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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