Saturday, January 30, 2016

Still the middle of a really long travel day....

So the flights were relatively uneventful last night.  We ended up with bulkhead seats to tokyo and both ash and I slept like a rock.  We were by the bathroom and that was noisy but nothing that a benzo can't overcome.  

The real excitement came when our plane arrived late in Jakarta.  We got in around 00:30, and we get through customs/immigrations pretty easily only to find that our driver wasn't there.  We hired a tour company to handle for this type of situation, getting off a plane all jet lagged and bleary eyed only to have to figure our transportation was not what we wanted.   I was quite scared that our tour was messed up, and we would be on our own to figure this stuff out.  But alas, we took a taxi to our hotel and they had our room all settled up.  Apparently our driver fell asleep in the parking lot of the airport.  

We got into our room around 2:30am.  Luckily we probably slept 10+ hrs on the various flights, so we werent too tired for our 7am wakeup call.  The breakfast buffet was massive and we hardly recognized anything on it.  And the tour company felt bad and sent a more senior person to take us to the airport and apologize for the inconvenience.  

The jakarta airport is pretty modern, and very western.  Yes most of the women are wearing headscarves but they have KFC, krisy kreme and starbucks to name a few chains.  We are enjoying a cup of very sweet indonesian coffee before our flight to Medan.  


Friday, January 29, 2016

And we are off

We are denver international airport and waiting to board.  We are flying to Tokyo, where ash will spend two hours in the future. And then we will head to Jakarta, and on sunday we will fly from jakarta to medan, then a 5 hour drive to our lodge in the jungle. 

We are really excited but also not too excited about the long travel times.  We left our house at 10am on friday and get to the jungle around 7pm on sunday. Not quite as long as the trip to zambia but not too much shorter.

Ash is most looking forward to seeing wildlife.  Hopefully we will see an orangatun.  Michael is most looking forward to just being away for 3 weeks.  We are both nervous, michael especially about the logistics and the tour.  Ash is scared of volcanos and leeches.  

We are not sure what our connectivity will be while we are gone but will try to update yall regularly.  

Wednesday, January 27, 2016

Dreaming of orangutans, frogmouths..but not leeches!

Once upon a time I went to Hawaii with my heart set on seeing a Sea Turtle up close and personal while having a swim. It didn't happen. So I try not to get my heart set on seeing the wildlife of my dreams in real life.

But that doesn't really stop me. Seeing an Orangutan has been a dream of mine. As we are days away from heading to Indonesia, dreams of Orangutans are dancing in my head.

As are dreams of this little guy- a Sumatran Frogmouth. Frogmouths are nocturnal birds related to Nightjars. I really, really, really want to see one. As well as a laundry list of other birds from my Birds of Sumatra powerpoint flashcard presentation.

I'll let ya know how it goes.


Saturday, January 23, 2016

Indonesia in a week

We have decided to resurrect our blog to account for our travels. So we are going to Indonesia in a week, and are quite excited. We will be doing a three week trip and plan to visit Sumatra and Bali.  In Sumatra we will go see the orangutans, including 5 days in the jungle.  

In Bali we will doing some beach time plus some bird watching.