Wednesday 7 October 2015

Day 354: Macaque attack 2

Kate and I were both awake early this morning. She went out onto the balcony and quickly called for me to join her. She pointed into the trees not far away, where there was a group of very attractive white and grey monkeys with a funny pointed tuft on the top of their heads – Thomas's leaf monkeys. They were soon joined by a much less welcome primate – the dreaded long-tailed macaque. In numbers. They swung down and onto the roofs of the surrounding buildings, strolling around like they owned the joint, occasionally jumping onto a balcony to check for open (or openable) doors and windows, or sitting for a moment to consume whatever food they had managed to purloin. Back inside the room, Kate spotted some more wildlife – a couple of toads hunched up in a corner. 
 








Although Green Hill had told us that we could 'upgrade' to their 'much nicer' family room today, we weren't that keen on staying, so Kate headed up the path to ask about availability and cost at some of the other places. A bit of background here. Bukit Lawang is essentially two villages in one. There's the 'real' village down on the main road and the tourist village, which runs up along one side (mostly) of a steep-sided river valley. The only throroughfare is a path that runs between the buildings – shops, restaurants, hotels and travel agents – before ending at the river just across from the national park office. Our hotel was located a couple of hundred metres from the end of the path.

We ended up choosing the Garden Inn, which had a nice semi-detached bungalow up on the hillside. It was also pretty basic - a downstairs bathroom (with a sink and a proper shower head, but still no hot water) a little mezzanine room with a mattress and mosquito net for the girls and a bigger upstairs bedroom for Kate and I with a double bed, mosquito net, book shelf, a tin to put your food in (to keep it away from 'the other animals'), and a balcony with a great view down over the river and across to the steep jungle hillside on the other side (with some more sturdy-looking furniture). We had some breakfast there and then walked back to Green Hill to pack our bags and check out. While we were there we had a lovely chat with a lovely couple from Seattle: Clint and Anita, who were travelling with their two- and five-year-old children.




After dropping our bags at Garden Inn, we walked up the path to where I had earlier seen a dinghy being used to ferry people over to the national park office. We were hoping to talk to the rangers about maybe hiring one of them as a guide, but the boat was gone, so we went back to the room and got changed into our swimmers. We'd been told that you could swim in the river, but the place we had been directed to was very shallow, so we headed upriver to near the national parks office, where there was a lovely deep section where the river swept around through 90 degrees. The current is pretty strong in the middle and farther half of the river, but slackens right off next to the beach, and we had great fun jumping in at the bend and getting swept back, before swimming across the current and back to the beach. While we swam, groups of people regularly swept past on rafts made from tyre inner tubes - trekkers on their way back to town.





We had lunch at Sam's, a restaurant and hostel near the end of the path. The eating area is set out like a covered deck up and out near the river – it probably has the best river views of all of the restaurants along the top end of the village. This was the hotel that Kate had tried to book and missed out on at the last minute, and it was run by a really friendly local guy (Sam, of course; the fact that he was really friendly didn't set him apart from the other locals here – we've been really impressed by how genuinely nice the people are in Bukit Lawang). After lunch (which was pretty good – especially the satay sticks), we asked him about options for guided treks. Although it's possible to go with rangers, most people use the local guides. Each restaurant and hotel has its own 'stable' of guides that it arranges treks with (half-day, full-day and overnights of varying lengths). Kate also went back and asked about the guiding deals at Green Hill and Garden Inn. She got the best price and the best 'feel' from the guy who runs the Garden Inn – an older guy who is married to a Frenchwoman and spent some time living in Dijon.

It started to rain a little as we headed back to the house. When we got there, I heard a noise in our room. Climbing the stairs, I was confronted by a scene of devastation. While we were out, the macaques had forced their way in through the louvre windows, opened the food tin and eaten everything they found. There were biscuit crumbs (Tim Tams! Chips Ahoy!) and bits of orange and cucumber scattered all over the room, mingling with the clothes and other bits of our stuff that the monkeys had had to burrow through to find what they needed. Oh, and they hadn't left yet. When I emerged at the top of the stairs, the four monkeys still in the room went crazy. One of them managed to get back out through the windows but the others panicked and just pinballed around the room. I tried to get the door open to let them out onto the balcony but they were too scared to go past me and instead went barrelling down the stairs, giving the others a bit of a shock. The monkeys couldn't get past them and ran into the bathroom, where they stayed until the others had left the building and I opened up the downstairs door and shooed them out.

Later in the afternoon, Kate went out to organise the guiding, but she and we kept changing our minds about which option we preferred – not helped by input by the hotel proprietor and his preferred guide, Sinar. We ended up going for the full-day option, but as Sinar is already booked for tomorrow, we're going to go out the day after.

Decisions made, we went for another swim. I had spotted some people walking further upriver along a path on our side, so while the others continued to swim, I went for a little bit of an explore up it. We all then wandered downriver, before returning to Sam's for some beer and chips and then dinner. Later, when we were safely back in the house, it rained quite heavily. Kate went to sleep quickly but I stayed up reading. Hearing a noise, I looked up and watched a large mouse scamper along a piece of wood set halfway up the wall and disappear into a hole. A bit later, I watched a rat run up a beam from the same piece of wood to a hole in the ceiling (these were obviously the 'other animals' that the food tin was meant for). Wildlife-watching Sumatra-style. 







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