Today we had a nice leisurely start to the day as we knew we arrived in port at 10 am. We had pre-booked a ship’s excursion called the Kilia Mangrove Cruise.
We met in the Stardust Theatre probably 25 minutes ahead of our scheduled 10:15 meeting time – and that mean we got a seat while waiting for the ship to be given clearance by local authorities to disembark. For some reason we were delayed 20 or 30 minutes in leaving the ship. When we did depart, we were delighted to see high quality comfortable motor coaches.
And we appreciated those coaches, because we road in them for 2 hours to get to our destination! We arrived at our destination just before 1 pm and had a lovely buffet lunch (which was a good thing – J had asked the excursion desk if we were fed on this excursion and was told no – so we would have been very hungry!)
We were very fortunate with our weather today. Our guide told us that they had monsoon rains as recently as yesterday, and it rained while we were under cover eating lunch but cleared beautifully for our boat ride.
After lunch, each of the four busloads of tourists were loaded onto boats on the Klias River.
Our guide Herman immediately spotted a crocodile that was very close and I failed to capture it with a picture!
We were fortunate to get a great viewing of the proboscis monkeys or long nosed monkey. They have is an an unusually large nose – that measures up to 4 inches in length on the male. It is found in the Southeast Asian Island of Borneo and is found mostly in mangrove forests and on the coastal areas of Borneo island. Coincidentally – where we are today! Our guide, Herman, told us that three countries exist on the island of Borneo - Malaysia, Brunei and Indonesia. The proboscis monkey can swim up to 66 feet under water and easily swim across this river. These proboscis monkeys are often seen walking in an upright position and are habitually bipedal. There are only about 1,000 of them in the wild now and this Klias Wetland is one of the finest paces in Borneo to see them!
We were also fortunate to see long-tailed macaques. These macaques are known to drink a lot of water and to eat crabs. They have a social hierarchy dominated by the females where the males tend to leave the troop!
See the baby to the right of the two adults!
We were very pleased to have worn sunscreen and Tilley hats in the heat of the day (about 30C) on the water. This mangrove boat ride was the highlight of the whole day!
When we returned to our starting point, we loaded back into the buses for our return to the ship. We arrived back on the ship until after 6 pm. We then were in the dining room to start dinner at 6:30 pm. It is considerably busier in the dining room one hour later and therefore took us longer to eat.
We decided to go upstairs for a hot tub on deck 11. So here I am at 10 pm at night typing my blog! Tomorrow is a day at sea and we set our clocks back one hour tonight so I can afford to be up late!
No comments:
Post a Comment