate for the monkeys and fireflies to show up.
We put our lifejackets on and entered the boat. After a couple of minutes on the water, we spotted our first monkeys. As they were not the proboscis monkeys we didn’t hang around them for long.
We made our way on the river, enjoying the fresh breeze as the boat moved faster.
The captain spotted some movement, he stopped the engine and slowly approached the riverbank. There they were, a big group of female proboscis monkeys!
One of them was carrying a baby and that was the cutest thing I had seen that day.
Our knowledgeable guide told us that the males even with their big noses are much harder to find as they are shyer then the curious females.
The captain started the engine again and we were off to go, we now knew what to look for! The moving branches in the trees would give the monkeys away and the further we went the more monkeys we spotted.
On our way back, our captain put a bit more speed on the boat. It was amazing to race on the river with a speedboat! I wasn’t the only having fun as I could read the excitement on everyone’s face!
Suddenly the captain turned off the motor as he noticed a big male monkey sitting very close on a tree close to the river. We were all silently staring at this creature eating his leaves when Richard told us that the proboscis monkeys have a funny nickname. Because of their big nose and big belly, the locals also used to call them “the Dutch monkeys” referring to the Dutch colorizations. As a pure Dutch girl, I didn’t know whether to feel offended or bursting out in laughter.
The sun started to set behind the trees when we arrived back at the jetty. Diner was ready so we could directly grab a plate. There were a lot of different dishes at the buffet. I tried most of them and really enjoyed tasting the local vegetables as well as the fried fish which was excellent! It might have been our driver’s earlier catch, who knows?
When it was dark enough to go chase the fireflies we went back on the boat.
The captain shone with his torch in the dark wilderness when he quickly noticed something in the water. A crocodile he said, a crocodile! He cut off the motor and slowly got closer. The torch was pointed towards it so we could see it too. It was a wild baby crocodile. He might have been little, but that didn’t make it less impressive. We got too close and it vanished away from the surface. The captain said if there is a baby, the mother shouldn’t be far.
We all switched on our crocodile radar when I suddenly felt as being part of those jungle exploration documentaries looking for red eyes popping out of the water.
Some guests spotted two eyes in the bushes so we rapidly went towards it. My heart started to beat faster even though I had no clue where to look. A couple of seconds passed before I finally noticed the crocodile. He was much bigger then the first one but fortunately for us not as big as a full-grown crocodile.
We continued our river cruise and spotted our first fireflies. I didn’t really know what to expect but I definitely wasn’t expecting this. The whole tree was covered with twinkling green and yellow lights flying around. It felt a little bit magical, the fireflies, the trees, the reflection of the moon in the water, something out of a Disney movie.
A few fireflies made it to our boat, attracted by our lights. We managed to catch some of them, letting them twinkle on our hands before releasing them back. Their lights are due to a chemical reaction in their abdomen told our guide.The further we went, the more fireflies we could see. In my opinion those trees must be Christmas trees from the jungle.
We got back at the jetty after 40 minutes and prepared ourselves for our way back to our hotels.
TIP for this trip: It is possible to rent some binoculars for RM10 before entering the boat, it can be very useful as some monkeys are well hidden in the trees and sometimes quite far too.
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