Garama River Cruise

Went to a river cruise that was arranged by Only in Borneo Tours. I've never been on a river cruise before so it was really exciting, but mainly because I had a chance to snap some photos :D

The cruise is an opportunity for people to see the long tail macaques, proboscis monkeys and the silver leaf monkey, the guides dubbed it the "David Beckham monkey" because of its natural Mohawk hair. xD

Other animals that could be seen included monitor lizards, crocodiles [very unlikely because only the really young ones linger around this river, the adults move on to another place], and eagles. Sadly it was difficult to get any kind of a closer image to the monkeys unless they were close by because I don't have a longer zoom lens and add to that the fact that silver leaf monkeys are very shy so they tend to hide further in the trees. The guides were fantastic with spotting these creatures even from far, and incredibly informative about them.

Anyways, I tried to make the most out of the disadvantage from the short focal length of the kit lens. I tried to be as creative as possible when framing the shots, and playing around with the flares. It's always during times like these that I get to learn new things in photography.

This cruise session had two boats because there were about 18 people altogether. There was another photographer in the cruise, he has a Canon EOS 5D Mark II and a 1000D with a 24-105mm and a 70-200mm lens and by the looks of it, had no problems zooming into the monkeys.

There was a small village along the river belonging to a tribe which I completely forgot what it was called.

As the cruise neared nightfall, we had a chance to see some fireflies. We really didn't think we would because it looked like it was threatening to rain, but I guess we got lucky. They were like Christmas lights flickering inside the bushes :) the guide caught one and it looked like a really tiny beetle, almost like a tiny cockroach. It's very much like the 'photinus pyralis' firefly from the photurinae sub family.

It was impossible to get a sharp image with slow shutter speeds because it was close to dark and the boat was moving.

We got back to base camp after that to enjoy a delicous buffet dinner :D