Tuesday 13 October 2015

Day 360: Great! More apes!

We all went down to the Garden Inn restaurant at around 7.15am this morning. Zoe had some breakfast with me and then Sinar and I headed down the path to get Julie and Tony. Together we crossed the bridge, but this time we headed left. As we walked, Sinar handed around a bottle of 'brown sugar' – what I think was fresh palm juice, a lovely, sweet, slightly nutty drink. We headed up a small set of stairs where a couple of young locals pointed out another small juvenile viper, this one a bit bigger than the one that has set up camp opposite Green Hill. Sinar told us that the locals call these month snakes because once they've found a spot they like, they'll often stay there for a month.

We passed by the under-renovation restaurant at the eco-lodge and through a rubber plantation and then into the jungle. The gradient was significantly less brutal than it had been when I went out with the others a few days ago. I was very slightly nervous about the whole orangutan situation – having all but promised Tony and Julie that they would see some, and recommended Sinar to them, I was now a bit concerned that things wouldn't turn out. But of course I needn't have worried, as we came across our first orangutan (with attendant baby) pretty early on. There was a troop of macaques hanging around, too, and several of them bared their teeth at me as I moved around trying to find good angles from which to photograph the two apes. 








The day then went much the same as my previous day out. We saw some white-handed gibbons, lots of leaf monkeys, a great argus, a tortoise and a total of nine orangutans. Thankfully we didn't see Mina, but what we did see was a guide hurrying down the path with a bandage around his leg – and apparently a few Mina-inflicted puncture wounds underneath it. We also saw a lovely little tree shrew with a big bushy auburn tail. It had obviously found something very appetising right beside the trail and kept darting over to dig it up, then losing its nerve and bouncing away, before returning to have another go. Sadly, despite waiting around for several iterations of this nervous dance, I never managed to get a decent photo of it. 















As the afternoon wore on, Sinar offered us the same two options for returning to Bukit Lawang – the quick way across the river or the slow way back through the forest. This time we opted for the former and soon found ourselves tackling a very steep descent to the river. When we finally got there, Sinar led us to a slightly rickety contraption beside the river – essentially a wooden seat hanging from a rope and pulley system set up between two wooden platforms, one on either river bank. Julie, Tony and I took turns being hauled across the river on the little seat and then Sinar and his assistant put their bags on their shoulders and forded the river. It had begun to rain as we began to make our crossing and by the time the guides made theirs it was properly pouring. Up in the platform, Sinar pulled a couple of plastic bags from his rucksack and double-bagged all of our daypacks inside them. He then handed the load to his assistant and we all set off downriver, very quickly going from sweat-damp to completely rain-drenched. 











When we got back to the Garden Inn I spotted Kate and Sarah up on the lovely dry balcony. I grabbed my daypack, said goodbye to the others and then went up to the bungalow, where we shared animal stories. They'd had another run in with the macaques, which had got into the room again and scattered our bag of spare plastic bags all over the place. When Kate and the girls had returned to the house, there was a group of monkeys on the stairs outside that had stood their ground and hissed at them. Zoe was so distressed that she ran back down the stairs, sat in the restaurant and refused to come back out until I got back.

I got changed out of my sodden clothes and we went down to the Garden Inn's restaurant for some beer and chips, before walking up to the Jungle Inn for dinner. While we ate, it started to rain again - really, really heavily again. Every time it seemed to be easing off, and we started to think about going out into it, it would suddenly regain its strength and we would settle back in to wait. The staff took this as a perfect excuse to pull out the guitar and start massacring a few more bad songs, right at the end of our table. Eventually, I couldn't bear it any longer and headed out into the downpour to get our umbrellas, which we had of course left back at the bungalow. I got as far as Sam's and noticed a large umbrella hanging up at the entrance to the restaurant. I grabbed it and asked if it was okay if I borrowed it and then returned to the bungalow to get ours – and then we all finally made it back to our beds.


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