Borneo: Orangutans and Coral Reefs 🇮🇩

Borneo is the third largest island on earth and the only place where two of the planet's rarest wildlife experiences sit inside one archipelago. In the south, Tanjung Puting National Park, 415,000 hectares of peat swamp forest protected since 1982, home to the last self sustaining population of wild Bornean orangutans and the rehabilitation programme that returns rescued individuals to the trees. In the east, the Derawan Archipelago and its outermost atoll, Maratua, sitting on the edge of the Celebes Sea at the top of the Coral Triangle where Pacific and Indian ocean currents converge and pull barracuda, sharks and mantas onto the walls year round. Two of the biggest wildlife stories left on the planet, four hours flying apart, done back to back in a single trip.

The trip runs on two very different vessels. In Central Kalimantan you live on a klotok, a traditional wooden Kalimantan longboat converted to a two level houseboat, with a covered upper deck for sleeping under mosquito nets and a lower deck for the cook, the captain and the dining table. You wake to gibbons calling from the canopy, eat lunch prepared on board by your own crew, and moor each night deep in the forest so the fireflies come to you. Then east across Borneo to Nabucco Island Resort, a small German owned dive base perched on a private islet at the northwest tip of Maratua atoll, sitting directly on Big Fish Country: barracuda tornados, wall sharks and manta cleaning stations minutes from the jetty. Two worlds, one archipelago.

On the klotok you have the entire boat to your group with your own guide, your own captain and your own cook, no schedules to share and no other travellers competing for the front row at the feeding platform. At Nabucco you dive from a dedicated guide boat with two guides in the water, which means the group moves as one, sites are chosen for your certification and experience level, and if the current is running at Barracuda Point the group can extend the dive without asking anyone else. Five full dive days at Nabucco, three days upriver in Tanjung Puting, and the transition day handled for you. Uncrowded, unhurried, unforgettable.