After saying goodbye to the Malay school teachers we were straight into our walk through the canopy. The view on the way is quite breath taking at times. Low midst really make the forest look "the part".
The canopy walk, called the "Sky walk" starts at the Kinabatangan river, although it is still quite young here and not the mighty beast it turns into later on. It's a long series of bridges between trees.
The animals tend to avoid the sky walk, so there wasn't any chance of us seeing a herd of elephants, or a pair of orang-utans on the walk but walking along the canopy you notice something, something that is obvious. There are allot of plants in the rainforest. I mean, where there should be one plant, there are two plants or three or four, all stacked one on top of the other, clinging onto each other.
For many, the floor is something that has nothing to do with them. This is a Flower Palm, its spores find little cracks in trees and it grows there, the roots pull moisture straight out of the air. Some gardens plant dead tree trunks and seed them with the spores.
The canopy walk, called the "Sky walk" starts at the Kinabatangan river, although it is still quite young here and not the mighty beast it turns into later on. It's a long series of bridges between trees.
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| The entrance to the Canopy Walk |
The animals tend to avoid the sky walk, so there wasn't any chance of us seeing a herd of elephants, or a pair of orang-utans on the walk but walking along the canopy you notice something, something that is obvious. There are allot of plants in the rainforest. I mean, where there should be one plant, there are two plants or three or four, all stacked one on top of the other, clinging onto each other.
For many, the floor is something that has nothing to do with them. This is a Flower Palm, its spores find little cracks in trees and it grows there, the roots pull moisture straight out of the air. Some gardens plant dead tree trunks and seed them with the spores.
It's a short walk, it only takes around half an hour, but as I said, the views can be breathtaking.
It's estimated that there are 800 different species of plant in any single square kilometre. There are tarzan-esk vines hanging down and, yes, you can swing from them, I checked.
Of course, the fruits are very important for feeding animals, and finding them. Apparently you should look for these:
I can't remember what they are called but it seems that just about every animal in the forest can eat them. For some it's not their first choice but they all seem to be able to fall back on it in a pinch. In the case of humans though they are poisonous. Sometimes I wonder how we survived this long, everything makes us die, then I remember that, in a pinch, we could sit and wait for the animals that eat the fruit, and then eat them. Mystery solved.
We walked back again.
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