Feeding time
The Orion II spent two days anchored at Kumai in central Kalimantan. On day one, we visited the Orangutan Care Center and Quarantine in Pasir Panjang village, near Pangkalan Bun town, about a 20-minute drive from Kumai. The OCCQ was founded in 1998 by Dr. Birute Mary Galdikas, who had founded Camp Leakey in 1971. On day two, zodiac pontoon boats and slowly chugging "klotoks" (think "African Queen") took us up the Sekonyer River to Camp Leakey, where this large female orangutan took the big milk container to the edge of the feeding platform, away from the other mothers and toddlers who'd also emerged from the forest.
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Isn't this one of the few places where orangutans still exist?
Yes. They now live only in Borneo and Sumatra. We saw scores of them in the Care Center, which allows visitors only from the Orion II cruises and from the Orangutan Foundation, which musters two groups a year. We also saw four orangutans in the wild, and about eight at Camp Leakey. We also watched two at feeding stations at the Semengoh Wildlife Rehabilitation Centre in Sarawak, northern Borneo.
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Central Kalimantan
