Wildlife Extravaganza

Tangkoko-Batuangas Dua Saudara Nature Reserve. Home of black macaques, tarsiers, hornbills and other amazing creatures. We envisioned spending days in the woods alongside the animals, returning to nature and observing wildlife, something we got to do very little in the Philippines otherwise known as (by me) The Land of Empty Forests.

Well, our vision of Tangkoko was not quite as expected but it was still spectacular. We arrived to the village of Batu Putih on the outskirts of the reserve by riding on the back of a pick up truck that had been rigged up with wooden benches which fit about a dozen people and their various goods. Again, we picked the accommodation based on the price, but our decision ended up being a good one since the owner was also a park ranger.

The entrance fee to the park was steeper than expected. For every three hour venture into the wilderness one must pay the equivalent of $8.88 PER PERSON. This fee includes the guide, but if you want to take a day long hike the price jumps to $10.10 and if you're there to watch birds the price is over $20!!!

We paid the astronomical fee and received our guide, who was very knowledgeable about the area. Our first hike was in the evening and therefore we were there mostly to see the Tarsier. The tarsier is the smallest primate (think gorilla) on earth. It is a nocturnal creature with one of the largest eye to body ratio of all animals. There are many species of tarsiers and even one inhabits the island of Bohol in the 'Pines where we had seen them in horrible little tourist venues. Now was our chance to see them in the wild, going about their wild lives. We waited by the tree house of one tarsier family until dusk. As we watched the lazy critters slowly began to emerge from the depths of the fig tree. Just before it was too dark to see anything, they began to jump, on the hunt for small insects and lizards. They were like lightening as they zipped from sapling to sapling. It was the highlight of the trip.

The rest of the hike wasn't too shabby either. We saw a gang of about 20 macaques, a pair of gorgeous red beaked hornbills, a monitor lizard and sleeping tarantulas. We were extremely lucky to see all of this in one three-hour hike and we came back to the homestay thrilled!

We went on one other hike with our ranger friend, who got us a scam on the entrance fee ($5 for both of us instead of $16). We went with a Malaysian couple who are wildlife photographers. For this expedition they wanted to shoot the tarsiers and so our guide brought a little snack to lure the primate out of its hole. We went to see the same tarsier family only this time there were hoards of onlookers snapping flashing cameras in the face of the poor wide-eyed tarsiers. Then the guides got out a gecko and tied it to a string to taunt the primates. It was pitiful. I felt so sorry for both the gecko who was slowly mangled and for the tarsier who was duped into thinking it would get an easy meal. On the flip side, I did get a few nice videos of them jumping (but I did NOT use flash and I tried to stay a fair distance away from them). Just to show how lucky we were the first day, on the second hike we only saw the tarsiers and a few birds. We did see a cus-cus (think sloth) very high in the canopy but it looked more like a clump of dead leaves than anything (still pretty exciting to a couple of biologists!).

We also spent some time sneaking into the forest. We followed some trails at the edge of a pasture and were able to leisurely search for birds and watch a group of macaques play at the creek with no other tourists watching. If we didn't need to be so stealthy, we would have spent more time exploring this unique area.