Bukit Lawang–Orangutans

We took yet another bus from Lake Toba to Bukit Lawang, this time in an air conditioned minibus!  It dropped us in a small village with goats and sheep walking down the small crowded dusty street.  We decided to book our jungle trek in Gunung Leuser National Park for the next day. 1 day of walking in the jungle,sleep the night in the jungle, then a river raft back.  And stay the night in Bukit Lawang, to find the guest houses, you had to cross the river….thank goodness it was still daylight when we walked across with our bags!  This photo is one of the bridges we had to walk across, there were 3 to choose from, all long and swingy, each more rickety than the next, missing boards etc!

And a much nicer view of one of the bridges from the hostel reception/hang-out/restaurant/bar area.

The trek was hard work, but really worth it.  No easy maintained paths, but really interesting guides who are really proud of Bukit Lawang (in fact every english pop song they sing, they substitute Bukit Lawang and orangutan in the song somewhere!)  Next photo is how they get rubber out of a rubber tree.  They explained that a rubber tree is environmentally friendly, especially when compared to palm oil! Everyday workers go out and make cuts in the trees with a special knife, and collect the rubber in a bucket. 

We saw a funky monkey (white breasted Thomas leaf monkey) called that because of his mohawk.  Hard to get a good picture as they move so fast!

They showed us all sorts of trees, including making us chew on some bark claiming after a while it tasted of icecream, but actually it was quinine, the stuff in tonic water and was very bitter, but the next tree was my favourite, a coca tree, what chocolate is make from!

A honey  bear also lives in the jungle, very hard to find but we found his footprints going up a tree

The trek was really hard going, thank goodness for tree roots to grab onto.  This tree had the coolest roots…

Our lunch in the jungle was produced by one of our guides, Mona.  Mona was a really cool guy, if you ever go to Bukit Lawang, you must ask for him with your tour! and he makes a great pineapple.

The lead guide, who was Mona’s teacher also harvests the coca beans when he’s not got a tour guide job. He’s really passionate about the National Park, and was particular about not feeding the orangutans, as some of them are rehabilitated orangutans and  have to relearn to fend on their own.  Whenever we stopped for lunch, all the fruit peels were put in plastic bags and carried with the guides.

Here is a shot of Andre in the jungle followed by a small river in the middle of our trek

 

And now, for our best photos!  The Orangutans!  (Andre has made me limit how many photos I put on, as you can imagine I went crazy with the camera!  We must have seen over 30!)

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

The above Orangutan was very aggressive.  It threw branches and fruit at us later to make us leave the territory!

 

That night it poured with rain just as we got to camp, but the guides entertained us with magic tricks and songs.  Later that night we awoke to a scream, Andre discovered something trying to sleep on his face and threw it off to the girl a couple of sleeping bags over (all 9 of us slept in a line under tarp) there is dispute as to whether it was a frog or a monkey, most of us think it was a monkey, as we felt the frogs earlier jumping over our legs!  Worst night sleep ever!

Next morning we went white water rafting, so took us over 6 hours to trek to the jungle and less than an hour to ride back to the hostel!

 

 

that night we got Mona to sing our jungle trek song,

jungle trek, jungle trek
in Bakit Lawang
see the monkeys, see the birds, see Orangutan
to the tune of jingle bells!  here it is live by Mona