Today we got up early with a plan for a 7:30am start to hike into the jungle to see orangutans. We had an incredible breakfast of eggs, fresh bread (SO good!), fruit, juice and good local coffee. We stored our bags in the hotel and each had a backpack. We headed out with Fikar and the local guide, Ayoop. We were able to walk directly into the jungle from our hotel. We started through a local rubber plantation. It was cool to see the trees and how they cut the bark in a spiral pattern to get the sap to drain out, which drains into a coconut shell and is then collected every 5 days. It is then sold in the market and refined. The sap comes out white but turns black after a while, which is why most rubber is black!
We saw a few macaques on our hike up and then came across a troupe of Thomas Leaf monkeys (also called Thomas’s langur.) They are grey with black mohawk hair and the males have a black mustache. I pointed out the hair to our local guide and he said they are ‘funky monkeys’ which I thought was funny since he didn’t speak much English but had clearly picked up that phrase! The Thomas Leaf monkeys have very long tails, which is typical of all the langur species. The species is endemic to this part of northern Sumatra in the ‘dry’ forest. Obviously ‘dry’ is a relative term given it is a rainforest, but there are other ‘wet’ forests on Sumatra that get even more precipitation than the ‘dry’ forests and have thick mud on the ground at all times and even thicker vegetation than the ‘dry’ forest.
Next we hiked up for a while then stopped to hang out while our local guide went to explore other parts of the jungle to look for orangutans. While waiting we saw a huge troupe of macaques! They were all different ages and sizes from very tiny babies to very large males. The biggest ones were probably 50 pounds and the smallest babies were about 1 pound (so cute!) They travel in large groups with smaller sections of moms/babies, adolescents and various adults. They store extra food (mostly fruit) in large expandable pouches in their necks so it looks like they have some huge cancer but actually it is multiple small fruits about the size of golf balls. They unfortunately have gotten used to some tourists feeding them fruit so they were not afraid of us at all and some of them got pretty close. It was fun to see the babies up close though and watch them explore a little. It was also interesting to see the large males up close with their necks stretched out really far to hold extra food – it looks like they have big neck tumors!
Our guide came back and directed us up to another spot that was a bit of a difficult climb through the wet jungle. Along the way my mom got a leech in her foot (eww!) but we managed to get it off before it did too much damage other than getting her sock a little bloody. Still pretty gross though! We sat around at a new spot and had some fruit as a snack before we heard there had been a spotting of 2 orangutans so we headed back the way we came and retraced our steps back towards where the Thomas Leaf monkeys had been. We saw our first orangutans!!! There was a female and a large male. The orangutans in this area of the park are wild but because this is where tourists come to see them, the local guides know most of them and have given them names. The female of this pair was Wadee and the male was Osama bin Laden (because he had a very long beard.) Also, the local guides occasionally give them fruit to entice them to come out of the high trees so that tourists can see them better. It was a little sad but also really amazing to get so close to such an amazing creature. The female was curious and liked to climb above us and the male mostly wanted to eat his fruit and pose for us, which was both hilarious and fascinating! Their fur looked so course and the male had a large face with whiskers on it and a huge beard that looked eerily similar to Michael’s! They look so humanoid in certain ways. We watched this pair for a while then headed off to find 2 pairs of mom/babies that the guide had heard about.
The first mom/baby pair we came across was a mom with a 3yo baby named Ricardo….although we called him ‘bad baby’ because he had a reputation of being naughty according to our guide. When we first saw them the baby was somersaulting down a hill but when he saw us he first grabbed his mom but then decided he wanted to come chase after us so we went running back up the hill since we didn’t want the mother to get the wrong idea and be aggressive towards us. Finally the baby calmed down and let us watch him play and swing around while he was showing off and entertaining himself. He would climb up small trees then they would bend and he would hang off them or grab leaves to chew on. He was very funny to watch but would occasionally try to get too close and our local guide would have to chase him off. He finally got distracted enough that we could sneak by and head off to have lunch, although he almost ripped off my dad’s backpack as we were trying to get by!
We hiked for a short while before sitting down at the old feeding platform, where they used to regularly feed the orangutans. It was dry and had some nice benches. We had fried rice, fried egg and chips for lunch, which was actually pretty tasty! As we were sitting down to eat, two more orangutans came out of the forest! They were the other mom/baby, although the ‘baby’ was 6yo and an adolescent but still hanging out with mom. The mom was Ratna and the younger one was Junior (a female.) They were both very sweet and docile. They were curious about us but not aggressive like the last pair. We got very close to them and Michael even touched one briefly while Ayoop was distracting them with food. Not ideal for wild animals, but still incredible to get so close!
We decided to head towards our guesthouse for the night called Back to Nature. We trekked across a river and then down the bank for a bit. The guesthouse itself was gorgeous and had large rooms with big, clean beds, a toilet in every room and running water. The best part was the area of river in front where we could all swim and then come back to the main open area to sit and look at the incredible view. There were monkeys and flowers and cool insects everywhere. It was truly amazing. Michael called it ‘paradise,’ which it really was. We all went for a swim then sat skipping rocks in the river and chatting. We changed and had some beers (lukewarm because no refrigeration) and ordered dinner of tempe, noodles and rice, which was super tasty. Overall an incredible day and definitely one of the highlights of our trip!
Mera and Michael Travel 