Top 10 activities on our trip

We've been asked about what the best activities on our trip were. There are so many memorable things that we've done together in our year away, its difficult to distil this to just ten, especially with a 'late contender' from our recent time in Borneo.

As we talked about this as a family and also started trying to rank them, we found it very hard to compare, say, the thrill of swimming with a sea-lion with the wonder of staring in awe at one of the highest mountains in the world.

So we decided to just put a list together of the things we enjoyed the most, not to worry too much about the order of them and not to feel guilty about many other things we enjoyed doing that aren't on this list too.

Skydive Taupo, New Zealand

Ready to jump.....(as if you have much choice at this stage!)

No doubt about the biggest adrenalin rush of all - Skydiving.

Whooooo-hoooo!

Snorkelling with sealions at La Loberia, Galapagos, Ecuador

Sunset at La Loberia

Amazingly, this is something you can do quite easily in the Galapagos - and it's free.  La Loberia is a deserted beach on the small island of San Cristobal, with sealions everywhere - you are very much on their beach. The younger ones in particular are very playful, they swim right up to you at high speed, inches from your face, and then arch away, or they'll swim rapidly around you in circles. There is always a large bull sealion patrolling to remind you not to get too close!

Observing amazing wildlife by boat and on horseback in the Pantanal, Brazil

Horse ride at sunset along the river bank on obedient horses!

We spent a few days in the Pantanal, and were amazed by the abundance and richness of wildlife there.  It was a fantastic experience for the boys, already fascinated by animals thanks to Steve Backshall's Deadly 60, to have so many up-close wildlife encounters. The caiman, jabiru, great black hawk (especially the one with the water cobra in its talons!) giant otter, hyacinth macaw, piranha and of course toucan are just a few we remember seeing there. 

The caimen are so still, sometimes you don't
see them even if you are really close!

Sandboarding and surfing in Cabo Polonio, Uruguay

Fabry, the boys and Louis' new birthday gift!

We're sure Louis won't forget his 9th birthday.  

Staying at the tiny, remote and querky coastal village of Cabo Polonio, Louis had a sandboarding lesson in the morning and a surfing lesson in the afternoon. 

Fabry, the sandboarding teacher even gave Louis the sandboard they were practicing on as a gift, afterwards!

Frankie had a go too!

Louis getting the hang of the waves

Dolphin and whale watching at Puerto Pyramides, Valdes Peninsula, Argentina

One of the whales duly obliged with this classic pose

The Valdes peninsula is famous for the orcas that beach themselves in February to catch and feed on unsuspecting young seals.  

We were there in December so missed this (perhaps just as well...the boys might have been a little upset!) but did get to see the orcas from a distance, as well as marvelling at the majestic southern right whales passing directly under the boat.

We were leaning out over the front and this 15 metre
beauty passed by directly underneath

Buller Gorge Jetboat, South Island, New Zealand
The Shotover ride in Queenstown normally gets all the attention but this trip on Buller Gorge, also on the South Island, is longer, less busy, cheaper, just as fast and definitely very exhilarating!

High-speed thrills

Did I mention you get a bit wet?

Trekking to Poon Hill, Nepal
We did a five-day trek in the Annapurna region of the Himalayas. It was a real challenge (especially the going up part!) and gave the boys a strong sense of achievement, especially when we reached 10,000 feet and were rewarded with memorable views of some of the Top 10 highest mountains in the world.

Annapurna South, at 8,091m, 10th highest mountain in the world

With our guide, Ratna and Dhaulagiri, 8167m, in the background

Machupachare, the famous, sacred, 'Fishtail', just before sunrise

White water rafting and "cool river running" in San Rafael, Argentina
We rafted a few times on the Atuel river, and Louis and I also went down in a kind of converted inner tube, which they call "Cool River".  It kept you very close to the action! My father came over from England and celebrated his 80th by white-water rafting with us too!

Rafting on 31st December - great way to see out the old year!

Louis and Frankie loved getting wet!

Louis getting face to face with a rapid while "Cool river" running

Tropical island hopping on Ovalau, Fiji
We spent three weeks in Fiji, mainly at Bobo's Farm.  As well as introducing us to the wonderfully hospitable villagers of Rukuruku and guiding us on hikes into the jungle, Bobo took us to the the most beautiful local islands enjoying excellent snorkelling, drinking and eating fresh coconuts, and sampling the fish he'd just caught with his spear!

Approaching Mystery Island

Just moored on our very own Moloi Island, only surfaces at low tide!

Going home to Rukuruku

Amazing wildlife in the tropical rainforests of Borneo

Frankie with a crested lizard

In our month in Borneo, we stayed in jungle camps and wooden shacks to experience wildlife encounters we'll never forget.  We saw orangutans, proboscis monkeys, silver-leaf monkeys, huntsman spiders, snakes, frogs, lizards, bats (over 2 million of them) and more - it's a very long list!

Proboscis monkey having a bad day

The youth of today are so uninhibited.....

2 million bats head out of their cave each night here in Mulu, Borneo

Icebergs and glaciers in Patagonia, Argentina
We spent three weeks in Patagonia and got up close to the amazing - and advancing - Perito Moreno glacier. We saw an enormous shard the size of a house slide into the water - and our treks took us to the windiest and coldest parts of our entire trip.

Ice crashing into the water at the giant arch that heads the glacier

Real icebergs!

Not surprisingly, the ice is very cold

Travelling around Western Australia in an RV

Breakfast on the beach at Cape Range

We spent a month - and 5,000 kilometres - working our way up the west coast and returned on an inland route back to Perth. The spectacular Cape Range National Park, the beautiful, rugged gorges of the Karijini, and the endless salt flats of Lake Ballard were three of the many highlights.

The unusual statues dotted around the vast salt flats of Lake Ballard

Paragliding over Lima, Peru

A great introduction to alternative air travel, over the beaches, parks and traffic of Lima.

All good up here....

I'm loving this!

Yes I know.  There are more than 10. Sorry.

What do two million bats look like?

We enjoy an adventure, but lets be frank: sliding through claustrophobically thin, muddy gaps in caves doesn’t overly appeal to us.  Actually the sliding through isn’t so bad, it’s more the getting stuck that is the problem.  

Nevertheless, we found other reasons to make the effort of two separate flights by propellor plane to reach the caves of Mulu National Park, set deep in the vast (remaining) rainforests of Sarawak.   Firstly, it hosts access to Deer Cave, the world’s largest cave passage, and secondly, you can witness the extraordinary sight of a two million strong bat exodus at just before dusk.  

By the way - is it just me that feels a trifle uneasy when your window seat is directly by the propellors, such that, however unlikely it may seem, if one of the propellor blades DID manage to detach itself, the most likely destination would be slicing through my little window.  If I pressed my head back into my seat, I might just get a way with a shaved nose I suppose.......

So when we finally arrived at the tiny airport of Mulu, anticipation levels were running high.  As if to suspend our excitement, we decided to leave the bat exodus and Deer Cave for the last day, and headed off next morning by boat up the river ahead of a hike to a couple of other caves, and later also enjoying a night walk. 

Of course I'd have volunteered my finger,
but I had to concentrate on the photograph....

Amongst our encounters were a huntsman spider which we was not quite as large as we’d imagined........until we saw another one twice the size shortly after! Somehow they don’t look quite as scarey on a tree as they do on your pillow, but nevertheless they are poisonous and you should keep well away.  We learned a useful rule of thumb for spiders: If they are bigger than your thumb, keep away! OK, here's the real rule.  If they use a web to catch their prey, they are less likely to be poisonous - their web is their weapon, whereas spiders that hunt with no web need poison as their weapon to attack their prey.  (The Australian funnel web and red-back are two exceptions, however.) 

Black-bearded gliding lizard - that glided away off Frankie's hand as if to prove this.

VERY noisy tree frog

Borneo red cricket

Wagler's pit viper. (So what's it doing in a tree?  The
'pit' refers to the characteristic dents in it's cheeks)

Another river adventure.........

Very tempting to jump on one, where better to try a real Tarzan impression?

Although we've been in many caves over the years, Jules and I had never heard of helictites. These are primarily sideways growths, where a water droplet gets to the edge of a small hole and teeters for so long that it deposits it’s microscopically small limestone crystal on the edge, and over time (a very long time) more crystals are deposited and the helictite grows outwards.  

Example of a helictite

Great white rock shark

T-Rex.....apparently

Only 2,000 years to go then......

The following day, we hiked 4 km to Deer Cave. It was absolutely vast.  The entire cave system is over 200km long.  We walked in well over a kilometre, before the cave passage began to narrow.

The cave was so tall, that unlike the other caves we’d seen, there are no stalagmites - it was explained to us that the water frequently evaporates before it reaches the bottom! This seemed at odds with the steady streams of drops that we could see in front of us everywhere.  Then we realised that this in fact was not lovely, refreshing, cool water, but warm, smelly bat pee, cascading down from the millions of little bats clinging to the roof of the cave! But to be fair, the smell of bat pee pales next to the pungent stench from the bat poo that is EVERYWHERE!  

It's much, much bigger than this meagre effort shows

The final thrill was to watch the bat exodus.  We stared at the cave in anticipation from about 300 metres away.  Strange that this massive cave now looked small, set into the side of a larger mountain. After a while, we saw this curious brown-grey flickering, it was the first tranche of the bats exiting.  They flew outwards and upwards, towards the last rays of the sun, before turning an imaginary corner and spiralling across the sky above us like some peculiar horizontal tornado. As you looked closely, you could see thousands and thousands of bats flying broadly together but each one seemingly moving in random motion within this wider whole. And after they passed, we saw wave after wave of the same thing, almost as if they had arranged to leave the cave in organised groups. It was an amazing sight, and made the lengthy trip well worth the effort.

They just kept coming and coming.......you could hear
an almost menacing buzzing sound as they passed overhead.

Louis and Frankie - jungle rangers for the day!

There is a Nature Reserve attached to the Rasa Ria Resort near Kota Belud, in Sabah, Borneo where there are four orangutans living in the semi-wild.  This means effectively that they live in the wild forest, but can come to the feeding stations if they like, where they can then be observed.  And why wouldn't they, it's a hearty meal. 

We read  that a couple of lucky kids can get up close to the orangutans by being rangers for the day.  The drawback is that you have to be resident at the hotel, which is no great hardship really, as it’s highly luxurious, providing you can afford the cost.  Well it was way beyond the budget but we figured for one night, if it helped the boys have a special and memorable experience, then we’d make the sacrifice.......

We weren’t disappointed - but that’s enough about the incredible dinner and breakfast buffet. The boys had to take a medical in order to ensure that they wouldn’t be passing any dodgy diseases onto the animals, and were delighted to be given a clean bill of health. 

Frankie getting a clean bill of health

We headed to the Nature Reserve and saw a video all about an Orangutan called Cinta who had been rescued when she was very small and nurtured there for four years before being returned to the semi-wild at Sepilok.  We realised that we had met Cinta when we'd been up at Sepilok a few weeks ago, so it made the film all the more real for us. 

We saw the boys go past with the Head Ranger, they were wearing their new green ranger t-shirts and matching caps, looking very professional indeed!  Their first task was to prepare the food for the Head Ranger to give to the orangutans.  

Jules and I walked for about 10 minutes to get to the orangutan feeding platform and noticed a little orangutan already on a distant tree making his way there, he was small and very cute and we got a much closer view than we did at Sepilok. At one point he was no more than 3 metres from us. He did lots of tricks on the ropes which included falling off a couple of times and rolling a little way down the hill!

Oops.  Now I've got to climb back up again!

We had hoped the boys would get closer than we did, but, in fact, as they arrived later than us with the food, this wasn’t the case.  They did join us on the platform though and got a very good view too.

Weeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeee!

Louis explained:  “We gave them lots of chopped up fruit and vegetables such as, carrot, lychees, aubergines, beans and lots lots more!!!!!!!!!!

Frankie added: “Greedy orangutans! I chopped up at least 75 carrots! !!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!  I thought that we would get to sit on the platform with them, but we didn’t, which was very frustrating.   But at least we saw them and it was closer than the ones we saw at Sepilok, even though there were nowhere near as many.  Afterwards I was very excited to be feeding the goats, ducks and fish too.“

We like our new outfits!

Boys with their Ranger Certificates