Ah, Bukit Lawang. How I loved it! The walk along the riverside to Nora’s Rainforest Lodge was beautiful enough and our bungalow room was comfy. I ate a homemade bowl of tomato soup while Amar, a trekking guide, showed us his album of photos. The tour he offered was expensive, and I was somewhat reluctant to pay for it initially, but it was completely worth it. We booked a two-day trek for the following morning and had a delicious night of sleep before departing on our trek with Amar’s son, Haidir, and Andy, a local who worked at Nora’s. Rick from Holland and Emily from Canada were also a part of our tour, and here and there we met up with a group led by Hendri. There was a couple in our group who only stayed with us for a part of the day, but the black man was quickly nicknamed “Obama.” Indonesians LOVE Obama. We discovered this in the short time that we were in Medan and en route to Bukit Lawang. Whenever anybody asked us where we were from, we would tell them America, and they would respond, with a huge smile, “America! Obama!” This happened every time, without fail.
Anyway, I have to admit: the first hour or so of the trek was pretty miserable. It was hot. We weren’t completely in the rainforest yet so the sparse shade didn’t offer much relief and mosquitoes were flocking to me like Christmas shoppers to the mall on Black Friday, despite applying and reapplying bug spray. But we learned about the mango tree and the rubber tree and saw the white-handed gibbons—the same ape that I had held, diapered, in Phang Nga.
We were sitting on the trail, eating a snack of bananas, oranges, and passionfruit, when Haidir disappeared for a few minutes, then returned and told us to leave our bags where we sat and bring only our cameras. We followed him back the way we had come to see four orangutans. There was one large female and three smaller apes hanging in the trees. Their rusty fur against the green foliage is a striking color combination and we watched them swinging through the trees, as limber as if their arms and legs were made of rubber, their bellies big and round. To switch from tree to tree, the apes would hang on to the edge of a branch and let their weight bend the tree until they could reach the branch of a second tree. Then they would pull this branch toward them, grab on, and go for a ride, causing the tree to swing and shake back and forth, sending leaves and sticks to the forest floor.
We watched for about half an hour before continuing on our trek. We ran into a flock of long-tailed macaques on our way back to our packs. There were so many babies—skittish and falling out of trees. They were all eating leaves. A male was trying to get with one of the females; he would approach from behind, lift up her tail to take a peek, and then she would run away. Does this sound maybe a little familiar to anyone else? Or am I anthropomorphizing?
Moving on from the macaques, we kept hiking and came across another
orangutan hanging from a tree above the trail. After finding a safe way
to move past her, we continued to a clearing where we stopped for a
delicious lunch of fried rice with peanuts and vegetables and fresh
tomatoes and cucumber that Haidir and Andy had prepared the night
before. We sat on logs, eating our rice with our hands, when all of a
sudden Haidir and Andy told us to pack up our food and move up the
trail. We did, as out of the woods and into the clearing emerged a male
orangutan. We ran up the path to get out of his way; he had been drawn
by the scent of the food. In groups of two, Haidir took us down the
path to get a closer look at the giant. In watching the orangutan, I
had equal feelings of wonder and fear. It was hard to believe how large
he was and how close I was. He was the last orangutan we saw on our
trek.
That afternoon, we kept hiking. It was exhausting; to the top of the ridge and up and down and up and down. We finally reached the riverside campsite. Haidir took our bags across the river while Hendri ferried us to the other side in an inner tube. When we reached the campsite, we immediately went into the water. I was so sweaty, so muddy, and so itchy, and cold water never felt so wonderful, even though the current was strong. I went swimming in all my clothes but before I could hang them to dry, it started to rain. I dried off and was given a cup of hot tea as I sat under a tent, watching the rain fall down and the river run by. There were white seeds of some plant floating by in the rainy sky and the tall trees grew wet and the night sky darkened.
