Day 9... The forest says goodbye

 Today was my last day in Tawau Hills. I was going to miss the peace of this place. I was well aware that Sepilok, my next destination, would be more touristy and contain waay more people. I intended to cherish every moment today.

For my morning walk, Ledumin was my guide. I may have said before, so bear with me, but Ledumin is a former poacher. As such, his tracking and animal spotting skills are second to none, as evidenced by the epic night walk when we saw so much. 

This morning his plan was to hike back up the hill towards the big tree to see what we could find. I didn't tell my legs... or my feet for that matter... they might have become petulent and refused to move. I decided to let it dawn gradually on them in the hope they would only realise once we were so far up it was pointless to turn back. Legs, like the mind, have to be tricked into performing every now and again. 

Our first point of call was just behind our accomodation. The crashing of trees indicated that something was awake and moving around, so we stared up at the top canopy. Swinging around in the morning sunshine was a small group of Gibbons! Excellent. I love watching monkeys. The Gibbons can be distinguished from the other monkeys in the area, by watching how they move through the trees. The Gibbons, with its long arms, generally uses them to swing from branch to branch. Macaques and Red leaf monkeys seem to use more of a combination of feet and arms and tend to run along branches more than swinging along. At least that's what I had noticed. These Gibbons were fairly high up but it was possible to see fairly clearly without binoculars. We stood and watched for a while. Monkey species number 4... I had now seen all the species possible to see here! 

We headed towards the big tree path and after a short section of well gravelled path, it turned into the wet and muddy trails I was now familiar with. The steps soon appeared and we climbed slowly up. 

As is usual in the mornings, not much was about and we saw very little to write home about. I instead took the opportunity to ask Ledumin about his former life as a poacher and why he switched from killing animals to saving them. His answer was very simple. 

I like animals he said. I didn't enjoy hunting them. 

He is a great example of how you can turn a poacher into a guide, one that already has the tracking and spotting skills and I hope that in the future there will be many more like him. 

Even Ledumin couldn't conjure up much this morning though and we got fairly high up when he suggested we turn around and go back down.... 

now I have been up this trail 3 times now... and I still haven't seen the big tree, every time turning back just short of the top. I told Ledumin this and he uttered his surprise that I hadn't seen it yet. He immediately started up the hill again, determined to show me the tree. 

I have seen some huge trees in the Amazon and a very tall tree in New Zealand but this tree was absolutely huge! The but tress roots were taller than me and spread out quite an area on the ground. The tree itself had been measured around 88m which made it pretty tall, but I had my doubts about whether it was still the tallest tree. That declaration had been made a few years ago and I was pretty certain I had seen a sign about a taller tree somewhere else. It didn't diminish my awe at standing next to it though, not only for it's height or it's roots but also out of appreciation for how many animals and insects and plants this tree supports... its own little ecosystem within the greater one.

I was glad I had finally seen it.

We headed back down to breakfast... my thoughts firmly on how to make the most of my last day. 

I settled on climbing the Bombalai hill. A trail that I had only been a few hundred yards on on a walk with Yulinda. Having got to the top of one trail today, I decided to go for another one. I knew this was going to be hard work but was told that the view from the top was pretty spectacular. Ledumin had also mentioned that I might be lucky enough to see the big chicken. I had no idea what he was talking about so promptly forgot about it. 

The first few hundred yards we're through some very muddy grass, my shoes squelching through. On the left side, the palm plantation and on the right, houses of the forest workers. The grass quickly gave way to trail and soon I was under the canopy and going steadily but inexorably upwards. 

A crash, then another and instinctively I turned my eyes upwards. I stood and waited for the next telltale crash and treetop movement... there it was and there was the culprit... or culprits

Another troop of Gibbons... and I had found them myself! I can't explain how satisfying it is to find wildlife in the jungle without a guide to... well .... guide you. It's not easy and needs practice. I have spent many days and nights walking in jungles, learning from guides about how to look, where to look, what to look out for, but each place is slightly different depending on what species live there. My previous days in Tawau had been an education and I was trying to put it to use.

Did I mention that the trail was steep... and did I mention that it was really hot! 

I continued upwards, finding the odd millipede or small skink.

The next thing I heard was a loud rustle near my feet. I quickly looked down to see a large lizard disappearing under a log. Unfortunately for him, the gap was too small to fit all of him which gave me a good look. An angle headed lizard sat under the log staring balefully at me as I bent down to take some pictures. 

I continued on... still up and then the trail took a turn for the steeper. Fortunately there was rope at the side of the trail which in places I used to haul myself up. The ground was a kind of clay underfoot and very slippery. In places there was little foothold and I scrambled up as best I could.

It was taking a lot of effort but I thought it would be worth it. There was mud too, adding to the complications of the trail and soon I was smeared with mud from waist downwards. There were steps too, which made the going a bit easier but the wood used to bolster the steps was also slippery and total concentration had to be kept to avoid slipping and falling.

The hill went on forever... until eventually it flattened out a bit. There were some logs nearby and I sat down to rest my feet, who by now had caught onto my plan and were protesting vociferously. I knew I wasn't far from the top but was enjoying being surrounded by the smells and sounds of a live jungle, breathing in the fresh air and enjoying the restorative peace and tranquility.

The need to press onwards urged me to my feet and I continued to climb. The sky had gone a little grey now and I could feel a few drops of rain starting to fall. Hmmm rain +steep slope+mud. Going down was going to be tricky. I put this out of my mind and negotiated a few more roped sections, each one a bit steeper than the last. Then finally I neared the top.  Suddenly out of nowhere came a red leaf monkey, carrying a baby. She scurried across the ground in front of me and then disappeared into the forest. She was surprised... I was surprised. No time to get my camera out. I stood there for a few minutes trying to spot her but the forest was too dense so I continued along the trail. I had now reached the top and it had flattened out on the ridge.

Once again I was surprised... ahead I saw something I was not expecting to see run off the trail into the side foliage.... 

A peacock... an honest to god wild peacock! 

Again no photo for evidence. I went back to Ledoumin's words... a giant chicken and the 2 clicked as I realised he had described the peacock... and I had been lucky enough to see it. I strode forward a few more yards to the observation platform. A rickety, rotten wooded platform which was roped off limits. Who was to know. I squeezed round the roped off bit and trod carefully onto the platform boards... hoping they would not give way. They held form and I looked up and beheld the view. Ahead of me I could see all the way to Tawau town and beyond that, the sea. Stretched out to either side was a mass of green palm oil trees. It was quite a view. Nearby, the peacock crowed, as if celebrating my ascent.

Time to go back down. Whilst up on the hill, the rain had started falling in ernest and I started carefully downwards. Boy was I glad of the rope. Mostly I used it to steady me, holding onto it with one hand, but there were many places, even more slippery as a result of the rain, where I judged it better to grasp the rope with both hands and step down backwards as if absailing. It worked and made the downhill descent much easier and less treacherous than if I had tried without the rope. That said, I did end up on my arse once but considering the terrain, that wasn't bad at all 

In this way I lowered myself down the hill, pretty pleased with the days efforts and finds so far. 

My afternoon guided walk this time was with Shavez(might have spelt his name wrong before).  We set out again at around 4pm as usual and headed out of the park towards the plantations. He wanted to try and find the helmeted hornbill, the rarest of the 6 species of hornbill. I had seen these before but only when they were flying overhead and difficult to spot. He also wanted to look at an area of the plantation that he possibly had plans for. It looked out over the river to a really nice stretch of the forest. We bushwacked through the plantation undergrowth and we're looking out towards the forest when suddenly he made an exclamation and dived into his bag to retrieve his camera. A pair of helmeted hornbills landing on the tree opposite us. 

And so we sat down in the plantation, trying to keep noise and movement to a minimum so as not to disturb them. We got a good look through binoculars but unfortunately my camera on my phone was not quite up to good pictures at this distance so I have some blurry shapes which you can just make out to be a bird. In one picture you can clearly see the tail feathers hanging down below a branch but that's about it.. 

We also saw some rhinoceros hornbill fly to a dead tree and investigate a hole near the top... a nest perhaps. We sat there for a while keeping an eye on both sets of hornbills. Shavez was almost beside himself with excitement about the find and declared that he would be back tomorrow morning to watch again. 

We had disturbed them by sitting there though and Shavez determined that it would probably be better to go, so we got up and started to walk out of the plantation. Just as we did so a pair of rhinoceros hornbills and their young one landed in one of the palm trees near us. They were closer than they had ever been and afforded me with some excellent photos of both the male and the baby. The horn on the baby still wasn't fully developed, making it easier to distinguish him. 

Tonight, I got both Ledumin and Yulinda. Whilst I was waiting for time to head out, I also had to swop rooms for the night and  my stuff had been moved for me into my new room. I changed my wet muddy shorts from the afternoon and hung them up to dry on the windowsill. As I did so, a monitor lizard ambled past....  I thought it had given me one last sighting as a farewell.

The night started well with a search down by the pond. It revealed another type of mock viper, sleeping peacefully... the common mock viper is a greyish purple colour and is diurnal so it had picked its sleeping spot for the night.

The finds came thick and fast... a sleeping lizard with beautiful markings and one eye open staring at us for daring to disturb him. A preying mantis and a few different types of stick insects. And then another species of snake we hadn't seen yet, the striped dwarf tree snake out hunting for its next meal.

It was my 8th snake species in Tawau. Unfortunately the cobra and pit vipers had remained resolutely hidden but I was over the moon with how much I had seen and I still had a few days in Sepilok to find the aforementioned...

Yulinda and Ledumin had been excellent guides for me, imparting some of their huge amount of knowledge of this forest and it's inhabitants to me over the last few days. I was sad that it was the end of my last day here but I still had a few more days to try and find a few more things. Yet I had a feeling that I had started with the best first and anything else would not come close to the measuring scale that Tawau was on. Still, there were no orangutans here and there were in the Sepilok, both in the sanctuary and wild in the rainforest so that was something new to be seen too.

Shavez had arranged for a taxi at the other end to convey me to my b and B from the bus station near Sandakan and I said goodbye to him, Yulinda and Ledumin as I was leaving very early the next morning to catch a bus! It had been an amazing place to stay. 

Onwards and....?