Since the trip Elaine has become a valued supporter of the Orangutan Foundation and has raised over £2500 from several ideas that she has had. Her latest venture was a charity golf day which produced £1572 (see here for more info). When people come out to visit Tanjung Puting and are moved to take action and contribute to the on going consevation efforts it makes these trips even more worth while. I'll leave it Elaine to explain how she became involved : "The day that did it for me on your trip was the visit to Lamandau. To see orangutans in that beautiful forest living as they should together with all the other species was a highlight. Then as we travelled back and saw the border posts and the logging concessions you realized how fragile this all was and how hard people were working to save the forests for all our sakes. On the boat back to the Rimba we watched the fire flies under a beautiful starlight sky and it was the end of a perfect day. I felt that I just couldn't stand there and beat my breast about how terrible the deforestation was and then come home and just carry on as if nothing had happened. The orangutans are still close to my heart and since I came back I've raised about £2500 from various events that wouldn't have happened without the inspiration on your trip."

Thanks for that Elaine ... it was a great email to come home to !

There was an extremely high level of fruiting in the forest on the recent April trip which is obviously great for the orangutans who live in Tanjung Puting national park. We were however very lucky as we still saw several orangutans up close at every feeding site we visited during our stay. On day 3 when we moared our boat at the jetty at Camp Leakey we saw 3 orangutans down by the edge of the river. For about 30 minutes we were treated to the lovely sight of them scooping up water from the edge of the river. These pictures show "Percy" enjoying his refreshment. Princess was also on the jetty and was in a particularly mishievous mood. She caught us all off guard and actually ended up coming on to our boat and tucking into the remains of our lunch. Dani had only just asked me a few minutes before about whether Princess was naughty or not. My reply had been that she was such a lovely, good natured animal and never caused us any problems !!! Oh well ... despite making me look stupid she's still one of my favorite orangutans and let's face it ... everyone loves a slightly naughty female ? A personal highlight for me was photographing a Wagler's Pit Viper which was thanks to John who found it early one morning. These lovely snakes are quite anti social and live a very solitary life. Pit Vipers get their name from their special pit organs locatated on their heads which are used to detect prey. They also have long fangs that inject a poisonous venom into the bloodstream. This snake was very still and left me with the dilema of how close it was safe to go to get the shots I needed.