Indonesian Jungle Adventure...

Well aye...can't believe we made it!

After 17 hours in the air, lost (and much later found) luggage, an upgrade to business class, and a pretty dodgy car ride we found ourselves in Bukit Lewang - a quaint little village in Sumatra Indonesia. We were welcomed with nothing less than true hospitality and generosity.

One night in a our hotel room surrounded by lizards and cats with no tails (no they don't chop them off and eat them, just a genetic defect) and then off on our practise trek to the orangutang feeding platform. Sadly our luggage had still not caught up with us at this stage so we were camera-less. However we saw 3 beautiful orangutangs, a very poisonous centipede, and several other long tailed monkeys.

Our guide Wanda led us further into the jungle, to see how we coped before we left on our big trek. Safe to say, we weren't as good as we thought and decided to head up the river first.

And that's exactly what we did. The next day we departed heading up the river with Wanda, and not one, not two, but THREE porters to carry food and shelter. In total there was SIX of us in the jungle fellowship.
The first 3 days we spent walking up the river and slept at various campsites which the boys made out of branches and tarpaulins. Quite cosy really, but gee that ground was hard to sleep on!

We were treated to sensational food cooked by our very own chef - Bendi. This guy is the man - he is like the ultimate crocodile dundee, we would put our life in his hands anyday.

During our journey up the river we saw heaps of big ugly millipedes, frogs, fish, birds, a few more orangutangs and the boys caught us a 4metre python!

The last day we had to trek over to mountains to get back onto the main river. It is a monumental understatement to say that it was hard. This was gruelling. It was almost vertical, going up and down. It took every ounce of concentration to pull yourself up and steady yourself down.

After five and a half hours of this we finally made it to our final campsite where we were greeted by yet another TWO more porters. They had brought us river tubes to use the following day.

We played cards that night and had a great laugh before our final uncomfortable sleep.  The final day river tubing back to our hotel was brilliant. The rapids were enough to let out gentle screams of delight, and relaxing in between.

Just fantastic and an experience we'll never forget!!!

After a day of catching our breath back at our Guest House (this time our room had a toilet), and visiting the local markets, we headed back to the airport and flew back into the capital Jakarta.  We spent an afternoon walking around the city centre and for some reason we seemed to stand out.  People would stare, walk past us and touch our arms, try talk to us in English, kids chased us - and the bold ones asked for photos with us!  In fact, in about a 1 hour period we had photos with up to 20 different groups of people!  We were so amazed by this celebrity status, we even bought a photo of ourselves that a local photographer took: