As we dragged the heavy dugout canoe over thundering rapids, waist-deep foaming waters raged around us, threatening to wrench us downstream. Two days before, our guide had proclaimed, "You are the first outsiders ever to see this place."
We looked around us in awe at a steep rock-sided canyon with pristine fine jade velvet drapes hanging over glass-clear water. Two further days of dragging heavily laden boats through the rainforest torrent and I was starting to appreciate why no one had ever been here before.
Suddenly, and with a sickening crack, the dugout we were dragging over the rocks was overcome by the waves, filled instantly with water, and snapped in two, causing all hell to break loose.
The supplies, stacked 2 feet deep in the boat's hull, were pitched into the river. The outboard motor was ripped off the back of the boat and went floating downstream, a hardy boatman gamely clinging to it like a big, metal lifebuoy. We were in trouble …
The island of Borneo, divided between Malaysia, Indonesia and Brunei, is the third largest in the world and until very recently was covered in dazzling rain forest. In the last 20 years, about 60 percent of that forest has disappeared and may never return.
The purpose of Expedition Borneo was to attempt to get into some of the most remote, untrammeled hinterlands of this astoundingly rich and diverse island to discover new species and find, film and assess the well-being of the animals living there.
The expedition took our team up unscaled peaks, along rivers that had never been seen by the outside world, and into cave systems that had never seen light until we arrived.
The dugout disaster was the first of many harrowing adventures in which our mettle would be tested by an indifferent jungle. We managed to steer the gear to our carefully selected campsite in Imbak Canyon where we spent the night in hammocks 10 stories up in the crown of an emergent tree, where we played cards and drank whiskey in the lightning and downpour of a tropical night. Then we woke above the misty canopy to a chorus of gibbons singing for their breakfast.
A small crew trekked two days into the heart of Imbak Canyon and climbed a magical seven-tiered waterfall to catch dancing jeweled frogs in coffee-colored pools. I festered (or just sat!) for four days and nights in an ancient burial ground that looked like something out of Raiders of the Lost Ark, where vine-entangled caves were surrounded by 350-year-old ironwood coffins, to try and catch a huge python that lived there.
What we saw dazzled and delighted and convinced every one of us that it was a place well worth saving. I hope watching the programs will convince you as well.
