Our jungle trek was one of Reid’s main interests in the trip, as he is
very interested in animals of all kinds, especially those that are unusual or
endangered. There are few places where orangutan
can be seen outside of a zoo, and northern Sumatra is the only one in Indonesia
where they can be seen in the wild. In
other parts of Indonesia, they are on reserves where visitors can see them
coming to feeding stations.
But getting there is a major endeavor. Our flight from Yogya to Jakarta was delayed,
so we were a bit worried about whether we – and our luggage – would make the
connecting flight to Medan. Fortunately,
we all arrived on time in Medan, where the airport was an hour’s taxi from the
hotel. Medan is a city of 2.5 million,
and at least .5 million of them seemed to be vying with our taxi for position
on the road. By the time we got to the
hotel, we had decided that we had seen enough of Medan!
However, the city redeemed itself with our dinner experience
– as we walked around the block that our hotel was on, we discovered a back
alley full of food carts selling fried noodles, fried rice, satay and various
coconut and rice desserts, all wrapped in banana leaves or other similarly
compostable coverings. We were in
sampling heaven, and the only foreigners in sight. For the first time since Reid arrived, we
were dealing with people who were not able to communicate in English, but sign
language worked just fine and we came back to the hotel looking forward to a
chance to go back after the trek.
The next morning, our driver showed up right on time. To get from Medan to Ketambe, I had been told
that we could take a local minibus for a 13 hours trip through town and
country…or we could hire our own driver and do the trip in 7 hours in an air-conditioned
SUV with 4 wheel drive. I’ve done enough
of the mini-busses with the pigs and the chickens in my life to know that the private
SUV was the better option!
The dusty condition of the interior of his SUV was our first
tip that the drive would be somewhat less than deluxe. The road was much busier and better than I
had expected for about the first hour, although it was barely two lanes
wide. The driver used his horn to clear
the way as we barreled along, weaving around becaks, motorbikes, minibuses and
other SUVs. As the traffic began to
thin, so did the quality of the road.
Occasional potholes became gaping voids in the tarmac, and the SUV’s
shocks weren’t well matched to the speed with which we traversed them.
Conversation with the driver was limited as he spoke very
little English, and he filled the silence with Indonesian music from his thumb
drive run through bass woofers in the back that were stronger than magic
fingers, but not as effective. I decided
that since I was paying for the ride, I could regulate the volume, which I did.
The A/C was somewhat compromised by his smoking, for which
he would roll down the driver’s window, which explained how the interior of the
car had become so dusty – we noticed that the people on motorbikes all had
handkerchiefs pressed to their faces. And,
as he finished the snacks he had bought on the way out of town, he disposed of
the pesky wrappers out the open window.
Relief came after about two hours, however. We stopped at a gas station to use the bathroom
and, while Reid was inside, the driver pointed to his own head with a grimace
and asked with sign language if Reid could drive. I gathered that he was not feeling well, and
pointed to myself, making a driving motion with my two hands, indicating that I
could do it. This seemed quite baffling
to him as he kept gesturing toward the absent Reid – apparently the concept of
a woman driving was incomprehensible to him.
Nevertheless, after about ½ hour more driving, he pulled
over. I climbed into the driver’s seat
(on the right side), Reid took shotgun, and the driver climbed into the back
seat, from where he grunted approval as I tested the gears with my left
hand. I pulled out onto the now
intermittent stream of busses, trucks, becaks and motorbikes, as the driver
stretched out in the back seat. Reid and
I exchanged the “here comes another adventure” glance that was now becoming our
private communication.
We quickly discovered that being in the driver’s seat had
many advantages: we controlled the A/C, the radio, the horn, and the speed and
angle at which we transited the potholes.
The driver was soon snoring audibly, so he was not smoking, and Reid and
I were free to chat. By this time we
were rising into the mountains that divide Sumatra, and the road had become a
series of hairpin turns interspersed with potholes, some of which covered the
entire lane. My confidence in the car,
its brakes, and my left-hand shifting grew rapidly though, and soon we were
moving along at a fairly decent pace, although these were by far the WORST
driving conditions I had ever experienced.
Occasionally, we would pass a large piece of earth moving
equipment on the side of the road, such as a backhoe and, once, a steamroller,
but the system of road improvement seemed patchy and haphazard at best. Stretches of smooth black asphalt with a lane
marker alternated with sections that were so sketchy I wondered if we were
still on the right road. We passed
through scores of roadside communities, helter-skelter accumulations of tin
roofs, concrete walls and dusty signs. And
a cell phone tower every mile or two. In
the furthest reaches of Sumatra, I was still getting email.
Reid had offered to spell me, and after about 90 minutes, I
was about ready to cede the wheel when I saw the driver’s head appear in the
rearview as he looked around rubbing his eyes.
“Miss,” he said, “I driver now.” “Are
you feeling better?” I asked hopefully. “Yes,”
he insisted, and we swapped places. Reid
and I exchanged one of those glances again.
The driver must have gotten a second wind, as he was soon
back in the groove of smoking, honking and barreling down the road. Did I mention that he was also receiving –
and responding to - cell phone calls as he drove? Shortly we began dropping in elevation and
the road began to improve as we headed toward the river. Kuta Cane looked positively urban compared
with the previous 4 hours. It had been
hours since our last bathroom break, however, and I had been making good use of
our water bottles. I looked up the word
for ‘bathroom’ in Indonesian and managed to get the driver to understand that I
needed to stop. Kutacane actually had a
gas station with a bathroom as clean as any in the US.
Just as we were leaving town, he pulled over and spoke with
a woman he apparently knew, and she and her two daughters piled into the back
seat with me for a few miles.
It was with a good deal of relief that we saw the sign for
the Guesthouse an hour later and tumbled out of the car with our bags…. 7 hours
after we had left Medan.
We met Ahmad, the guesthouse owner with whom I had been
emailing to arrange the trek. He showed
us to our bungalow, a very clean but very basic concrete hut with two beds and
an attached bath. These were the
‘deluxe’ accommodations, for 100,000 IR (about $8) since there was a cold
shower in the bath, instead of a dipping basin.
A cold beer never tasted so good.
This area is, though, quite lovely and quite rural – a
collection of rustic guesthouses like ours clustered along the road, pretty
much hidden in the banana and coconut trees.
The babble of the river and the song of the cicadas put us to sleep by
8:30 and we were dead to the world until 7 a.m.
We had a day to unwind and shake out the kinks from the
drive, and to talk with our guide, Jhon Kanedi (he goes by JFK, after whom he
was named), to determine what we should bring.
His recommendations included long pants to keep off the leeches and a
strong flashlight to see animals at night.
We let him know that our priority was to see animals, especially orangutan,
and we were pleased to discover that this would mean that we would keep to the
lower country, travel slowly and make little noise…we were both a bit concerned
about trying to gain altitude quickly in 95F and 95% humidity.
With all that sorted out, we wandered down the road and
found a tiny shop to buy a roll of TP, a battery and a small flashlight for the
trek, as Jhon felt that my flashlight was not strong enough to hunt animals at
night.
The next day, we met Jhon and our porter Safar at our
guesthouse, where we donned leech socks and began hiked up the road to the
entrance to the national park. Leech
socks are something like Christmas stockings made of light canvas, big enough
to fit just about anyone. You wear them
over your feet and pant legs up to your knees, then fitting your feet into your
shoes. The purpose is to keep leeches
from affixing themselves to your feet and making their way to bare skin. Since this was the ‘dry’ season, the guide
assured us that we would not see too many. By the end of the trek, we had seen 5-6 and Reid managed to get bitten around the waist when we sat down for lunch on the last day. Not dangerous, but ICK.
Turning abruptly off the road, we dove into the jungle and
began a three-day trek through dense foliage on terrain that could only be
described as rugged. We climbed and
dropped, picking our way over roots, under fallen logs and around the trunks of
trees that predate the Americas. Our
pace was slow, as Jhon stopped frequently to check for signs of wildlife. We soon learned that a light shower of leaves
generally meant that there were monkeys overhead, and movement in the canopy
could be caused by a gibbon or orangutan swinging 60 feet above the jungle
floor.
Although we walked in silence, the jungle is NOT quiet – a
chorus of cicadas in various phrasings and tones provided a constant backdrop,
broken by the chatter of macaques or the whoop-whoop of a gibbon. Our first sighting was of a male gibbon, to
whose call Jhon responded with a whoop-whoop that elicited a long and excited
response from the gibbon. While we sat
there watching him swing above us, Jhon pointed out a Thomas Leaf Monkey just a
hundred feet away, before we headed down to the river where Safar had set up
camp and was busy whipping up lunch.
The campsite was an idyllic spot at the side of the perfect
swimming hole, and it took us no time to put on our swimsuits and jump in. There
was a troupe of macaques that hung around camp, waiting for the opportunity to
raid the cook tent. As Reid and I
soaked and chatted, we noticed one of them stealing a bag of chips and we
shouted the alert to Safar who had moved to the river to wash dishes. The macaque made a beeline back to the trees,
but dropped the bag before he got too high.
Camp was a rustic affair – basically a collection of sticks
stuck into the ground with thin clear plastic tarps wrapped around them. Although it rained the first night, the
guides constructed them in a way that let in less water than some high-tech
tents I have used. Pretty
ingenious. Sleeping was another matter,
as our ground pads had definitely seen better days. I was feeling my age --- and the rocks and
roots --- through the pad the first night.
After lunch, we headed back onto the trail, which was
considerably more rugged than the morning’s trek. They don’t believe in switchbacks to reduce
the incline, we just climbed up and over fallen trees, roots and hills. We did encounter a couple of leeches in the
process, but avoided connecting with them.
An hour into the afternoon, Jhon pointed out the promised Tarzan vine, a
thick liana hanging from a branch about 30 feet above us, and demonstrated how
to swing across the muddy creek that ran through the glade.
Reid was eager to try it, although I reminded
him that, slender as he is, he still weighed at least 50% more than our guide –
but he was game to try it and made it successfully out and back. I was not so lucky – somehow I lost my grip
as I swung high on the other side and did a belly flop right into the mud. However, the thought of leeches bounced me
right back onto my feet, to the consternation of our guide and Reid’s barely
suppressed laughter. I made a lousy
Jane.
It was the end of the afternoon when Jhon signaled a
sighting, a large female high in the canopy.
We all lay on our backs on the ground and watched her for about 15
minutes as she moved about eating and began constructing her nest for the
night. From the loud cracks of the
branches as she broke them, we had a clear sense of the strength and power of
these apes. 
We returned to camp ready for dinner. 
A steady evening shower kept us from night
trekking, but we enjoyed huddling under the tarp with Jhon and Safar and
hearing their personal stories. Jhon is
unmarried, although he revealed that his brother had been killed riding one of
those overcrowded minibus that run between Medan and Ketambe. Jhon therefore inherited the responsibility
for his brother’s children and was getting pressure from his family to marry
his sister-in-law. Although he knew that
this was likely going to happen, he was not looking forward to the prospect,
since he had spent too much time with foreign visitors to be satisfied with a
local wife who spoke no English and was not interested in the world beyond her
village. I was moved by his story, as I
watched his brilliant smile fade as he talked about the dilemma he faced.
The next morning, after a breakfast of banana pancakes and
coffee, we were off again. Although we
saw several monkeys, our morning resulted in no orangutan sightings. Orangutans are very hard to track because
they sleep in a different place each night and rarely descend to the jungle
floor, leaving no trail.
We headed across the river after lunch to try a different spot, and to check out the hot springs upstream. This trail was even more rugged, with steep ups and downs and opportunities for missteps. After an hour of arduous hiking, we were happy to lower ourselves into the steaming pools of the higher camp.
 |
| Hot springs |
Our trip back to camp yielded more gibbon sightings and more Thomas Leaf monkeys, but still no orange apes. I was ready to call it a night after a fabulous meal of gado gado, and Reid and Jhon waited for dark to explore the jungle at night.
By the next morning, we were both feeling the effects of the
terrain – our legs and feet from the hiking, our backs and sides from the
sleeping. My rib cage still ached from
my failed Tarzan imitation, and Reid’s stomach was complaining about the second
helping of gado gado he had the night before.
We were moving pretty slowly as we headed onto the trail, but all of
that was forgotten about an hour later when we came upon a young orangutan who
was busily feeding. As our cameras
clicked away, we watched him come within 20 feet of us, moving from branch to
branch in search of food. Reid was in
heaven. 
A bit later, Jhon showed us how to get water from a jungle tree that yields a steady stream of slgithly sweet liquid when cut.
Our next sighting came an hour
later, as we sat on a small hill for an improvised lunch. Orangutans don’t vocalize much, making only a
kind of ‘kissing’ sound on rare occasions, and Safar heard one. Right above us was a huge male, hanging from
the canopy scolding us for intruding on his territory. As we watched, he made a show of strength
breaking branches and hurling them to the floor as he swung from tree to tree,
altering his route to give us a wide berth.
There was no way we could have tracked him overland, as he moved at
least a quarter mile through the canopy in the time it would have taken us to
cover 100 yards.
 |
| Hiking the last half mile back to the guesthouse |
 |
| Jhon, me, Reid, Safar |
Finally it was time to head back to the guesthouse, where we fell onto our cots with two cold beers.
Our time in Indonesia was drawing to a close. We left Ketambe tired but nor sure we were ready for another 7 hour drive like the first. However, our taxi drive was a whole different experience from the first one: we had three different drivers who drove different legs of the route, doing a much better job of avoiding potholes, with no smoking and no loud music. This time we could enjoy the scenery as we passed verdant rice fields, dusty villages and a smoking active volcano. 
I'm including here a few shots of things that made us laugh, Because Indonesia is Muslim, there are a number of things that are different. For example, what do you put on the mud flaps of a big rig if you can't show profiles of naked women?Of course, a naked smoking baby and a kangaroo!
And then there are the toilets. The traditional Indonesian toilet is a hole in the ground that may or may not include a porcelain fixture to stand on. Our 'thrones' are being introduced, but, clearly, not everyone knows how to use them. Hence, the following signs can be found posted in 'western style' stalls.
Someone apparently came up with a better idea, which we found in one of our hotel rooms, a toilet equipped with special jets to serve the same purpose (not a bidet). But, clearly, people needed instruction for the (ahem) "eco-washer"
Back in Medan, we revelled in hot showers, real mattresses and clean soft sheets, revisited our back alley of food stalls
and tried some new dishes. The next day
we taxied to the airport and flew back to Bali and headed to Padangbai, the
fishing village I had visited before.  |
| Our guesthouse in Padangbai |
We
had a few nights there to rest up for our long flight home, soak in the pool,
and enjoy the food on the café on the beach.
 |
| junkung and snorkelling guide |
And then it was time to pack and go home. On the taxi ride to the airport from Badangbai, we managed to squeeze in
a visit to a Balinese temple. known for its bat cave, and caught a
python in the act of trying to catch a few of them.
I’d covered a lot of ground since I left Olympia in September: 5000 nautical miles across the equator in the Beneteau, cultural exchanges in 4 countries, new friends from many different nations, great food, stunning vistas…. but the highlight of the whole trip was 17 days spent with my son.
