First day of jungle trekking

Today was our first day in the wild, and it was a good one. We left about 8:30 and walked through a rubber plantation to get to the jungle. We saw monkeys all day - Thomas leaf monkeys, long tailed Macau (? On spelling), pig tailed Macau, some gibbons from a distance. After about an hour we saw our first orangutan, it was a momma with her baby high up in the trees. Quite the sight to see the baby playing. 

The babies stay with the mother until they are 8 or so and this one was older. We continued to trek and saw another one high up, then we saw a mamma with a younger baby up close. We started to make lunch and she showed up, so our guide packed up quickly. He didn't get all the cucumber peels up but she was happy to help clean up. This one seemed somewhat tame and almost posed for pictures. Birds continue to be elusive but we are hearing hornbills just not seeing them.

We Trekked for several more hours until we got to our camp. It's semi permanent, and while not comfortable it will do.

Our guide, Udin, is definitely our favorite guide yet. 

Jungle Trekking Tomorrow

Last night we had quite the feast at Linnea lodge.  Two nights ago there wasn't much to choose from on the menu, and the staff felt bad about it.  So they went crazy and gave us seven dishes - chip cha, fried noodles, some sort of egg dish, chicken satay, soup, and the traditional fruit at the end of the meal.  They did give us looks when we didn't finish it, but we were not given an option on the ordering end.  The food so far has been stellar, we have really enjoyed all the vegetarian options.  

This morning we drove from Tangkahan to Bukit Luwang, where we are staying at the very generic sounding EcoLodge.  It was a 3 hour drive that was very bumpy, but we were constantly greeted by children yelling HELLO.  It was cute.  

We just ate lunch at the Eco Lodge and saw more wildlife at our lunch than we did the entire time at Tangkahan.  Its not to say we didn't enjoy Tangkahan, we loved the service we got, but would have liked to see more things than leeches!  

Tomorrow we head out on a two day jungle trek.  We hope to see orangatuns.  

We have enjoyed the tour so far.  Having all the logistics taken care of is pretty convenient.  Its also nice that its all private but our guide is always guiding and wanting to talk to us.  It can be a tad exhausting.  

Vacation Mode Activate...form of Jungle Fun

So after a really long travel day, we arrived at Linnea Lodge in Tangkahan, Sumatra.  The ride from Medan was very bumpy and we were feeling a bit sore by the time we got here.  We are the only visitors at the lodge, which is cool and slightly uncomfortable.  Its nice to be alone in this beautiful place, but a 7:2 ratio of staff to us is a little much.

Today, we started off on a jungle hike.  We hiked around for about 3 hours looking for wildlife and birds, we didn't see much of either though.  At the end of the hike, we did see a thomas monkey (below) which was cool.  What we did see on the hike were leeches, lots and lots of leeches.  I probably had about 10 of them, for a gory pic check out facebook.  The leeches were not painful, just really bloody.

After removing the leeches, we walked over to a local hot spring, which we had to swim to get to.  It was rather tiny of a hot spring but the warm water felt nice on our achy bones from the travel and hiking.  There were a lot of locals at the hot springs, but no foreigners.  All of the woman were swimming in long pants and tops, so while ashley started out in a bikini she added a coverup for the rest of the day.  

After the hot springs break, we swam to a waterfall.  And then swam (lots of swimming in Tangkahan) to a junction of two rivers.  At the junction, we hopped on some inner tubes and floated down the river where we ate a late lunch at a waterfall.  After we hiked back, I took a nap.  It was quite the fun filled day. This is the advantae of doing a tour, b.c if it was just us we would have only done one thing but instead we packed it in.  After all that intensive traveling, it was great to have some intensive fun!

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.  

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.  

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.

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.