My friend Steph, who works for the RSPB, writes about a visit by her and her husband Liam to see me and experience the Sabangau rainforest. This blog was originally posted on the Orangutan Tropical Peatland Project blog.

It has been months since I first thought about organising a trip to visit my friend Matt who is working in Borneo for the Orangutan Tropical Peatland Project. But it came round really quickly and in no time at all we were arriving in Jakarta – quite a temperature shock coming from the UK in December!

Matt had bravely promised us orangutans, but I know you can never predict wildlife, so I was just crossing my fingers that we’d be privileged enough to catch a glimpse of one of these beautiful creatures.

We arrived in Palangka Raya and headed straight out to the Sabangau peat-swamp forest. It turned out to be a challenging environment Matt had warned us that as it is the wet season, the forest was deep in water and that we should embrace the fact that we would be up to our waists at times. A few of the trails have single plank boardwalks, which was quite a challenge for me as balance is not one of my strengths.

We set off and must have been in the forest for less than an hour before we heard the unmistakable sound of something large crashing through the trees above us. We looked up and there she was. A wild, female orangutan, with a baby following close behind. I immediately forgot my soggy clothes, the intense humidity and squelchy boots, as the moment was as magical as I had hoped it would be. The mother was totally unconcerned by our presence as she is used to the researchers following her round the forest. The baby is three years old, so starting to act like a rebellious toddler and he delighted in throwing the odd stick down at us.

The experience was wonderful, but the next day will be remembered by me as one of the best wildlife moments of my life so far.

We headed out before dawn to the canopy tower, which is a structure about 35m tall and quite a struggle to climb. We got to the top at sunrise and the view was simply breathtaking. The tower is taller than the highest of the trees so you can look right down into the forest and there was a beautiful mist hanging just below the canopy level.

Birds are quite difficult to see in the forest from the ground, as the vegetation is so thick. So being at this height gave us the chance to see some wonderful birds including the Asian black hornbill and the Malaysian blue flycatcher. Incredibly we also caught a glimpse of red langur monkeys and saw gibbons swinging through the trees.

But it was the orangutans again that really took my breath away. We saw another mother and baby and because we were so high up and quite a way away from them, they were oblivious to us. We watched the mother build a day nest and try to persuade the baby to take a nap, but she was having none of it and was climbing out, dangling and generally misbehaving – just like a human toddler.

We headed back out later on and saw the adult female and infant from the day before again, even closer up this time. But towards the end of the day we had a different orangutan experience as we came across our first adult male orangutan.

We were able to follow him to the tree where he settled down in his nest for the night, which meant that the following day we knew exactly where to find him.

Before dawn we headed out and spent the next few hours watching him eat and move through the trees with incredible views. It was later that the really unexpected happened, which was that another, much bigger, male turned up behind us. The first orangutan, clearly intimidated, fled faster than you would think such a big creature capable of! It was a truly exhilarating experience.

We saw so many incredible things in our three days in the rainforest, but I will remember forever the intimate behaviour of these animals and our glimpse into the lives of these beautiful apes. I really hope their peat-swamp forest home continues to be protected for them, and thank you so much to Matt and OuTrop for both the experience and their work to secure their future.