11. Welcome to the Jungle

After possibly making you a little "hot" for the jungle, this blog post is now about our trip to the jungle of Sumatra.

The flight from Singapore to Medan in northern Sumatra was unspectacular. Robert was still awake. We arrived at the airport and were even expected with a sign "Robert Jeske". Cool, Robert always wanted to have that ;-)

The super friendly driver from Ecotravel, our jungle trip organizer, greeted us very cheerfully. We were a bit off track and went to Dunkin Donut first.

Just 5 minutes later, Jojo became a double millionaire. It's going well for us, we thought! Unfortunately, not quite. With an exchange rate of 1 € to 17,000 IDR, Jojo didn't accomplish a great work of art.

Off to the air-conditioned car! A nice little jeep should take us from Medan to Bukit Lawang in the rainforest. That worked quite well, if it hadn't been for the really catastrophic roads. People in our country bathe in such large holes... After a drive through palm oil plantations and rubber plantations, we arrived in a small town.

Bukit Lawang is one of two towns that serve as starting points for the jungle in the Gunung Leuser National Park. In Bukit Lawang, you can only enter the "town" by moped, along a footpath. The village stretches along a river, which can be crossed occasionally by wobbly looking suspension bridges.

After Singapore, quite a shock. I don't want to know how Jojo felt :-)

We had booked a simple triple room for one night. And simple means really simple... toilet to scoop, cold water and the room without air conditioning. We immediately noticed that we were on the edge of the jungle. Never mind... we were curious about what would happen the next morning.

On the day of our arrival, we received an instruction for the jungle trek. It was given by a constantly giggling guy who had suspiciously large pupils. He took a leaf in his hand and drew a zigzag line on a small piece of paper. That was supposed to represent our path. He commented every hill with up and down... up up... down down... up up up... Food... up up up... up up up... down down down... Sleep and River back. And he was absolutely right :-D

All clear! The plan seems to be in place, we thought :-)

Put long pants in socks, pack light luggage and 1.5 liters of water as well as mosquito repellent. Since we were truly poorly prepared, we immediately laid out the clothes in our room after the instruction. Jojo got long socks from me, Jojo gave Jojo long pants from Josi and Josi... well, as always, was well prepared.

We went to the river and took a refreshing bath. The view from the river to the jungle made bathing a real eye-catcher. Pretty strong currents made it possible for us to only bathe at the edge of the river.

After the bath, the preparation continued.

Robert only had elegant jeans with him, so he went through the village again and bought a very chic baggy pants for €5 :-)

We put out our trekking shoes...

and Jojo his deer brown, highly polished Lacoste shoes :-D

It started raining! Good prospects for a muddy adventure in the rainforest :-/

Josi wasn't feeling well. Hot flushes and rash. After a little nap, she was luckily feeling a bit better.

A couple had moved into the neighboring room. Leonie and Jan from Wuppertal. And as luck would have it, the two of them went on the same trek with us. Jojo and Robert went to eat and Leonie and Jan went to the nearby warung (small restaurant). After Josi had also had some sleep, she felt a little hungry and the five of us sat at the table.

Everyone was tired, so we went to bed at 8 p.m. The alarm clock was set for 6 a.m. We still had to finish packing our backpacks and have breakfast. We started almost on time at 8:30 a.m. Our guide was called Antonio, who would really blossom during the trek.

On the way, we picked up another couple. Lisa and Christian from Dortmund. After initial difficulties regarding motivation for Josi and misunderstanding for Jojo and Robi :-) we continued into the jungle. Robert's t-shirt was completely sweaty after about 15 minutes.

Well, this is going to be fun... We passed a small rubber plantation and after a short while we had to put down our backpacks. Another group before us had apparently already spotted orangutans. Oops, that was quick! An orangutan was simply hanging in the tree. There was even a second one behind... Suddenly our mood improved and we were in explorer mode :-) But it was going to get even crazier.

We walked a few meters and got to watch an orangutan couple mating :-)

We didn't have to worry about contraception, because there were enough rubber trees nearby.

We put on our backpacks and continued into the jungle. It slowly became more and more muddy and the forest a little denser. On the way, we kept meeting individual groups. So the path was clearly recognizable. We didn't need a machete or any other tools.

Some time passed and we lost a bit of the sense of time. It was getting slowly exhausting and the path became more and more difficult. We climbed up and down, some of our group slipped, tripped over a tree stump, splashed into the water or into the mud. It got rough. Jojo's shoes were able to prove themselves for the first time here...

We saw another orangutan mother with baby. There were other primates nearby.

We took a short break and ate delicious fruits.

Afterwards, we walked in a single file through the jungle for quite a while and Antonio and his crew made sure that they didn't lose any of us. It became really exhausting.

After the steepest of all the ups, we took a break and had very tasty Nasi Goreng wrapped in palm leaves. Our guides had the food in their backpacks and surprisingly, it was still warm.

Rested and strengthened, we continued. We wandered through the rainforest and the sounds became louder. The most exhausting part was still ahead of us.

In one area, we met "Mina," a semi-wild orangutan who had had bad experiences with evil people :-( Here, we had to keep our distance. As we later found out, Mina bites an average of 2 tourists per month.

Robert's newly acquired pants got another hole and provided a surprisingly fresh breeze in the intimate area.

We crossed a small river and Jan had to deal with leeches. It went steeply uphill and we caught sight of another very cute orangutan sitting on the ground.

"Look, a snake!" A snakelike snake hung on a tree and we had trouble seeing it at all. We were (luckily) spared from encountering the large poisonous creatures.

The hardest and most dangerous part followed promptly. It took about 45 minutes to get down a very steep slope to reach our camp by the river. We hung on vines and slid over bony roots down the mountain. Really crazy and quite dangerous.

Everyone was happier when we finally made it. We arrived at our camp. The guides proudly showed us our tents, which were under a simple shelter made of wood and plastic tarpaulins.

Robert immediately asked about beer and took a cool Pivo from the crate in the river.

The beer is brought to the camp by loggers, who carry several of these heavy tires on their heads for two hours along the river to earn some extra money.

With the beer in hand, Robert immediately ran to the river and lay down in the shallow riverbed. There was a loud hissing sound and a cloud of steam rose. Robert was too warm :-)

The others in our group followed and we enjoyed the bath in the river. Our bath was accompanied by 3 monitor lizards.

We rested while the cook prepared our dinner in the camp. We all ate together by the water and the food was excellent for jungle standards. It started raining and we gathered in the communal hut. We drank tea and beer and nibbled peanuts. We had a lot of fun and our guides started playing matchstick games and card tricks with us. Jojo, Christian, and Robert had fun late into the night, before they too fell into a deep sleep.

The toilets were the worst of our lives and we don't want to go into any more detail about that :-)

We woke up in a good mood the next morning and had breakfast. We had delicious sandwiches and coffee or tea. Afterwards, we waited by the river because we were going back to Bukit Lawang by tires. Yes, that's right, tires! These were large black inner tubes, which had a net stretched in the middle for sitting. Strung together in rows of 4 or 5, these tires became our raft. The luggage was fastened between the tires. First, we watched the spectacular attempts to get the tires from one bank to the other. Why? All the tires that reached the goal had to be brought back to the start. This was done by men from the village, who carried several of these heavy tires on their heads through the damp and warm area for two hours. Hats off!

Then we watched the untying of the tires and already had a slight idea of what lay ahead of us.

Everything was delayed a bit and we amused ourselves with the card tricks we had learned and with fruit.

Antonio made a clever holder for Robert's glasses.

Then it was time. The guides decided to start as quickly as possible because it had rained all night, the river was swollen and the strong currents didn't look harmless. Waiting made no sense, another rain shower threatened.

Leonie, Jan, Lisa, and Christian got on the "boat" together. Antonio and another guide were steering with them.

Josi, Jojo, and Robert got on another boat. Our cook was steering with us :-)

Our backpacks and shoes were packed in bags and distributed and fastened on the boats.

The start was quite pleasant, we were excited and occasionally there were some "Wheeeeee!"

It was about to get wet. It became really fast.

We got a little scared for the first time when the cook's paddle, which he used to steer our construction through the brown waters, broke. He got the paddle from the guy who was trying not to fall off the back of the boat :-)

The masses of water rushed towards us, aaand suddenly our cook was in the water :-D

Okay. Crazy . He got a rope and grabbed Josi's foot and pulled himself back into the boat. There was a calmer phase and we got closer to the other boats.

Promptly, we got stuck with one of the front wheels on a rock. The currents pushed so hard from behind that Josi was looking at the water from above at a 90 ° angle and was almost considering jumping out.

After we escaped the situation, we sang a song full of relief, which the guys from Ecotravel always sing on the river. It was to the tune of Jingle Bells and it was about orangutans, birds, and monkeys. Of course!

Shortly afterwards, we spun in a circle and the cook broke the second long cooking spoon with which he was stirring in the brown soup...

The trip took longer than expected, so we still had the chance to leave the boat during the ride :-)

In a very rough, wave-shaped hollow, we tipped sideways and everyone on our boat ended up in the water. The current was strong and we had to struggle to stay with the boat. Jojo got some hard hits because the water was shallow and rocky.

We somehow managed to get to a calm spot and with the help of the other boat occupants rushing to us, we all climbed back into the boat. Everyone was healthy and happy that nothing worse had happened.

We had a few more meters to go and we were really happy when we reached the shore.

Dripping wet, we celebrated our well-being, but the looks of the guides indicated that they were also a little shocked.

AND NOW A HIGHLIGHT!!! Here is the link to our GoPro video:

https://gopro.com/v/Roo0915v1VK2N

In the meantime, we had developed a very positive group dynamic and everyone gathered in the evenings to relive the experiences together with cocktails and acoustic music.

It was a beautiful evening in which Jan surprised us with his voice and Antonio surprised us with his passion for love songs.

In the end, this was a fantastic experience with new friends and surprisingly robust and easy-to-clean Lacoste shoes.

Josefine, Robert & Johannes aka "Jojo"