5 jours dans la jungle de Borneo

Notre ami Josh qui a fait le trek avec nous le decrit tres bien. J'ai donc copie son message ici par pure paresse et fatigue d'attentre apres l'ordi pour les photos...

"Next thing I knew I was on an eighteen person Cessna heading to a tiny village in the Kelabit Highlands. After a fair bit of turbulence we touched down in front of the Bario Airport which was about the size of a regular house. Right away we were greeted by Nancy, the wonderful lady who ran the guest house we were planning to stay at. That day we ate some amazing local food and planned our 5 day journey through the jungle.
Right away I knew this was not going to be a walk in the park and this was a real turn on for me! We woke up fairly early the next morning to begin the 20km walk to the first longhouse (Many locals in the jungle villages stay in longhouses which house about 13 families). Pretty much the entire 4 days we were walking in water or mud, and my feet constantly looked like they belonged to an 80 year old man with all the pruning.
As we were doing a leech check about 5 hours into the trek, we were suddenly attacked by killer bees!! Next thing I knew we were all running full speed down the trail until we came to a small river. Two members of our group were bit pretty bad, but thankfully we had Tarzan as our guide who treated the bites quickly. Ahh, I should quickly mention our guide Irwan AKA Tarzan. This man grew up in the jungle, and knew every smell, noise, and plant that ever existed in the Borneo jungle. Without him, we never would've made it out of the jungle. Even if we would've survived all the snakes, spiders and sun-bears, the place was like 100km of maze.
Leeches. Stinkin blood thirsty leeches. In Canada, leeches are only in the water. In the jungle they're EVERYWHERE!! They would sneak into your socks, up into your underwear, through your jackets and shirts to stick to your chest. At first it was pretty disturbing with blood running from many holes on my body, but after about 50 leeches, I was flicking them off without thinking about it.
After about 6 hours, we stopped to drop off some food at a shelter that we would be passing later in the trek, just to relieve some weight that wasn't needed.
The first night we spent at the longhouse about 20km, or 9 hours from the start of our trek. It was great to see how the families all lived out there away from much modern influence. Many of the elderly still had the traditional tattoos and clothes, and most wore the heavy earrings for the long ears. They have obviously had exposure to tourists before because most of them wanted quite a bit of money to get their picture taken. For about $12 we were able to able to eat like kings, and sleep in BEDS! Such luxury!
The second day we started early again. We planned on walking to another village so Vy could use a telephone to update her travel insurance. At first we were a bit annoyed about this detour, but it turned out to be a great addition to our journey. The little village surrounds the school, which seems to be the most important part of the place. We were like white muddy celebrities as we walked up, as most of the kids in the school came out front to stare at us. They were such great kids, and most understood a bit of english which was a bit surprising as they were literally in the middle of nowhere. We got to witness a bit of how the school ran before we started to make our way back to the jungle. We stopped for a quick snack before the start of the trail when a local man came and invited us to eat with him at his house. We discussed it a little bit, and decided it was a good idea. It turns out he recently used his blow-pipe to get the meal he was about to cook for us. Cool!! Even cooler was the fact that it was a fox bat!! MMmmm delicious! After the interesting meal Tarzan took us outside and taught us how to use the blow-pipe. Sweet day so far! After our little two hour break, the locals saved us heaps of time by fixing their boat, and taking us a couple kms up the river.
That night was our night to sleep in the jungle. Of course, being a rainforest and all, it poured on us for much of the day. We arrived at a tiny shelter, soaked, muddy, covered with leeches, but very happy. We all went into the river next to the camp and had a nice bath together. It was quite funny actually. One day I don't know these guys, then two days later we're sharing the same soap half naked in the middle of the jungle. Wild how nature can bring people together :)
That night we cooked ourselves some noooodles on the fire, and relaxed as much as possible with leeches still crawling on us.
The third day started off just as good as the others. We took it fairly slow at first, keeping as quiet as possible just in case we were lucky enough to spot some animals. A few times along the way we would hike off the trail and stop behind a tree as Tarzan would make some animal calls with hopes of seeing something, but no successful attempts.
That day I over extended a muscle in my knee, which drastically changed the trek for me. It was quite an uncomfortable feeling when the group would have to go a bit slower, and often have to stop and wait. They were really supportive about it though, and I pushed through the pain as much as possible to keep a steady pace.
Around lunchtime that day it started to storm again, but not your average storm. Buckets upon buckets were pouring down on us for hours. Often times I would look around at all the rain, the mud, and the leeches and just laugh. I knew it was going to be one of those experiences I wouldn't forget. As it was getting dark, our guide started to get a bit anxious. We knew something was wrong, but he just kept trudging along through the mud. That is until we reached the first river. With all the rain, the rivers had risen extremely. We stood by the edge of the fast, muddy river, with puzzled looks on our faces as Tarzan took off his clothes, tied a rope to a tree, and jumped into the flowing water. It was crazy to watch as the water easily pushed him down river, but he quickly reached the other side where he attached the other end of the rope to another tree. To add to the suspense, there just happened to be a waterfall about 50 meters down stream. Our guide followed the rope back and one by one he slowly brought our bags to the other side. Hand over hand, with his feet straight behind him kicking to keep his head above the water against the weight of the packs. Bloody insane jungle man. We all followed his lead as we worked our way across the river, hand over hand as our guide had done.
We all had quite a good feeling as we reached the other side, and our guide told us we only had 40 minutes left until we reached the shelter, and the food we left behind a couple days previous. Oh, the dreadful lies... He forgot to inform us that there was one more river to cross, and it was almost dark. About 40 mins later, we approached another river. It was dark by now, and we were all cold after being drenched for the last 5 hours by the torrential downpour. On top of that, there were 10 times more leeches than we had ever seen before. Leeches were on top of leaches as they worked their way to our skin, and when we'd pull one off, another one would quickly hop on. Non-stop cycle of blood thirsty slugs.
We were all clueless as to how we were about to cross this river. It was much more powerful than the last, and much wider. When our guide started to climb a tree is when I noticed our next challenge. Two trees had grown together over the river making a sort of skinny, slippery, and extremely sketchy bridge. 'No way...' is what was going through all of our minds as we checked out this bridge. For the next two hours our guide went to work on making this bridge okay for us to walk on. With just a machete and ropes, he managed to assemble a handrail across this tree. With the exception of helping Irwan get the 10m piece of bamboo up into the tree for the handrail, he wouldn't let us help at all. We just stood there, with mud up our shins, the leeches, and feeling hungry and cold. One member of our group was brought to tears with the misery of the situation. Wasn't too pleasant at the the time, but now I look back at it and laugh.
Crossing the river was like crossing a pit of crocs. If we would've fallen in, chances are damn slim that we would survive. We took our time, holding onto the handrail, with our bare feet carefully picking our steps along the tree. Talk about adventure! This was the real Borneo I came to see!!
We all made it across safely, and we were all so excited to see the nice dry shelter, with firewood already cut, and the food we left behind. We all sat merrily around the fire singing songs, drinking Milo, and eating crackers and noodles. After our sleeping bags dried we all curled up by the fire and slept like babies after the intense day.
The fourth day was a breeze. My leg wasn't getting any better, but after about 4 hours we were on flat land again, and it was much less painful to trek on the flat than it was on the slippery slopes of the mountains. We had to cross a few small rivers, and a couple ponds that day, but nothing too extreme. Unfortunately, due to all the rivers being too high, we could not continue our trek for another day as we had planned. We got over it pretty fast as we re-entered the town of Bario, and sat down at a tiny cafe for a warm Tiger beer. We were all still bleeding, stinky and muddy as we sat with smiles on our faces admiring the memories of the journey.
Nancy, the woman from our guest house, was pretty surprised as she saw us step up the porch. I must we were all pretty happy to be back, have a cold shower, a nice hot meal, and a dry bed to sleep in.
Talk about adventure, and as our guide would say, the REAL Borneo is TOP CLASS!!!"