As a traveler, these are the types of experiences we grow to crave.

The Night Dive

I turned around in the water and saw my other two dive buddies, clearly thinking the same thing I was – I want to see the white glitter! Despite the fact that it was dark, and we had big square masks separating us, I could see the looks in their eyes.  Simultaneously, we all pointed our flashlights toward our chests, nearly extinguishing the lights, and started twirling, running our hands from side to side, and kicking around in the water, stirring up the plankton, which created a white glow. The bioluminescence was incredible, falling around us like white glitter, following our every move.

With every swish of the fin, we were putting on shows for each other. Somewhere a few meters away, our dive master realized we were squirreling around, mostly because he could no longer see us, and tapped his tank – the universal diving sign for “pay attention!” We giggled a bit into our breathing apparatuses.

Encountering Octopi

I had been jealous of some of the other dive groups, as they had seen an octopus or two during our dives in the Similans.  I had never seen one before and was dying to know what they looked like. Out of the corner of my eye, I spotted an uncharacteristically white sea creature.  Immediately, he started morphing like a chameleon to black, then to purple, before settling on a nice beige that would allow him to blend in with the rock. I finally understood what all the fuss was about.  The changing colors put any art I could create to shame.

The Cherry on Top: Manta Rays!

“You’ve got a better chance at winning the lottery than seeing one, but it just might be out there,” a dive master said during our final dive briefing. He was talking about the manta rays – something we had all hoped to see, but never took as a given. It was my final of 18 dives for the trip, and I had yet to see one.  I was hoping today might be the day, but my expectations were managed.

About 20 minutes into the dive, I heard frantic tapping – it could only mean something amazing was nearby, and some other divers had just seen it.  Hoping we weren’t too far away, I spun around several times, looking up, into the blue, just about everywhere all at once. Then, like a plane gliding overhead, it soared over us, flapping its giant wings like an angel of the sea. If it were possible to cheer under water, the ocean would have erupted in roars and shrieks of delight from several dozen divers.

There’s something truly amazing about viewing sea life on their own turf.  I was merely a spectator, along for the show, keeping my distance but admiring everything I saw, taking in every moment with gusto. As a traveler, the ocean is another part of the world that I want to see every inch of.  If you’re like me, the Similan and Surin islands are sure to impress.

*Special thanks to Wicked Diving in Khao Lak, a great choice for anyone looking for an awesome diving trip in Thailand’s Similan Islands. 

The post Scuba Diving the Similan Islands in Thailand appeared first on XpatMatt.

Cristina and I were camping in Ithala National Park in South Africa when a couple invited us to share dinner around their campfire. Five minutes into the conversation the man turned to me and said, “I’m sailing to Antarctica with a couple friends and we need another man. Are you interested?”

Two months later I was stepping off a plane in Ushuaia, Argentina, the southernmost city in the world, and catching a taxi to the public sailboat dock.

There would be six of us (four South Africans, a Canadian, and myself; an American) none of whom I had known for more than five minutes. Together we would sail a 50-foot aluminum-hulled sailboat across one of the world’s most dangerous stretches of ocean, The Drake Passage, then spend several weeks exploring the Antarctic Peninsula.

Most people who visit Antarctica travel aboard a cruise ship with over a hundred passengers and pay $8000 for a 10-day visit. I had somehow found myself embarking on my dream journey, paying only for my share of the food and fuel (amounting to $400) and getting to spend nearly a month wandering alone in the Antarctic wilderness. And I didn’t even really know how to sail.

Two thirds of the way across the Drake Passage we awoke to a fright. John was on watch when he poked his head below deck and shouted, “ICEBERG!” When the sleepy crew and I had finally squirmed out of our sleeping bags, we emerged to see a block of blue ice fading into the darkness behind us. It was as tall as a skyscraper and as wide as a city block. And we had barely missed it. Icebergs are not normally seen this far from the continent. Time to turn on the radar.

We completed the crossing in four days without further incident, landing inside the crater of Deception Island in the middle of the night. The next day we would lose an anchor attempting to dislodge ourselves, but from here out I hardly concerned myself with such issues. I was in Antarctica, and I had come to see the wildlife.

In the hold I discovered an inflatable kayak, still in the box and never used. I pumped it up and discovered it was hardly more than a pool toy, just a thin layer of vinyl all around. But it was my ticket to freedom. At the first stop I donned my foul weather gear, wrapped my camera gear in plastic bags (in case my un-seaworthy vessel should capsize) and carefully lowered myself into the tipsy little craft. With a flimsy plastic paddle, I propelled myself across the crystal clear water, which hovered as close to freezing as physically possible without actually freezing.  Within minutes a Minke whale surfaced twenty yards to my left, blew a spout of steam into the air, and dove. It passed directly under on my kayak, too deep to see, and surfaced again on my right for another breath. I was exhilarated, but it also suddenly occurred to me how ridiculously dangerous this was. I was alone in a remote continent on a kayak that I could probably sink by giving it a sharp look, in deep water so cold that I would probably die of hypothermia within a minute if I fell in. And I had neglected to put on a life jacket. On top of that, there were leopard seals around.

The leopard seal had grown in my imagination to be the most fearsome predator in Antarctica. Certainly it wasn’t the biggest; an orca outweighed it by many tons. But something about its reptilian face and lithe neck and wide toothy grin made it undeniably creepy to me. Unlike an orca it could travel both land and sea. It had recently been reported that a leopard seal had killed a scuba diver, and even more recently there had been reports of leopard seals biting and popping inflatable dinghies just for their own amusement. Some said they appeared to enjoy the sound of air escaping from the gash.

I didn’t know how much of it was hype or hyperbole. I only knew that a leopard seal was the one thing I most wanted, and least wanted to see at that very moment. In the distance a large slug-shaped creature slipped into the water from a floating patch of ice and disappeared.

Over the next couple weeks I paddled to many strange shores, set foot on a dozen islands, wandered alone amongst vast colonies of Gentoo, Chinstrap and Adelie Penguins and was accepted as one of their own. I saw molting Elephant Seals, cavorting Fur Seals, fat Weddell Seals with their cute curly whiskers and Crabeater Seals with their bizarre sieve-like arrangement of teeth. We passed Humpback Whales that breached beside our boat, and Minkes and Orcas. I watched Skuas and Giant Petrels devouring penguin carcasses and was bombarded by Antarctic Terns near their nesting grounds. And yes, I even saw a few leopard seals lounging lazily on the pack ice as they yawned their gaping pink maws toward the sky and eyed me with their watery black eyes. But it was always from a distance. That is, until we landed at Booth Island.

I hiked across the island in my tall rubber boots, and discovered a hidden cove that was collecting a spectacular assortment of ice formations. Upon one of these bergy bits rested a large spotted grey torpedo. As I watched through my binoculars, it raised its head like a snake and my heart jumped at the realization of what lay in front of me. A leopard seal, just twenty feet from the shore.

I clambered down among the rocks and snow and approached the pebbly beach as slowly and quietly as I could. I was now fifty feet away as the seal’s icy bed continued to drift toward the shore. Finally it lodged amongst the rest of the frozen detritus and the leopard raised its head. It looked straight at me and opened its vast nostrils like two gray-lipped mouths to inhale my scent. The ferocious beast did not leap from its icy perch and tear out my throat. In fact, it was no ferocious beast at all. It was just a seal that occasionally ate penguins and other seals, but in fact spent most of its time sieving tiny krill from the water. He blinked once at me and lay his head back down to continue his nap.

I crept closer still and reached the edge of the water. I was wearing my waders so I was waterproof up to my chest. The seal dozed on as I entered the freezing water, trying not to slip on the round grapefruit-sized stones under my feet. I approached within ten feet. His ice bed protruded only a couple feet from the water so he loomed now at eye level, a hulking form longer than me and certainly twice as heavy. He rolled his head lazily toward me as my body tensed. I noticed a trail of bloody feces dripping down the back of his ice mattress, a reminder that this was indeed a hunter that lay before me. But he gave no reaction, only a mild curiosity registered on his features. I snapped a few pictures of the magnificent animal and then looked into his eyes. If he wished, he could have leaned over and engulfed my skull in his gaping jaws. Instead he sighed deeply and turned his muscular torso away from me. I took this as a signal that he was bored of my presence and backed slowly away.

I don’t condone approaching wild animals, and in retrospect I realize it was a selfish impulse that compelled me forward: my desire to feel the thrill of being near an animal that frightened me. Yet it gave me an understanding that I lacked before: that this was no monster. He was just an individual like myself who might occasionally harass others for his own entertainment (like biting into a zodiac to hear the hiss of air escaping) but who otherwise went on about his life doing his best to survive and every once in a while enjoying a nap in the sunshine. He smiled his great wide smile at my back as I stumbled to the shore and disappeared over the ridge.

About the Guest Blogger

Hal and Cristina blog about wildlife and their travel adventures at  travel4wildlife.com. You can also keep up with them on Facebook and Twitter. 

The post A Close Encounter With a Leopard Seal appeared first on XpatMatt.

The first part of this story involves five weeks of anxiety and headaches over whether or not I’d been a first-class idiot. I entrusted $250 USD in cash to a virtual stranger to secure a spot for me through his “special backdoor connections” on a gorilla trek in the Bwindi Impenetrable Forest in western Uganda. I had arranged to stay with him five weeks hence as a couchsurfer, and relied only on couchsurfing karma that he wouldn’t gyp me.

One thing after another held up the permit; my safari-guide friends said the deal didn’t sound legitimate. When I arrived at his place five weeks later, he had no permit. Yet, on the day he promised, he woke me inside my mud hut on Lake Bunyoni at 5:00am and we puttered in a boat through the darkness – there was no electricity on that side of the lake — to a car waiting on the far shore. We drove through heavy fog at an excruciatingly slow pace, and after the fog cleared, at an alarming pace that sent women and children, cows and goats fleeing from the road into the ditches.

When I arrived at the ranger station, they told me nobody else had shown up for the trek. Probably because it had been practically raining solidly for several days. I knew that typically treks only went out when they were booked with seven or eight people. My heart sank. Very, very low.

“You are very lucky!” the ranger said.

“What?”

“You’ll have the gorillas all to yourself! This is almost unheard of. We’re taking you to the largest habituated group.”

I filled out some paperwork, paid some more money, and I was off with my guide and armed ranger. The sun was shining clear and bright for the first time in three days.

The ground was muddy, rocks slippery, and my pants were immediately drenched from brushing against the rain-soaked foliage. My guide was in contact with the trackers, who had left several hours earlier to locate the gorilla group. After only an hour, we had come to a spot where we would leave the trail and cross overland to encounter the gorillas. Apparently, this was an unprecedented pace. With little ol’ me as the only tourist, we made good time.

As soon as we left the trail and began descending a steep slope, the origin of the phrase, “impenetrable forest,” became crystal clear. My guide hacked through branches and vines with a curved machete, and half the time our feet weren’t even on the ground, but on top of slippery masses of plant growth. This, in and of itself, was quite an adventure. The armed ranger quickly and deftly whittled a walking stick for me to help steady myself as we traversed the steep slope (I had foolishly declined one at the beginning of the trek).

We eventually emerged into sunlight near the bottom of a wide ravine and stepped over an enormous pile of poo. My guide stopped and told me to put all food and water inside my daypack. He warned me not to look a charging gorilla in the eye, but said it was OK, otherwise, to catch their direct gaze. He asked if my camera was ready and, after a few more steps, he parted some bushes with his machete. There, less than 30 feet below me, were two mountain gorillas lazily grooming each other.

I was so stunned and overwhelmed by their massive presence, I didn’t even think about raising my camera. After a couple minutes, my guide said, “It’s OK to take pictures.”

“Oh right!” I whispered.

Tourists are allowed only one hour with the gorillas, and this is strictly enforced down to the minute. Gorillas are huge, but the impenetrable forest is astounding in its ability to hide them. If I had been with seven other people, I would have had to wait for a turn to peer through the bushes at the gorillas, and overall, I would have had only a fraction of the time I had in direct visual contact. My guide was extremely accommodating to me, gently pushing aside branches that might have been in the way of my camera.

“You are so lucky,” he said to me. “They are here in the open ravine. Seldom can you see their whole bodies like this out in the open. Also there are two silverbacks here at the same time. And look … there is the new baby, only three months old!”

I followed his pointed finger to the bottom of the ravine and squealed like a piglet over the sight of the tiny gorilla suckling at its mother’s breast. The mother, my guide said, is the largest female gorilla anyone around here has ever seen.

As she fed her fragile baby, one of the silverbacks lumbered over to her, his ponderous weight crunching and crackling branches beneath his feet. The demeanor of the gorillas all around me – they were behind, before, and on either side – was so mellow that I didn’t feel frightened, but witnessing their sheer size moving through the forest so close to me did strike a rod of electricity into the core of my adrenaline system. Picturing one of these guys running toward me led to instant heart-rate elevation.

I spent my time about 50/50 looking through a camera lens and simply standing quietly in the gorillas’ presence. And because I was by myself, it was truly a meditative, I venture to attest even a spiritual, experience. No other tourists whispering, clicking cameras, pushing me out of the way to see. My guide and the trackers politely refrained from conversation as well. In all, we saw 13 gorillas.

After about 20 minutes, my guide said, “OK, it’s been an hour, we must leave now.”

“An hour?” I thought he was joking. I looked at my watch. Time had indeed betrayed me. The universe had just sped up to a rather unkind speed. It was difficult to put my lens cap on and turn away. In truth, I nearly cried.

Crack crack craaaaack. Everyone was suddenly alert; my tears immediately retreated. Directly above us we could hear creaking and cracking noises. We barely had time to process they were the sounds of a tree being felled before the sounds of branches and leaves smashing through other branches and leaves overtook us. Nobody even had the wits to move. The top of a tree landed on the ground barely 20 feet away from us. None of us moved or spoke as a gorilla ambled down the slope behind the tree he had just nonchalantly pushed over nearly on top of us. He sat down 20 feet away, so we were in a triangle – people, tree, gorilla. He wasn’t interested in eating from the tree; he simply sat down seeming extremely pleased with himself. I think he just wanted to toy with us.

The trackers and guide looked at each other.

“OK,” a tracker said to me. “This is a special case. You can have five more minutes with this guy.”

That’s actually the first time the thought breached my consciousness: “This is a once-in-a-lifetime experience, Shara.” I felt almost panicked, worried somehow I wasn’t capable of soaking it up enough. I stared at that contented gorilla like I was trying to mind-meld with him. Me and the mountain gorilla, basking in a window of sunshine in a crack in the impenetrable forest.

We made good time hiking back out. As soon as we reached the ranger camp, raindrops began falling. As my guide filled out my trekking certificate, the drops smudged some of the lettering. The clouds had parted, literally, just for me and my gorillas.

About the Guest Blogger

Shara Johnson lives in the small mountain town of Nederland, Colorado. You can follow her adventures abroad at SKJtravel.net.

The post My Moment in the Sunshine appeared first on XpatMatt.

ADVENTURES IN MALAYSIAN BORNEO

PT1: Driving at Night With No Lights

PT2: Lost in a Monsoon

PT3: Salvation in Sabah

PT4: A Mountain of Bat Guano

PT5: The Eye of the Elephant

A Note From Matt: If you haven’t read the first four parts of the story, you should either read the recap below or read the story from the beginning to make sure you’re up to speed. If you have read the story from the beginning, you should skip the recap, which is the section below written in italics.

Recap

I took a ten-day trip to the Malaysian province of Sabah on the island of Borneo to search search for, and hopefully photograph, the elusive endangered pygmy elephant. I rented a motorcycle in Kota Kinabalu and set out for the opposite side of the island where I was most likely to find the elephants. On the first night I discovered that the motorcycle had no headlights while driving up the side of Mount Kinabalu. On the second day I drove for nearly 10 hours in a monsoon and spent the following day trapped by the heavy rains in a dingy hostel in the port city of Sandakan. The next morning, determined not to fail, I mounted my motorbike and drove to the nearby Sepilok Orangutan Reserve. There I ran into two Swedish nurses that I had met in Kota Kinablu and they suggested we travel together. Things were looking up. The following day I received an email from the local tourism board offering to pay for my room, board, and a personal guide to help me find the pygmy elephants. All I had to do in return was provide them with fifty photos. My guide, Thorpe, picked me from the hostel up in a small car. On the way to the park we stopped at the fabled Gomantong Caves where, in the process of photographing the cave, I climbed a giant mountain of bat guano. Afterwards, while discussing photography equipment with Thorpe (he was also a photographer) he informed me that I would need a telephoto lens to shoot the elephants because we would not be able to get close to them. There was just one problem: I didn’t have one.

Part 5: The Eye of the Elephant

“What do you use to shoot wildlife?” I asked Thorpe as we drove slowly on a bumpy dirt road through the village of Sukau.

“I use a 100-300mm telephoto lens. You only have a 70-135mm?”

“Yes.”

“We can not get closer than 20 meters from the elephants. If we do they will either charge us or run away. How are you going to shoot them?”

“I don’t know.”

“It has been raining a lot. When it rains the elephants will usually move into the jungle. It’s possible that we won’t see them at all.” Thorpe offered. “They can’t expect pictures of the elephants if we can’t find them.”

The idea did not console me. I gazed out the window at the huts along the road.

We arrived at the Barefoot Sukau Lodge, put our bags in our rooms, and then met in the dining room where our dinner was waiting. My room was comfortable, the fried chicken and vegetables smelled delicious, the dining room that we sat in was suspended on pillars above one of the most scenic rivers on one of the most beautiful islands in the world, and I felt like a failure. I had come all-expenses-paid on one of the best assignments of my young career and had messed it up before I even got started.

“After the tourism board emailed me I looked at some zoom lenses online. Nikon makes a 100-300mm lens that I can afford. I would have bought it if there was time, but there wasn’t. Are there any shops in Sandakan that might have one?” I asked.

“No. You would have to go to the Kota Kinabalu.”

Kota Kinabalu was more than 400km of windy, potholed, mountainous roads away.

I shuffled my vegetables languidly around my plate.

Thorpe and I met at 5am the next morning to take a boat up the river in search of the elephants. We wanted to get started before the other guests woke up. Thorpe’s job was to get me as close as possible to a herd of pygmy elephants. That would be much harder if other guests were trying to follow us, hoping for a glimpse of a member of the smallest subspecies of the largest land animals in the world. Since the other guests knew that I was there on assignment to find the elephants (I had unwittingly told them in conversation the previous night) they were sure to ask where we were going.

It was still dark as we motored up the river wide silent river. The sun rose and the mist began to burn away. The light was perfect for pictures so I took out my camera.

Thorpe directed our driver to turn into one of the many small tributaries stemming from the main river.

When I raised my camera to shoot a colourful bird on a nearby branch the boatman turned the boat gently towards it and slowed down for me. The next time I raised my camera he did it again. I then realized that these men had only one job: to help me get the pictures I wanted.

The fact that these men were charged with assisting me, a supposed professional who was worthy of such assistance, was humbling and inspiring.

After all of the trouble that the people at the tourism board and these men had gone through, I could not return empty handed. Telephoto lens or no, I was going to shoot me some fucking pygmy elephants. I wanted to get close enough to shoot a close-up of an elephant’s eye looking right back at me.

The canopy seemed to billow out of the jungle and into the river as if they were competing for the space. As we meandered up the river Thorpe told me about previous clients that he had guided: photographers from National Geographic and other prominent magazines, camera crews for nature documentaries, and wealthy enthusiast photographers with cameras worth more than I earned in a year.

Suddenly Thorpe spoke rapidly to our driver in Malaysian and he slowed the boat. Thorpe pointed to a broad section of trampled vegetation.

“The elephants were feeding here yesterday.” He said. “We need to go back to the car.”

“Shouldn’t they be nearby?”

“No. They eat so much that they are constantly moving in search of new food. They can walk thirty kilometres in a single day. They could be very far by now.”

“Why did they leave? There’s lots of plants here to eat.”

“They only eat elephant grass.”

“Oh. That makes sense.”

We arrived at the dock as the other guests were climbing into their boats for their morning river cruise.

“Don’t tell them where we are going.” Thorpe told me. “We don’t want them to be jealous or, even worse, to try and follow us.”

“Any luck?” A woman from Chicago called to us as we pulled up.

“No.” I replied. “But it’s early. We’ll try again after breakfast.”

As soon as they were out of sight we got in the car. About thirty minutes later we stopped at a dilapidated convenience store. Thorpe spoke to the men outside rapidly in Malaysian.

“They were here this morning.” He told me as he swung the car around and turned down a side road. He slowed the car pointing to a large area of trampled bushes.

“They slept there. If we’re lucky they haven’t gone back into the jungle.”

We continued creeping down the bumpy road. Suddenly, Thorpe stopped. He pointed where a side road veered left and up a small hill. Over the crest of the hill I saw an elephant’s head. Three more appeared in the bushes, eating their way toward us through the foliage

“Stay behind me.” He cautioned as he opened his door and stepped out. I leapt from the car, camera in hand and starting shooting as fast as I could. The light was bad. I was barely able to take clear pictures, even with my camera set to the highest ISO.

My view of the elephants through my camera quickly grew hazy. It looked as though I was shooting them through a thick fog. I checked the pictures the LCD screen and they looked the same. All of my pictures were unusable.

Pygmy elephants are notoriously shy and we had disturbed them. They began to retreat over the hill.

I took off the lens off of my camera and looked inside. The rapid change in humidity and heat that occurred when I jumped out of the cool dry car into the hot humid jungle air had caused the inside of the camera to fog. I quickly wiped it clean and replaced the lens. My camera could take clear pictures again.

“Come on.” Thorpe shouted. He was already following the elephants up the road.

Just over the rise was a gravel pit. The elephants were at the far end of the pit ready to return to the jungle. Thorpe and I were at the opposite end with our backs to a road. Thorpe motioned for me to follow him and he began creeping closer. We moved closer and closer until the elephants began looking at us angrily. Thorpe motioned for me to move back. We retreated a few steps.

“Here.” He said.

The elephants returned their attention to eating and ignored us. Thorpe had determined the edge of the elephants’ natural boundary. They wouldn’t mind us here. I snapped photos as fast as I could, varying the composition as much as possible from my restricted vantage.

A few minutes later, we heard a door slam behind us. A tourist van had stopped on the road so the occupants could look at the elephants. A tall european-looking man with short cropped grey hair and a beard came ran past us, camera in hand. He stopped 10 feet directly in front of us and started taking pictures of the elephants.

“Hey,” Thorpe shouted. “Come here.  It is not safe.”

The man ignored us.

“Asshole.” I muttered.

Several of the elephants retreated into the jungle. One of them charged the man.

The man jumped back and was about to run away, but the elephant stopped about 20 feet short of him. It had been a false charge meant to scare the man off. The man went back to taking photos. Emboldened by the elephant’s retreat, he started walking towards the beasts. The elephants turned and hurriedly exited the gravel pit on a dirt road.  The man disappeared down the road after them.

“Lets go.” Said Thorpe. “This is no use.”

I agreed.

“That is very dangerous.” He said. “I hope they don’t hurt him.

“I hope they do.”

A few local children had gathered behind us to watch the spectacle. Thorpe spoke to them in Malaysian for a moment before we got back in our car and returned to the guesthouse for lunch.

We waited for the other guests to leave for their afternoon river cruise, telling them that we would be going out later. As soon as they were gone we got back into the car and returned to the gravel pit. We found the children from that morning, and Thorpe began speaking with them again.

I then realized what he had done. The local children, with no school to attend, had nothing better to do than follow the elephants around all day. For them is was great fun. Thorpe had asked them to track the elephants for us. The children pointed us down a muddy road overgrown with vegetation excitedly. We started walking with the children following us curiously.

“We must be quiet.” Thorpe told me. “I need to figure out exactly where the elephants are. Sometimes they can circle around and trap you.”

“Quiet works for me.”

We spent the better part of an hour creeping down the road, Thorpe cautiously inspecting the surrounding jungle. Then, suddenly, he turned back.

“They’re near the river. We must get the boat.”

“This could be an excellent opportunity.” Thorpe told me in the car. “If we are in the boat, and the elephants are on the shore, we can get very close. On land they won’t allow you to get close to them, but if you are in the water then the water’s edge is their boundary. You can get as close as you want as long as you are in the boat and they are on land.” Thorpe had only been fortunate enough to approach elephants from the river a handful of times in his career. This might be our lucky day.

In the boat Thorpe quickly located the place where the elephants were likely to be. We pulled up to the shore. I began to get out of the boat.

“Wait!” Thorpe said.

I turned around. He was holding out his 100-300mm lens.

“Use this.”

“Thank you so much.”

The elephants were less than 20 meters away, but seemed not to mind our presence. With the proper zoom lens on my camera I began shooting like a madman, zooming in and out, and hiding in bushes and climbing trees to shoot from different angles, and filling my memory cards with well-exposed and well-composed photographs.

A boat full of tourists on their afternoon cruise soon noticed us and came over to see what we were doing. The swarmed onto shore with their cameras. The elephants became agitated and started trumpeting and moving off into the bushes.

Thorpe grabbed my shoulder.

“Quick. Into the boat.” He said. “They’re heading for the river.”

We jumped into the boat and shoved off. We turned in the river and approached shore. As we inched towards the bank I could see the elephants eating through the foliage and moving towards the water. I stood on on the narrow tip of the boat shooting as fast as I could as we crept closer and closer.

We were an arms length from the bank when the first elephant’s head appeared through the bushes. He looked right at me, and I took this picture.

The post Adventures in Malaysian Borneo Part 5: The Eye of the Elephant appeared first on XpatMatt.

Please allow this page some time to load, as there are a lot of high-quality images on it.

These photographs (and many more not published here) are for sale. The photos on this page are all royalty free. I also have more images that my be purchased exclusively. For prices or a catalog of samples contact me.

Pygmy Elephants
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Proboscis Monkeys
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Orangutans
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Kinabatangan Wildlife Sanctuary

Location

Notheastern Sabah, Malaysian Borneo

Closest Town/City/Village

Sukau village

Description

Kinabatangan Nature is one of Borneo’s premier destinations for trekking and wildlife viewing. This well-known park is home to the Kinabatangan River some of the most exotic flora and fauna in Borneo, including, but not exclusive to, saltwater crocodiles, proboscis monkeys, orangutans, pygmy elephants, and macaque monkeys, all of which may be seen on river tours and treks.

Activities

• Trekking
• Boat Tours
• Bird Watching
• Wildlife Tours (day and night)

Photos

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Map

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