Welcome to the Jungle

After a brief flight from Jogya to Medan and a three hour car ride from Medan to Bukit Lawang, we arrived in the Jungle. We were out of volcano territory, and officially in Orang-Utan territory. 

We would stay in this small village for a week. Our plan was simple, take a day to get acclimated to the jungle, spend four days trekking in search of wildlife and then relax for another two days as our time in Indonesia was coming to an end.

We enjoyed our first day in Bukit Lawang by checking out the local market. Locals come together every friday to sell their produce, fish and freshly collected rubber. There are plantations all around the village where locals tap trees (like what is done to collect maple syrop) and collect rubber. It is quite an interesting and smelly site to be seen!

The next day our jungle trek would start. It would prove to be the best day of our entire trek. During this single day of 8 hour trekking we saw Thomas-Leaf monkeys, Black Gibbons, White-faced gibbons, Long-tailed Macaque, monitor lizzards, spiders and 10 Orangutans! We spent the night with a nice international group, 10 of us in all, but unfortunately for us, they all left the next morning, and only the two of us would trek on for three more days.

The next three days of trekking would reveal no wildlife at all. Five hours of trekking on day two, four hours on day three (with a painful 45min barefoot walk through the river bank) and a one hour tubing ride back into town (this was really fun).

Never the less it was a good experience; and like everything else, it had its highs and lows. The food in the jungle was great, its pretty amazing what they can make with such a simple jungle kitchen. Our last night included a side dish of jungle ferns that were freshly picked during our last treck.

And, we always slept by the river which made for nice showers and fun times hanging off the lianas and being pulled by the strong current in the river.

On the down side, the accommodations were extremely basic. Imagine laying a yoga mat over a bed of rocks and calling this your bed for three nights... very painful!

As well, the drinking water, which was boiled river water, always tasted like smoke. It was pretty awful. And of course, the heat and humidity, John was soaking wet within the first half hour of the walk and would just continue to sweat as the day went on, damn that jungle was hot!

We were both quite happy to be back in the village at the end of our trek. What seemed like such basic accommodations before we left, now felt like a 5 star hotel. Not many tourist stay for more than two or three days, so we were quite well known by the end of our visit. We were even invited to break fast with the locals who had been fasting all day for Ramadan (we had been eating all day, but were quite pleased to join and learn about their fasting).

On our last day we treked to the bat cave which was only a couple of KM away. It was an interesting site to see. Full of bats, a couple of spiders and very dark. Lets just say AJ was not a big fan of this place!