Last Two Bars of Soap and the Wilds of Sumatera

 

These are the last two bars of soap that we will buy on our mission. We will go home before these bars are used up. This picture is happy-sad because we are looking forward to being back in our home and our native land and able to spend time with our family, but also sad because we will miss Indonesia. We have grown to love being with our wonderful missionaries. About one third of them are from Indonesia, one third from the Philippines and one third from the US and Europe. They are all amazing and they make us happy just to be around them. We will also miss the people of Indonesia. They are among the friendliest and most helpful people in the world. We have made many friends here and renewed many old friendships. We are looking forward to our last 7 weeks here and plan to make the most of them.

One of the amazing treasures of Indonesia is the diverse wildlife of the jungles. Our dear friends, Mike and Laurie Hoer are visiting Indonesia for a dive trip and they arranged to come to Sumatera to visit the jungle with us. We hiked with a local guide into the Gunung Leuser National Park for two nights and three days. There are many wild Sumatran orangutans living in the canopy and we spotted quite a number of them. I think about 7 in all. The mother and baby in this picture moved toward us until they were quite close so we watched them for a long time as they moved through the trees. These are gentle and very social animals who are not dangerous. They seemed to just go about thier activities and completely ignore us. At the end of this blog entry I will try to place a short video compilation of this mother and child because the video of them moving is much more interesing that still photos.
We saw many monkeys while we were hiking. These two perched in a nearby tree and watched us as we took a rest and snacked on fruit. I think they were hoping we would leave some bits that they could forage from after we left. It is forbidden to feed any of the animals here for obvious reasons. These are macaques. We also saw white-faced gibbons and Thomas leaf monkeys. 
This bird is the Great Argus. It is over 4 feet long with tail feathers. It seemed to have no fear of me and walked within a few feet as I stood still in the jungle.
We had to wade across the river in a couple of places. Here is Mike Hoer is leading out in front of Sister lambson. Our guides helped us cross when we got out to the deeper water.
Our two overnight stays in the jungle were both near the river in semi-permanent camps like this one made from wood, rocks and plastic tarps. Not very comfortable but they kept the rain off. One night it poured so hard the river rose by 3 feet. I was very glad to be inside of a nice dry tent which was pitched inside of one of these structures.

This is a shot of the river and the surrounding jungle. It was a beautiful clear river that had its headwaters deep inside the national park. All of our drinking water came from this river and was boiled by our guides. We saw hornbills in the trees along here. They are large birds sort of like toucans. They were always quite far away so we did not get any good pictures. 
Our third, and final, night in Sumatera was spent in the little village of Bukit Lawang just outside the national park. Here we are standing on a suspension bridge that crosses the river. This is Cheri with Mike and Laurie. I (Chuck) am taking the picture.
I thought this location was very pretty. We are walking along a path in Bukit Lawang just looking around the town. Its quite a charming place.
These two long-tail monkeys were hanging out in a tree right outside our room.


Here is a short video of the mother and baby orangutan. I will try to link a longer one from youtube later.
https://youtu.be/9VOna3DaTt0?si=H8bVhiC4y7R8BbmU










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