Arriving in the rain on the high tide.
Monitor
Bako National park is only a short bus ride from Kuching and a 20 minute boat ride. It was founded 50 years ago and Malaysia's first. It is showing its age but we heard that tenders have been let to upgrade the whole facility soon. We stayed 2 nights in a lodge near the beach.
John beside the giant stemless palms.
Although we saw the proboscus monkeys in Sabah we were able to get closer to them in Bako. The male has a huge nose (apparently the females see this as a sign of a worthy male) and a pot belly. They were in the trees in the mangroves every morning and evening. They are very shy and if you got too close they would move further up the trees.
Everyday the cheeky macaques would arrive at the lodge at check-in time-2 pm. They seemed to know that the new arrivals were careless with their food and bags. When the new arrivals put things down to take photos the macaques would grab what they could and climb up high to look for anything edible. The tourists have trained them well!
There were lots of well marked trails to walk and even though it rained everyday we still managed to get some long walks in. Luckily we missed the really bad weather 2 days before so the trails were not so muddy.
The park has 9 different ecosystems represented so the walks are interesting and varied.
On the night walk we saw tree frogs whose croak sounded like a bird call, tarantula, stick insects, and this pit viper beside the trail- about 30cms away!
During the day we saw 5 pit viper in the trees near the lodge canteen and one thin brown harmless snake. They were so close and didn't move it was amazing. We could see the outline of her eggs in this pregnant one!
