Bukit Lawang Bliss

I had an incredible time in Bukit Lawang trekking in Gunung Leuser National Park. I got into my hostel later because of a delayed flight, but luckily was able to book a trek right at the hostel. We left the morning of the 5th for Bukit Lawang, a city right on the border of the park that is about 3 hours away from Medan. They drive on the left side of the road, just like Thailand and Singapore, but significantly more crazy. Even our driver seemed surprised by some of the maneuvers people in other "lanes" tried to pull. Luckily, he was safe and defensive and I felt as safe as I could on those roads.

We got into Bukit Lawang at about 1 pm and met all of the guides that work through our company along with a few from other companies. The guest house we stayed at has a bar that he locals love to come to. Their favorite thing to do (and something I've noticed all around Indonesia, including on TV) is sing. An ideal night is to have a few beers, break out the guitar an bongo drums, and belt out the favorite times everybody knows until late into the night. They love American songs, including John Denver, and old songs that they gave their own lyrics to (instead of Jingle Bells they sing about Bukit Lawang). The rest of the afternoon it rained (their "dry season" is relative) so we played cards with the guides. The other girls in my group were from Holland and Denmark. Apparently a lot of Danish and Ditch come there, because the guides spoke their respective languages very well and even knew a few songs in each language. And, of course, they also spoke excellent English. I also met an American man traveling around for a few months who had befriended one of the guides and had been in Bukit Lawan for a week already. He showed me some great videos of the jungle critters and through him I got to know the guides better.

The next morning we woke up bright and early to start our trek. We got to the National Park by passing some rubber plantations and palm oil plantations. Few people were out that day because it was market day for the town, so we had the plantations to ourselves.

After entering the park, we almost immediately got our first glimpse of orangutan: a semi wild female and her little one. The baby was about a year old and was having a good time swinging on its own a few trees away from mom. The orangutans in the park are separated into two groups: the wild and the semi wild. In the 1970's, some orangutans were kept away from the wild and were raised around people. The government outlawed the practice, but since some orangutans had never grown up wild they couldn't be counted on to find all their own food. To help, a feeding center was established as a sort of orangutan safety net to aid their transition into the wild. These are the semi wild, and since these distant relatives of ours live to be about 50 years old in the wild they still comprise a significant portion of the population in the park. The wild orangutan, on the other hand, were never in contact with humans and don't know or care about the feeding center because they can get their own food and don't trust people. When you go into the park, your likelihood of meeting a semi wild orangutan (like our first two) is highest, followed by the offspring of a semi wild (though thy never come as close), with the fully wild being the least common to see.

Along with the mom and baby orangutan, we also got to see some Thomas's leaf monkeys, which are beautiful monkeys that have a striped grey, black, and white patterns on their face and aren't found in many other places in the world.

Our campsite was beautiful and felt totally isolated--I felt like Tarzan in the wild, amidst giant trees with massive vines and hearing the loudest bugs of my life.  The morning after our trek we were even greeted by some monkey friends that like to visit to try to get some of the food scraps left at the camp site.