JugBlog: King of the Jungle

Our next stop was a place called Semengoh Wildlife Rehabilitation Centre. It's not far from Kuching, so an easy 20 minute drive for us. It's a smallish patch of protected rainforest and it is set up as a way of reintroducing injured, stolen, captured animals back into the wild. They have a long list of wildlife released such as pangolins, tarsiers, slow loris, civet cats and of course, the reason why most people visit....the Orangutans. Once again I've only seen them on TV or in a zoo, and my fear was that this place would be just a big zoo. It wasn't. They do say that you are not guaranteed a sighting of the apes, but as they put out big baskets of fruit for them twice a day and 'call' to them....they often come.
So we trudged through a short stretch of forest to the feeding sight (along with about 40 other people) and waited. The park rangers were doing their tarzan type calling to get the apes attention, but as time went by it looked like they weren't coming. The rangers explained to the visitors that 4 orangutans were out near the park entrance, where they also put out food, so most people wandered back off that way. We stayed and hoped for the best. The sky by this time was getting blacker and blacker and the first spots of rain were falling. Visiting time is only an hour and we were approaching 40 minutes by this time. Then, we saw signs of movement high up to our left and what looked like a mother and child stared to make their way down to the feeding sight. The heavens of course chose this exact moment to really open up, and rain poured out of the sky like it does in tropical equatorial countries...i.e. very heavily. Then.....the trees in front of us starting to move like an elephant was barging its way through them... and we got out first sighting of the alpha male...Ritchie.
Anyway enough of my blathering...here's some shots. They are not great pics, but they were still some distance from us and it was pouring down.