AT SEA ON THE JAVA SEA - Thursday Oct 18, 2012
Today we are at sea crossing from the South China Sea to the Java Sea. In fact we have a great session today with Mick Fogg called Plundering Paradise- an insight into the driving forces behind the catastrophic deforestation rates that are occurring in Borneo and what the future holds for this vanishing biodiversity hotspot.
We are at sea all day with a major objective which is that we can only cross the sand bar at the mouth of the Kumeih river at the very highest of tides which will be at 8pm tonight - apparently we will then have just a couple of feet clearance between the sandbank and the bottom of the ORION. We dock further up river for the night and then tomorrow we start the most exciting 2 days of the cruise - and look how amazing it has been so far! We spend 1 day at Camp Leakey and 1 day at the orangutan rehabilitation centre.
But first we have a beautiful day ahead. Overnight I had been reading Reflections of Eden, My years with the Orangutans of Borneo by Dr Birute Galdikas - I had hoped to read the entire book prior to the cruise but I am not going to be finished! It is an excellent background for the area that we are in and the orangutans that she has spent the last 41 years living with and studying, after being asked to by Richard Leakey. Dr Galdikas is of Lithuanian descent, born in Canada, and studied in California. Until she started her research there was almost no information in existence about orangutans. Tomorrow when we head up the Sougenya river for 3 hours to visit Camp Leakey which is so remote, I think we have no idea how Dr Galdikas managed to live in the middle of nowhere and accomplish what she started so many years ago and long before tourism of any sort to Borneo!
Back to this morning - shortly before 6 am I glanced out the windows and saw what was going to be an amazing sunrise! I threw on my shorts and tshirt and went on to the deck and spent at least 30 minutes enjoying the already warm but comfortable temperatures as I watched the colours change from deep blue, to purple, to red to yellow - all reflected off the water and the significant cloud formations in the sky! I was the only one on deck and it felt like this was my very own special sunrise!
Back in the cabin I coerced Terry out of bed with the promise of home baked cookies and caffe latte - on the ship they bake fresh every day and their breads, pastries, cakes and cookies are way too good to resist! We sat upstairs in the Outdoor Cafe enjoying the early morning in the quiet - as the Philippino Staff went about their duties singing along as they set up the tables and umbrellas for breakfast, and wiped down the teak tables and chairs which were still damp from overnight but drying quickly as we cruised along.
Breakfast was in the sunshine with everyone bright and cheerful., Sue and Audrey came out in their full Borneo jungle gear and presented everyone with their very own green or khaki jungle hat complete with netting to keep out all the bugs! This was followed by our Canuck group toasting with champagne or mimosas up on the front of deck 6 to just celebrate how lucky we are to be cruising with ORION ! We were provided with crystal champagne glasses and a silver ice bucket - a perfect way to start the day!
930am saw the start of Mick Fogg's presentation on Plundering Paradise - as always, incredibly interesting, but the statistics in show how quickly the legal and illegal logging have practically eliminated the forest habitat required for the continued life of the orangutans. The sad part is that all of us in the Americas, Europe, Australia and other countries in the developed world are a large part of the problem since we are buying so many products which are made from illegally logged rainforest in Borneo.
Mick did an amazing job of keeping us on track with what has been happening and told us that the World Wildlife Fund has purchased a very large amount of land in Borneo which they are keeping for the orangutans - unfortunately the habitat that they have acquired is not the perfect orangutan environment and so additional fruit trees are being added so that there will be enough food for the orangutans. Each orangutan needs a lot of land to provide enough food to sustain him.
There is another large tract of land 6400 acres with approximately 200 orangutans living on it today in the forest, where the owner wants to protect the environment and retain the original orangutan environment - he has been offered $2000 per acre to sell to be logged and replanted as a palm oil forest. He believes in conservation and is willing to accept $100 per acre to sell it to remain as habitat for the orangutans. A total of $645,000 is required and so far $295,000 has been raised for the RAWA KUNO LEGACY FOREST Project by the OFI Orangutan Foundation International www.orangutan.org and www.OFI.com There was so much interest that the next lecture was delayed by 15 minutes as many questions were asked and answered.
Dr Alexander Watson then presented a fairly dry slide show filled with charts discussing climate change "Rainforests and Climate - why forests are essential to combating the effects of climate change". The information was very informative and interesting but not necessarily easy to follow. Suffice it to say that the destruction of the rain forests means an increase in carbon dioxide which is causing the world huge problems, and we need to protect them since the forests can mitigate the effects of climate change. However, Alex was quite insistent about how the weather has always changed, and will always change, and that every 10,000 years or so there is an ice age and that has been consistently the way over the last 2 million years. Alex believes that managing forest bio diversity is one of the most cost-effective ways of addressing human-induced climate change.
Outside the sky was brilliant blue and the sun hot - so we found a perfect table for lunch under a large blue sun umbrella and on the back corner of deck 4 with a pleasant breeze. The special today was pasta carbonara (mmm good) and green salad followed by apple crumble and rum and raisin ice cream - at least those were my choices! There was also scallops marinara, fabulous vegetables, tomato and boccini cheese salads, cold meats, garlic toast, eggplant zucchini salad - yes, the decisions that have to be made on this ship are immense! Eric served us with sky juice (fresh iced water) and coffee or tea for anyone interested.
(Look for An Inconvenient Truth - documentary re global warming)
We always love days at sea when on a cruise - when we get to relax enjoy the views on deck, maybe read a little and catch up on things that we need, or want, to do. This cruise has proved to be so busy (and enjoyable) with no time to spare! The Expedition Staff are amazing - when we are out and about on the zodiacs they look after us, they're funny and so informative. Onboard they are so knowledgeable and give us great presentations, and teach us, so much and we can't bear to miss a minute! As a result we barely have time to eat our meals and get back into the large lounge area to watch the presentations. They have a big screen in the front and an extra flat screen TV at the back so everyone can watch everything with no problems.
There is a small store onboard run by Drew - a super nice Scottish guy - so I have popped my head in there a couple of times to see the wares! He is a little constrained by the space he has to work with but he does a good job, and again is so much fun to visit with. Drew also doubles as the shipboard hairdresser.
After a day when we had absorbed more than our brains could really manage we went for a wonderful dinner in the Restaurant and had lots of discussion around the table before retiring to our stateroom. We were all so excited - tomorrow we would be heading to Camp Leakey to see the orangutans - this cruise had been booked almost one year ago and we had been looking forward to Camp Leakey, the highlight of the cruise, for so long! Tomorrow half of the ship would go to Camp Leakey in the Tanjung Puting National Park (including our group of 13) and the other half off to the Camp Leakey rehabilitation Centre. The following day we would switch. We could hardly wait!
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