Friend or Plant? (Indonesia - Part 5)

Tracking orangutans in the wild is, surprisingly, an upper body exercise, primarily involving your neck muscles. 5 sets of 12 neck cranings, 30 seconds of rest. Move one foot ahead and repeat. 4 hours a day for 4 days.

First you're walking along a narrow jungle trail.

The guide points to a leaf barely off the trail: "This poisonous, will itch one week". It looks exactly like the non-poisonous one next to it. That one doesn't have poison, but it is outfitted with innocuous spikes on it's branches. Now the one next to it looks safe - except for the tiny razor blades on the ends of it's leaves. I don't know who hurt these plants to develop so many defenses, but it appears they will be emotionally unavailable for the next millenia.

The safest policy to navigating this landmine is don't touch anything. Period.

Then suddenly the guide says "Quick come" and puts on the gas. You blink and he's already off the trail, up the hill, having navigated through the poisonous/non-poisonous, spiky/non-spiky vegetation, as silent as a leopard, now perched on a log and looking up.

Behind him you're scrambling with your backpack in tow. Despite your best efforts to avoid crunching the bed of leaves and rustling the bushes, you're making enough noise to wake the dead.

You hope whatever has brushed against you - plant or insect - is not the poisonous kind. Actually you try not to think about the creepy crawlers entirely - ants the size of your thumb, spiders, millipedes, lizards, snakes. My position is that we can coexist as long as they don't touch me - though truth be told, my flight instinct will win out, and I think the creepy crawlers know it based on how boldly they get in my way. I have a small fit of jealousy for the tree dwellers swinging from vine to vine with ease.

Finally you catch up to the guide, look up and squint. I'm learning that Lasik is not in fact "permanent" as it was marketed it to be.

"You see?"

"Nuh uh"

"You see?"

"Nuh uh"

He moves you an inch to the right.

"You see?"

"Ahhhhhh yeah yeah"

What I see is a bundle of hairy orange amongst the leaves. It doesn't help that of all the trees, the orangutans prefer the tallest. Hopefully I didn't just get excited about a bundle of half-dead leaves.

Then the hairy ball stirs. Suddenly it expands into arms and legs. It pulls on a neighboring branch, tears off the fruit, and tosses the remains down.

Rule #1 was don't touch anything.

Rule #2 is don't ever stand directly under a monkey, for you don't know what may be dropped on you. If it's just a fruit or a branch that's lucky - but it might be a golden shower or turds the size of your head.

Then the orangutan is done with that branch. It stands, grabs a new one, does a 180 split and easily swings over to the neighboring tree.

"Come" says the guide and sprints again to a better vantage point.

We start the obstacle course anew again. A one second swing for an orangutan is equal to 3 minutes of clambering over fallen trees and under vines for us. How did we lose our opposable toes? Think of all the missed opportunities for four equally useful limbs.

1. Scratching is a way of life here. Humans do it, monkeys do it. You don't know if it's psychosomatic, you touched something, or it's the chemical reaction to sweat, deet, and citronella, but it's going to itch.

2. Why oh why did we leave the trees? Spend your days eating, napping, and swinging on vines.

3. Baby oranges look like gollum. Any moment now it'll take out a circular object and whisper "my precioussssssss"

In all, I spent 4 days in the jungles of Gunung Leuser National Park in Sumatra. Spotted 16 orangutans, 4 of them being mom and kid pairs, 5 leaf monkeys, 3 snakes, 1 flying lemur, and far too many devious macaque monkeys.