Days 14 & 15 - Weekend Jungle Trek

We've been out on a jungle trek on Saturday and Sunday. We left Bukit Lawang village and crossed the river to the National Park.

Day 1 started with a steep climb up through the jungle with our two guides. Bukit Lawang is popular for jungle treks and so there were several other groups setting out.

It didn't take us long to see an orangutan resting in a nest. After a little while he got out, climbed around and started building another nest.

It wasn't long before we saw a large male orangutan sitting on the ground. He stayed for a while and then started moving. The assembled trekkers scrambled to get out of the way and he was off.

We saw many animals including gibbons, hornbill, pigtail macaques, Thomas leaf monkeys and great argus (jungle peacock). As well as the big animals we also saw millipedes, bats, giant ants, jungle tortoises, big yellow spiders and a small snake.

Our accommodation for the night was a bamboo shelter with a mosquito net. The night was quieter than we expected. Though you could hear all sorts of jungle sounds including gibbons singing and the jungle peacocks calling.

On day 2 we had more steep climbing to do, up and down around 850 metres in jungle temperatures. We saw more gibbons, black and white hornbill and various insects.

We finished the trek with a river raft back to Bukit Lawang. Our guides had made us jungle crowns. We arrived back to equal amounts of cheering and puzzled looks from the many onlookers bathing in the river.

Tiring ... yes, but definitely worthwhile.