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Published: April 21st 2009
Butterflies
Trogonoptera brookiana on the riverThis Blog is dedicated for Jaya from Jungle Lodge.
We took motorbikes ride to get this place from Bukit Lawang, it was (I’m not exaggerating) an off-road tandem trip. I still not sure how they consider to make a service of this. If I have the best motorbike in the world, I still wouldn’t do it for 200,000 rupiah. Togo, the guy who took me, he was a really good motorbike driver. I asked him how the road could be this bad, he answered “Too many corruptions around.” That’s where we started to talk about Indonesian politics. Between rocks, dirts and scary holes, Togo told me that the people here are so poor and cant trust any politic figure anymore, they accept the bribe to elect with thought; no matter what I elect everything will be the same anyway, so if I could get some money to elect, why not?
That’s a very sad pessimism, but at this point I cant see how they could start a revolution for a better living.
Never-ending palm oil plantations were with us the whole trip to our destination, I tried to explain about deforestation and natural disasters caused by land erosion to
Togo. He then explained to me how these plantation companies help the people who live in the village around. How people count on them instead of government to build infrastructures and develop facilities for them to live. I thought, this is really a messed up situation to do reforestation.
After 2 hours and more and more palm oil plantations, finally we got there. It’s really hidden, beautiful and just took my breath away.
We crossed the river by a raft. Across the river there are only three inns, we checked in at Jungle Lodge. They have the best view from the restaurant. Our rooms in the middle of jungle and in top of the river. One night for 100’000 or, I don’t know, 10$?
This guy Jaya introduced himself as a Jungle Lodge employee, he’s a super polite, very down to earth guy. He refused when we wanted to give him a tip for carrying our 20kilos bag for 1 km (with walking up and down the crazy stairs).
So we checked in, I smoked a bit with Baba, with big hope that he will have a safe off-road trip back to Bukit Lawang. After writing for Baba’s recommendation’s
left and right
a sad landscape book, we had a drink at the restaurant. The cucumber salat (it’s salad, with ‘t’) is a mistaken recipe. Its basically just cuts of cucumber soaked in vinegar. LM loves the Acehnese coffee they have, after 3 days she has been down for absence of good black coffee.
The best food of Jungle Lodge was the food that you have to order 3 hours before. We had ubergine chili and traditional curry made from banana plants for dinner, it was so tasty. It was really good.
In the middle of our dinner there’s a guy with long hair and intense eyes introduced him as Jungle Bob. “HI. I’M JUNGLE BOB.”
There’s something about this Jungle Bob that will suck all your calmness. He’s very intense, cool, and intimidating. “Oh. Hi, Jungle Bob..” What a fit nickname. “WHAT’S YOUR RACE?” He asked me.
“Whatever you like as long as you don’t kill me” My mind answered.
“Chinese Indonesian.” I answered. “Okay, nice, wish you to have a nice stay here”. He probably just wanted to know where I from, and in Indonesia, we’re so not racist, it’s even not offensive to ask about your race. Later we know that Jungle Bob
Raft
to get to the inns is the manager of Jungle Lodge. And he’s cool too.
Jaya was serving us very well and he made light conversations with us. At dinner time people hanging out at Jungle Lodge and play guitars, sing songs. After a while we went back to our rooms to chill at the hammocks and chat.
About Baluh the dog.
This pal I met when I just got in the Jungle Lodge, he’s friendly, careless, steady, and belong to no one. He could go around the area whenever he likes, wherever he likes. People around there just take him as a character that they always see around but he is nowhere when they’re looking for him. He could be very spoily demanding once you poke and touch his head. He came with us the time we took our backpacks to check in, and in the afternoon he suddenly already at the cross of the river hanging out with the guys at the tourist station. The whole time we were there, we see Baluh hanging around here and there, went walking with us and just be in somewhere far the next second. He’s a free walking soul living in the best place he
Baluh
was making sure our backpacks were safe could ask.
In the morning they turned the generator off, we woke up late and had good breakfast. I don’t know what’s with LM and honey banana pancake. But for sure she’s doing comparison of every place’s banana pancake exsist. I took some photos, this place looks so beautiful in the morning.
After breakfast Mary wanted to stay to read her Kite runner book so I walked down alone a bit to the river. Hundreds of butterfly welcome me there. Huge, small, colorful and lively. It was really a great moment, I cant describe it. I read a book for a while then Jaya came up. He said he was worried that I’d walked to the Butterfly beach (a site around) alone and had no guide there. Then he told stories about animal and birds he sees here. After I walked up to the room and met LM there. This is the conversation she had before Jaya went down to look for me.
Jaya: Where’s your friend?
LM: down to the river.
Jaya: She went alone? You didn’t go with her?
LM: no, I want to read my book.
Jaya: Do you want to look for her? Aren’t you
worried?
LM: No, I want to read my book.
Then Yanti, the cook, or probably Jungle Bob, told Jaya to look for me.
It’s funny how people here are so sincere and affectionate in serving guests, I think that’s the best attraction they provide.
After few hours of hammocks rest and chat, at 2 pm LM decided that we have to check the elephants’ place. We asked Jaya how to get there, the next minute he was standing in front of our room and ready to take us to go there, he promised to take us to tubes, a waterfall and a hot spring after elephants’ bath too. Then there’s a boy from the inn came with us his name is Andre and he has the same family name like my boss. I’m still so excited about it.
So we went by motorbike through the palm oil plantation again, to this rangers site. We got introduced to the rangers there and they are very friendly. First they just trained few elephants to bring them to patrol the Leuser Mountain jungle 2 times in a week. Then there’s an ecotourism idea to allow tourists to play with them when they take
bath in the morning/afternoon. They now have 7 elephants trained. Most of them they took care since losing their parents, or lost in the jungle. Usually they have an area in the jungle for them to live, but the night before there was a wild elephant came so they put those 7 in the place the usually play mud and have naps. They just went back from Bukit Lawang to patrol the day before, so yeah they were so ready to take a bath.
About the ranger elephants.
So between these 6 females there’s one male with tusks called Theo. He’s big, charming and very very naughty. It was my first time touching an elephant and he just kept giving me his trunk to be hugged by me. He really liked it. And I did to. He pretend to bite me when I was feeding him banana. I never knew that an elephant could kid around. But this is not a circus, these are the elephants who work with the rangers. Once a ranger told Theo to open his mouth, his teeth were so huge I thought it was the bananas he hadn’t chew!
I sat on Theo down
to the river. His hair tickles, he walked very slowly, still I find it’s difficult to keep the balance on top of his neck. I screamed a lot.
Down at the river we met the other 6 chicks. The youngest one is still one year old, called Olive. Nothing is cuter than 1 ton of a baby elephant. She really acts like a baby. She plays around every other elephant.
The ranger told us story about Olive. She lost her mother when she was very small so they took her to the conservation sanctuary. Since Olive was there, there’s this older elephant, Sari, she always takes care of Olive. Even Olive always want to hang out with Yuni, the other older elephant, Yuni doesn’t seem care about her. Theo always tries to take Olive’s virginity, that’s why Sari always has fights with Theo. And Sari always kicks his ass. Hahaha.
So we started the bath, some elephants went straight to the water, some were lazy of the cold water, but then the rangers made them to dip in. I could see how the rangers care about them and they don’t just see the elephants as animals they train, they
see them as elephants who help their works. The head of the ranger has moved there for decades working for the jungle, he’s a very kind guy.
I asked Jaya to hold my LSR Camera and take pictures of me playing with elephants. He did take good pictures. LM laughed about how amazed he was when he found how to zoom the lens.
I took the first bath with Theo, then Olive (she’s veeeery cute, when I brushed her, she could show with her trunk which part she wanted me to brush.) Later I brushed Sari, she was so big. it’s even tiring for me to bath myself, so it wasn’t an easy job bathing elephants, no.
Later we said bye to the elephants and ready for tubing. I don’t understand how would we do this. Jaya told me to sit on the tube, then he suddenly pushed me to the river and jumped then hold on to my tube. Me and LM looked at each other and telepath, “So this is how they do it.”
Not only they provide the tubes, but they also will drive your tube and chat with you the whole time. It’s about 15
minutes long, its funny every time Jaya felt bad when we missed the big currents.
Then we walked down the stream to get the waterfall. It’s only 3 meters waterfall but we had so much fun. Jaya and Andre kept telling us to do massage under the waterfall. So we did, just to make them happy. We made overexcited faces up too when we did.
After we walked a bit we got to the Jungle Lodge area. Across the river, there were Jungle Bob, Yanti the cook and other crews were taking bath and hanging out at some rocks. “Hurry! Hurry! Cross the river!” they screamed at us to join them. I took some pictures of them and Jungle Bob did the scariest poses when I did. Then I swam across, I was so curious about the hot springs they’ve been so proud about.
The closer I swam to them, the warmer the water got.
“Okay, who just did number one?” I asked.
“The jungle mountain did” a girl answered, then they laughed.
Apparently there is this very small caves, and we could sit there and soaked ourselves in hot water. It has sulfur smell, but when I sit
Hot spring
That's Jungle Bob. i miss him already. there it was tranquilizing.
The crews swam across the river to take baths. Then they shared the soap with me. we climb up back to the rooms to have a shower.
When we went for dinner, they already set up our favorite seats facing the river with jungle flowers and candle lights. The 3 hours before ordered dinner was amazing. Chicken stew, Stir vegetables, and chicken curry. We were so busy eating and all we could talk about was just how good the food is. LM tried to convince the cook to go to Jakarta with her so she could cook for her everyday.
We chat with Jungle Bob, he told us funny stories about Minah, the scariest orangutan at Bukit Lawang reservation, how she likes the tourists but always looks for fights with the guides. The guides would throw their bags and run whenever they see Minah. The way he was telling story was so funny.
Because we didn’t see any bird Jaya offered to take me to do a bit trekking the next morning. He gave me a morning call at 6 in the morning, we walked and I heard so many of bird voices. These 3 days
Jaya
morning walk for birds I wondered, how could those non-stop noisy jungle sounds give a great peace feeling to me?
We saw few birds but it was too far to take picture of them. Jaya told stories about the place when we walked.
The time I went back to my room I was so sad because we’re about to leave. But we’ve packed. We said bye to everyone then Jaya and Andre helped us carried our backpacks across the river. The raft wasn’t installed yet so they had to swim and prepared the raft for us to cross.
The driver who picked us up ready to take us back to Medan, when we said bye to Jaya and Andre we really almost cry because we really didn’t want to leave the place.
No matter how many leeches suck my blood, no matter how many giant elephant’s flies bite my legs, and no matter Jungle Bob was real or not, that place is my favorite on earth now. We came at the right time when we were the only guest there, we met the right people, and I will definitely go back there.
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dave2222001
Dave2222001
Nice blog
Brought back memories We had the same room as yourselves at the Jungle Lodge great place want to get back but that trip there does you in we are old and ached for days. Again thanks.