February 7th, 2010
We just arrived in Tanjung Redeb after a very long day in the cars driving for 8 hours on some of the bumpiest roads yet. I thoroughly enjoyed my time at Wehea. It was really nice to be able to reflect on the trip so far and be able to relax. Last thursday we went river tracing down river. We had heard that there was a really cool swimming hole, so we wanted to find it. We walked down the river in chest deep water for 1.5hours until we came across the most beautiful pool of water with a water fall flowing into it. For the first time on this trip we were able to drive into the water and let our bodies float. On the way back upriver to camp, we got caught in the most intense rainstorm i have ever witnessed. Within 10minutes the clear water had turn a murky yellow, the green of the trees changed probably 4 shades and the river rose 5 inches. The rainfalls so far on the trip all have reminded me the reasons why these forests are so incredible.
Before embarking on this trip we had all been warned about the rain that we would faced since we are traveling through Borneo during the rainy season. Its been almost 6 weeks and i can only count maybe 5 times in which we experienced the rain that we had all been expecting. When we talked to some of the TNC (Nature Conservancy) Staff regarding the drastically low rainfall, they seemed somewhat indifferent regarding it. It seems strange that they would not be more concerned regarding this, and over the next couple weeks, we plan on looking more into this issue and predicting if it will have any long term effects on their crops over the next year.
We are now in Tanjung Redeb for 3 days to regroup and prepare ourselves for Lesan Protected forest and the issues that they are facing.
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