18th Jan. Gibbons and Crocodile lake

We were collected at 5, and walked a few meters into the jungle where we sat on the roots of this big tree, in the dark, and listened to the forest wake up.

The guide came to say she'd found the Gibbons and we walked to find them. Soon we saw them high, high up in the trees. We were fortunate that they did their loud morning calls...for about 45 minutes, which was magical.

Back to the lodge for breakfast.

After breakfast we went across to the island to visit the primate rehabilitation centre.

In the afternoon we cycled a few kilometers, seeing quite a few monkeys on the way. 

We'd been undecided whether to use one of the guides from the lodge as it was very expensive, but agreed to use him in the end. What a mistake! He was taking another couple too and we had to dawdle so that we met them at the start of the path at 3.30. But then....the guide decided to first show us a cave first. Half an hour of struggling through the jungle, obviously getting lost a few times only to see a dull cave and have to do the half hour back to the start of the walk. After the early morning and long cycle I was already feeling a bit tired. And now this sillly guide had not left us enough time, so we ended up doing the 5km walk at high speed, rushing to arrive at the lake before dark, when all we wanted was a nice walk through the jungle and to enjoy the late afternoon and sunset at the lake. I was feeling pretty annoyed when we arrived as it was almost totally dark - and we'd paid a large fee for this! Grrr!

Fortunately we took two cans of tonic and some gin and my mood improved slightly.

Dinner was very good...fish from out of the lake (yep, a park, but they still fish).

Didn't take any pics at the lake on my phone. Sorry.

We saw THE biggest gecko! Apparently these are the biggest in the world. He was beautiful. We also had 2 lovely big frogs in our room. There were also crocodiles in the lake.

I'll add pictures later when I can get off the other cameras.

We went on a night walk with our guide, an annoying Dutch couple and George, the American from Minesota. He was nice. The couple seemed to think the guide was only for them and refused to ever let us walk behind him. If he did see an insect or anything, by the time we got there he'd finished saying what it was and they didn't move along so we could all see. I gave up after an hour and just did my own looking. Soon after we called it a day and left them and went to bed. They didn't see anything except some eyes of buck back at the lake. We were exhausted!