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Published: September 17th 2008
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We left Medan in the morning for BL for some jungle action, we caught a local bus, this bus was funny, again it should of been scrap but it got us there, we even had chickens on the bus.
The heavens opened when we arrived, walked to our guesthouse(bungalows) called Garden Inn, and it was lovely, bunaglows made of wood, quite open around the edges (always makes me nervous)massive rooms with our own balcony overlooking the river and lush jungle.
In the morning we see our first Oran-utan, 2 of them walking along the river to the feeding platform, it was amasing, just a great feeling to see them in the wild when you only hear and see them on the TV, they are bigger than we expected but just as handsome and they look so gentle and why anyone would want to hurt them, we have no idea!
We had a day just to take in the scenery and relax. So we descided to hire some tubes and take them out onthe river (its the same kind of thing as Loas, but without the bars along the way) So off Stu and I go, found a good
spot and jumped in, we held on togethers tube as the river was really fast and the rapids were quite scary for me anyway! NOW... another little story to tell......
We got to a certain part of the river and I said to Stu, the bloke at the guesthouse told us to get out at this point but Stu descided it would be a good idea to carry on a little further, I am nearly crying at this point and panicing, so he shouts at me to pull myself together! we hit some rocks, i fall out of the tube and Stu looses his grip of my tube and flows down the rapids, i grab a rock and shout to Stu that i am getting out and that my flip flop has come off, IF it goes past him to grab it, not thinking he would push off the side just to grab my flip flop, he then gets taken in to some big rapids and carries on down the river, i look up and all i see is Stu's head and tube disappear downwards, to me it looked like he had gone under under water! PANIC!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! Two men
(one fishing, the other just walking along the river side) start running down to where Stu disappeared, again i am nearly crying, it seemed ages but then I see Stu float across the river and stand up on some rocks and he waves at me telling me all is okay!
A man has to help me out of the water, as its really strong current and slippery, then i meet Stu onthe road, he said there was a Weir, around 2-3metres drop, he got taken under but luckly held on to the tube(and flip flop!) which bought him back up! I was so happy to see him, thought he was a gonna!
We tell some people from the guesthouse and they tell us(sorry we forget to mention!!....) not to go that far, its very dangerous and 3people(locals) drowned there! Great now they tell us!
After our ordeal that daythe next we had a great days hike inthe jungle, we started at 7.30am and we trekked for 6.5hrs and it was quite hard work but well worth it, the last part was the worst, it was absailing but without the ropes, it was really steep and slippery. Stu
fell once or twice but me, it was at least 4-5 times if not more, but i have to say the ground was very wet, it had rained all night!
Within 1-2hrs of walking we saw Thomas Leaf Monkeys and Macaques, which was great to see, some had babies which were tiny, and they come up pretty close to see you as much as we have come to see them. I got a golden shower by a Thomas Leaf Monkey, which wasnt very nice!
We carried on walking and saw our first sighting of an Oran-utan, they are sooo cute, relaxed and dont mind you being there, i guess they see people often on these treks, now these Oranutans are semi wild they were saved or bought up in a sanctary but then let out in the jungle to live a normal life, the jungle has a feeding platform, which happens twice a day, and if they dont have much natural food inthe wild they can come here for meals, we did go and see this and there was about 8 of them, one with a little baby, which was just like a human baby.
We heard
a bear on our trek (i soon moved up the hill when i heard that noise, didnt sound very friendly to me), saw a wild peacock, monitor lizards, family of white handed gibbons, famliy of turtles when we stopped by a river for lunch. All in all we saw around 9 Oran-utans.
The only disapointment of the trek was one Oran-utan, which they feed, she has a baby and her face was full of fustration, you could tell, but there was a few people(all taking pics!) feeding her and when the guide held out his hand, saying there wasnt anymore, she didnt like that and grabbed a ladies bag, now 4-5 blokes grabbed her and punch her arms to let go of the bag. (now I luckly didnt see it, just heard it, but Stu said it was horrible) its not the Oran-utans fault, if they keep feeding her for photos and tourists shes going to become agressive.
I wouldnt walk past her so the guide grabbed my arm and dragged me past her and i think he knew Stu and I werent happy with what we just wistnessed, so he didnt say anything afterwards as nornmally he
would talk about facts etc...
Just before lunch we saw Gibbons(Stus fav!) all black gibbons a family of 5, including a baby, they were quite far away but came swinging over and one came down to the ground about a metre away, it was lovely, such a great feeling to be with some in the wild and so close.
Nick and Sanne, the couple we meet in Medan also stayed at the same place and each night we had dinner and had a great laugh with them.
We stayed here 4nights and we recommend coming here, its been the best place for jungle life so far and very relaxed.
In our bungalow we had a resident rat, we had some sweets in Stus day pack, I had a wrapper from something earlier that day in mine and the first night the rat found the wrapper and was making such a noise with it, then in the morning Stus bag had a small hole in the bottom. The last night I went to my main backpack and inside was coffee , the rat had got into my bag, chewed a hole to get to the coffee sachets
and descided it didnt like it and spat it back out all over my things, NICE!!
We left here for Lake Toba....
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