Tripping Out Alone

The first day trek ended at a campsite by the river, the food prepared for our evening meal was amazing. Fresh jungle ferns and tropical fruits as well as chicken and fish..Cool. Best of all, not only was the only female I was the only non-Indonesian so when the sun went down and we ate our dinner the guitar came out and there was music under the stars. The next day I was happy to see that no one is in a hurry, things are under taken at a leisurely pace, breakfast was eaten, icy cold pools were swum in and we got to play around with face paints for a proposed photograph to accompany the story being written about our search for the last Sumatran Tiger. Two other people showed up and were curious as to why there was a man in tiger face paint crawling along the tree trunks so we chatted to them for a while before finishing the photos and making preparations for the next day's trek. Again it was well paced and at our first incline rest I sat slightly apart from the others and wa

The first day of the trek was very pleasant, we didn't leave early, everyone took their time, there was no rush, and the first stop was to move our belongings over to another guest house over the river for our return. The return lodge was not as pretty as Sam's but it was super cheap and functional with pretty balconies overlooking the river. After lunch we began the walk into the forest, and the first part of our trekking was underway. It had rained and the river was swollen and brown, the forest was misty and hummed with insect and bird life, soft leaves under foot a slight dripping from the canopy and the heat was rising ..it was not hard work, the paths were clear and the pacing of the trekking was well managed into one and half hour sections and a variety of incline and decline, nothing too strenuous for that first day. The major impact was that there was a constant buzz of chain saws in the distance. I was hoping we could get deeper in to escape the sound eventually. The

The start was early, four am, but with a delicious breakfast hamper prepared in the car it was not too bad to drive through the early dawn from Malang to Surabaya past the view, often obscured by trucks and buildings of Mount Merapi. At the airport I discovered I had made an error of imagination and that the flight was three and a half hours..I thought that it would be an hour and had not realized, once again, quite how large Indonesia is..it is so long..You can fly to most capital cities in Europe , one to the other in about an hour, Barcelona to London, Paris to Rome so I think I had just neglected to consider the distance. North Sumatra is at the Northern end of the of the northest island with only Aceh further north. Medan is the capital of North Sumatra and because we were picked up and taken from it rapidly it did not have a chance to make an impression,or not a very good one. It seemed industrial and I didn't see much to describe as pretty in terms of architecture. Besi