Our Trek into the Jungle

It has been a few days since I posted last, but I promise, I have good reason!  We went out into the jungle about 3 1/2 hours north of Medan to a place called Tangkahan.  They only turned on the power at night, and then, I think it was a rolling blackout, because the power would only stay on for a few minutes, then turn off for a few minutes.  

Needless to say, there was no internet.

Even now that we are back in Medan, the internet is so slow, it takes a good 20 minutes to upload ONE picture.  I took about 40 minutes last night and uploaded two pictures to my facebook wall, if you would like to see a picture of an elephant blowing water in my face.

We arrived in Tangkahan just in time for the elephant bathing, after a very VERY bumpy road.  The elephants went down into the water and rolled around to get most of the mud off, and then they came over to the shallows where we waded in and used brushes to scrub them down.  Elephants are far hairier than I thought they would be.  

After they were done being scrubbed, they stood up and the local Indonesians told them to suck up water with their trunks and shower us!  It is an unnerving experience to have an elephant trunk, full of water, hovering in your face for a few moments before you are showered with cold river water!  

Caroline's elephant didn't want to shower her - in stead, he would suck up some water, hover his trunk in her face, and rest his trunk on her shoulder and spray behind her!  Caroline thought that he was just being considerate :)

After our showers, we were given a handful of bananas and we fed them all to the eager elephants.  There was one baby elephant named Amelia who was not trained very well, and would nudge us and try to take the bananas out of our hands!  She was adorable and mischievous!  We put the bananas one by one in each trunk and they fed themselves - unless we held the bananas over our heads - then the elephants would lift up their heads, open their mouths, and let us throw the bananas into their mouths!  Also, this was my birthday, so I'm pretty sure next year won't be able to top this!

We were staying at the "Jungle Lodge" that night, which proved to be a bit more "jungle" and not as much "lodge" as we thought.  There were spaces between the boards in the one room lodge that let small bugs and critters in, but we had a mosquito net over our bed.  The power, as I mentioned, was sometimes on and sometimes off.  When the lights were off, it was so dark that you couldn't see your hand in front of your face.  

During the night, a mouse or a rat or a ninja trained howler monkey got into our room and started rummaging through our snack bag (which we neglected to secure, not thinking through the whole "you're in the middle of a Sumatran rain forest" thing).  Caroline, being in the middle of a Sumatran rain forest, became notably warm as the night went on.  Both of us being frightened of whatever evil rat/mouse/ninja trained howler monkey was pillaging our seaweed flavored cheetos, we sat in darkness wondering how long it would be until it would tire of cheetos, and start hungering for our fevered bodies.  Being the kind of man who would fight off up to, but not exceeding, four crazed ninja howler monkeys to protect his bride from death by monkey, I resolved to brave the darkness, scare off the intruder, and turn on the light, so that my wife could take a cold mandi.  <-- Refer to this link to review how we bathe here.

Blanket in hand, I stuck my toe out of the mosquito net, frantically swatting the blanket around the room, in the blind hope that I would somehow not be forced to do battle with any jungle beings.  I crept, inch by inch, hunkered over and flapping the blanket in front of me like a hunchback matador, until my hand reached the wall opposite our bed.  I turned on the light to find....nothing.  The room was empty.  Whatever small mouse had been timidly picking at our plastic bag had no doubt scurried off as soon as I stirred from the bed.  We put the snacks in our suitcase, Caroline cooled off in the mandi, and we went back to bed.  

Oh yes.  All night there was a gecko, lizard, frog thing out side our window that would would honk four times, every ten minutes, all night long.  It was a long night.

The next morning we floated down the river on tubes with two guides, and were taken to a waterfall with a pool at the bottom.  We swam in the pool, stood under the waterfall, and had lunch which was packed by our guides, which they served to us on banana leaves.  We stayed there for about an hour and finished floating down the river.  As we floated down, we passed a water buffalo standing with only his head out of the water, about 30 yards from us.  

Once we finished, we hiked back to the trail and our driver took us back to Medan.  Our driver, who was in no hurry to GET to Tangkahan, got a phone call from his friend and was told that they were going to to karaoke that night.  Apparently karaoke is a big deal here, because he floored it, and we didn't stop the neck breaking, swerving, speeding, driving on the shoulder of the road, until he dropped us off at Joanna's door.  

The next day we did a little bit of souvenir shopping with a friend of Joanna's, and went to small group that night.  Today, we are headed out to get some coffee for friends and family.  By the way, the locals here all drink instant coffee.  On Sumatra.  They drink instant, packet, cream-and-sugar-included, coffee.  I was not prepared for this.