Jungle Love

I just spent four days on the edge of the Sumatran jungle in a village called Bukit Lawang. The village relies heavily on tourism because it is the home of an orangutan conservation and rehabilitation center as well as a national park. It is also one of only two places in the world where you can still see orangutans in the wild.

We left Jakarta on a 7 am flight, which put us in Medan about 9:30. A driver from our hotel met us there and drove us three hours to Bukit Lawang. From the drop off spot, we had to schlep ourselves and our bags another half-hour along the river to our hotel, the Jungle Inn.

Our rooms were amazing. We had two rooms, joined by a walkway between our patios and with a private view of a waterfall coming down the rocks behind the hotel. Also, my room had a gigantic rock that formed one of the walls.

Once we checked in and had a delicious lunch of pumpkin curry, we set out on our first hike, to the Bat Cave. Apparently, thousands of bats live there. I went on the hike but didn't decide to go into the cave until we got there. It was a pretty difficult hike, through a bit of jungle, down into the rocks and then up the rocks into the cave. So, I figured I'd come that far, I might as well go inside. Lucky for me, the bats were either hiding or too far inside.

When we got back to the Jungle Inn, I thought I was soaking wet from sweat--I wasn't and I wouldn't find out what soaking wet from sweat felt like until I went on the real jungle trek--so we rented some tubes and I jumped in the river in all my clothes to go tubing down a couple of rapids. In retrospect, this was a bit of a mistake. I only brought four t-shirts for four days and the one I was wearing when I jumped in the river never got dry again.

On Friday, we got up early, had a quick breakfast, and set off for a trek through the jungle in the hopes of seeing orangutans in the wild. We'd considered doing the overnight trek. There was a part of me that really liked the idea of trekking for two days and staying overnight in the jungle. And there was another part of me that thought there was no way my knees and feet would make it through two days of trekking, and that even if they did, there was still the problem of sleeping in the absolute darkness of the Sumatran jungle with all manner of bugs and snakes and who knows what else. It's a good thing that was the part of me that won the argument.

We trekked for a couple of hours. I went with three friends and there was another couple added to our group, so that was six trekkers and three guides. I was the oldest and the most out of shape so I went a little more slowly than everybody else. But one of the guides was always with me, trying to help. I always want to do it myself though, partly because I'm stubborn that way but mostly because I'm a total klutz and I can find my balance better without somebody grabbing at my arms and trying to pull me along. It ended up being okay because it was a tough hike for everybody, so while I was going along at a steady but slow pace my friends could stop and rest and have a drink of water while they waited for me to catch up. Plus, we would stop periodically while the guides went off the path and into the bush, looking for the orangutans.

There are both wild and semi-wild orangutans living in the jungle. You can tell the difference because the wild ones are scared of people and the semi-wild ones are not. The semi-wild orangutans started out as zoo animals or as pets or were maybe trained to be in animal shows. They were eventually sent to the Orangutan Center for rehabilitation into the wild.

The first orangutan that my group saw was wild. I was too far behind and missed it. Apparently, they caught it as it was running away and they gave chase with one of the guides. We came up on the other guide and he was laughing, saying that they could chase it all day but it was gone. He called out to find them and we started walking off the path in their direction. For one moment, I lost both of the guides and was standing in the middle of the dense jungle, off of the path. I wasn't particularly scared, but I didn't really know what to do. So, I called out and they were back to collect me in two seconds. We walked a little further on and found the rest of the group. That's when things got a little crazy.

When we started the trek, the lead guide told us the rules. He explained that we'd all walk up into the jungle (and boy did he mean up...and up....and up) and then we'd take rests while the guides split off to look for the orangutans. Then, when they found them, they'd take us to them but we would walk very slowly. He told us to get our cameras out and carry them because it wasn't a good idea to unzip a backpack in front of the orangutans since they would think we were unpacking food and might become aggressive. Also, we were told we absolutely could not touch them since we might transmit a human disease and especially since we were all wearing mosquito repellent. And under no circumstances were we to feed them. The point of the rehabilitation center is to make sure that they can live on their own in the wild. He told us that the guides carried food and sometimes had to feed them in order to stop them from being aggressive with tourists, but that they avoided that if they could.

So, picture the nine of us, all off the path, in the jungle bush. Then, from nowhere, all of the sudden, there were a bunch of other tourists and guides and somebody shouted, "They're over here." Remember how our guide told us to go slowly when we spotted them? Yeah? We didn't. Six people who were, to that point, being very careful about where they put their feet, were suddenly sprinting through the jungle to get to the orangutans, and I was one of them. Luckily, it was a semi-wild female who wasn't spooked by all the people that appeared out of nowhere. She had her baby with her and they stayed up in the trees, looking down at us.

Then, the other tourists, who apparently had guides who weren't as awesome as our guides, pulled out freaking bananas and started to feed her. I definitely had mixed feelings about this. One the one hand, I understand why we're not supposed to do it. Ultimately, it's not good for the orangutans to depend on food from humans. But on the other hand, she came right down to our level and it was unbelievable. I couldn't stop shaking and I almost started crying. We watched them move around the trees for about a half an hour until we were ready to move on in search of more.

After we'd been in the jungle about three hours, we got to a place that went up some more, only this time someone had built huge cement stairs. I started up with everybody else but then the guide mentioned that it would be about two hours of climbing up the stairs and then we'd have to go down. My knees are shot and stairs are the worst! Climbing up is hard, but I can handle it. Climbing down is downright painful. I thought about it and decided that after two more hours of climbing up, I'd be so tired that I ran the risk of seriously hurting myself on the way down. I also wanted to be able to enjoy the rest of the weekend with full use of my legs. So, I bailed. At that point, we were luckily only about 15 minutes away from the river crossing back to the hotel. So, one of the guides took me down and then ran back up to the group.

I got back to the hotel about noon, peeled off my sweat-soaked clothes, took a shower, had a nice lunch, read my book for a little while, and then ventured back across the river to the feeding platform at the center so I could watch the afternoon feeding. Twice a day, the rehabilitation center provides a meal of banana mush (bananas and milk) to any semi-wild orangutans who want to come and eat it. They say it's mostly mothers and babies who come to get a little extra to supplement what they find in the jungle. Unfortunately, it's the fruit season now, so none came to eat in the afternoon. But there were plenty of macaques. Those are little gray monkeys that can be very naughty. They were everywhere along the river and playing in the trees around, and on the roof of, the hotel. And apparently, they go to the feeding to get the scraps the orangutans drop. I was, not surprisingly, the last one up the path. I stopped at one point for a breather and I noticed a trail of monkeys following me. As I turned around, the all froze in place and the lead monkey became suddenly interested in the trees around him. It was so funny. It was like he didn't want me to know he was following me so he pretended to be looking at something else, just like a little kid. Natura-ally, I kept turning around to watch the scene play out over and over again for the rest of the way up the path.

One the way down, the ranger pointed out one of the 14 most deadly snakes on the planet, sleeping in a tree. I'm glad I saw it after I'd exited the jungle interior.

I got back to the hotel and my friends had arrived. One hurried off to get a massage and another took a nap. So, two of us sat in the restaurant (open-air, of course), and enjoyed a late afternoon beer. I sat with my back to the river. My friend noticed the trees moving across the river and said something about monkeys. I turned to look and all of the sudden we saw two orangutans, moving around in the trees. Right there, from our hotel. It was so cool. We learned later that they have a nest there, so most mornings you can watch them leave and most afternoons around four, you can watch them come back.

We hung around our hotel for the rest of the day, relaxing and playing cards. There was no reason to go anywhere else to eat because the food was fantastic. On Saturday morning, I took a walk down to the village to shop for postcards while my friends did a little sunbathing. I joined them for about a half hour when I came back. The sun is pretty hot at noon right on the equator. A half-hour was all I could stand.

Later in the afternoon, two of us went on a rafting trip down the river, through the village and into the farmland. I never imagined there could be so many shades of green. This time, there were two guides with us, one for the front of the raft and one for the back. The raft was three tubes tied together. There were rapids, but the water was low, so they were nothing serious, and we enjoyed a leisurely trip to a place where we climbed out of the raft and into a truck that drove us back up to the village. From there, we had to make the trek back to our hotel again. I'm glad we stayed where we did, but each time we walked back, I swear it was further away!

Sunday, we did a whole lotta nothing! I read in the sun for a half hour and then I was hot so I went swimming in the river. After that, I read in the shade. At three, it was time for us to leave. We said good-bye to our friends at the hotel and schlepped our bags back down the hill to the car that drove us back into Medan to catch our flight.

The weekend was a whole series of "I-can't-believe-where-I-am" moments and today I keep wondering if the whole thing was a dream. I'd like to go back someday but I know I probably won't. There are too many other things to see in Indonesia and it was a pretty expensive trip, by Indonesian standards anyway.

I'll always remember seeing the orangutans, which was the reason I wanted to go. But even more importantly, I'll remember the people of Bukit Lawang. In 2003, the river rose 10 meters in a flash flood that destroyed all of the buildings and killed over 300 people--I think that's about half of the population. The guide that stayed with me on our jungle trek lost his wife and son in the flood. Everyone in the village must have lost someone.

Just imagine that. Imagine losing half of your town--your family, your friends, your neighbors--gone in the few minutes it takes for a raging wall of water to rush through a village. Seven years later, the village is rebuilt and the tourists have returned. If you didn't know about the flood, you'd never guess. The people are warm and friendly and welcoming. Even though they didn't show the tiniest bit of sadness, my heart aches for them. I'm not sure I'd have the resiliency to recover from such devastation. But they go on, obviously proud of their village and their jungle and more than willing to share it with anyone who happens to visit.