Jungle Eddy

I’m determined to catch back up, so I’m going to relate the happenings of our jungle trek in Bukit Lawang a few days back. It was mostly just extreme exertion punctuated by moments of near death falls along the extremely steep and treacherous jungle trails, so I’ll keep this fairly short. Our guide, as the title suggests, was Jungle Eddy, a local guide/cook/nature expert and on the second day, Captain Eddy our guide as we tubed back down the rapids the 10km back to Bukit Lawang.

We trekked with two Aussies and a Kiwi, all doctors, all awesome. We’ve actually spent quite a bit of time with them since (they’re here on the island with us as well) so all in all a good group. The jungle was legitimate jungle. Trees as high as the eye could see, massive poisonous centipedes as long as my forearm, and water, water, everywhere, even when it wasn’t raining (which it’s done every night I’ve been in Indonesia).

The brief highlights: Orangutans. Lots of ‘em. Most were wild, so we couldn’t get too close, but they were majestic creatures, slow moving, swinging from branch to branch with their incredibly expressive faces. Jungle Eddy recognized each one and called them by name, as the ten or so we saw all called the area home. Black and white gibbons. Only a few of these made an appearance, but apparently they’re incredibly rare and everyone was really excited to see the first two. Unfortunately the last two we saw about 5 hours into our trek and everyone was really just too tired to take out their cameras. Sorry gibbons.

The best part of the whole trek, however, was getting to the river after the grueling first day and literally falling into the cold, fast flowing water. That is bliss. Then, after a fabulous Indonesian dinner of rice with tofu, chicken and vegetable curries we chatted with our guide for a while. Eddy was about 30, married with two boys. He had married his wife after knowing her for three months at around the age of 19. Unlike most of the other young men in Bukit Lawang, he had completed two years of high school, but it was too expensive for his family, so he didn’t graduate. A massive flash flood in 2003 that killed 289 villagers from the already small and economically depressed area carried away much of his extended family. It was an event that probably barely caused a ripple outside of North Sumatra, but it was painful and sobering to see the devastation wrought by Mother Nature on such a personal level.

Back to the trek: the next day, heavy rains precluded us from trekking another grueling 10km through the jungle so we were forced to sit in the sun by the water all day and play cards. I don’t think a single one of us was disappointed. Luckily, we were still able to return via tube along the river, an event that actually turned quite intense in a few white knuckle, white water parts of the river. We returned safe and sound.