In The Jungle

The mighty jungle is where we spent Sunday, visiting an animal preserve and a nature reserve.

We were up at 6:45am to met with Jim, Maxine and their family to drive out to the sun bear enclosure (20km out from Balikpapan) in order to be there for the morning feed. We were all highly impressed with the facilities, presentation and orderliness of the KWPLH preserve.

The preserve has a very well presented information area all about the sun bears and Borneo's wildlife and environment (Bahasa Indonesian and English) After watching the bears nosh on papaya, bananas, honey and termites we headed further along the Samarinda road to Bukit Bangkarai (which turned out to be a lot further than we'd been told) and went on a nature trail through the rain forest. It was only about 5km long but wound around huge (unidentified) trees and climbed a couple of hills until we eventually came to the main draw - a 7 storey high rope bridge walk through the canopy.

Normally I'd be a bit worried about the site's health and safety record but I had only heard good things about Bukit Bankarai so Rachel and I volunteered to talk Oscar, Hayden and Jade up the tower. Despite the cloud cover the views were magnificent and all three kiddies crossed the two bridges like budding Indiana Jones'.