Bittersweet Home

We are home safely, but tired, for sure!  It's good to be home, clean, and see Daisy, but sad to be done with our adventure and missing our new friends.  Thanks for reading and can't wait to see you soon...here's video to tide you over 'til we do see you!

Sumatra part 2

On the Volcano, day 13

This morning we met a guide who took Edy and us to Sibayak Volcano. We hiked straight up for about an hour. As we climbed, the scenery around us changed from lush jungle to scraggly plants, and finally to grey volcanic rock. Sibayak Volcano hasn’t erupted for 400 years, but it has many signs of life. Including hot sulfur smelling gas pouring out of cracks and holes near the top and hot water spots where water is literally boiling in a pool on the Volcano. As we reached the top, we were getting pretty close to several gas leaks and Jeremy said to the guide, “should I take a picture now, or will we get closer?” She said, “Oh you will get closer”. As we got closer and closer (!) the force of the hot air rushing from the cracks is so loud it sounds like a jet plane taking off. Eventually we were literally beside the cracks and you could hardly talk it was so loud. We could see the florescent green/yellow sulfur crystals accumulating by the crack and of course it smelled like rotten eggs. The sky was crystal clear so our views were amazing, but the wind was wicked. I was more than just a little concerned that I might fly off the side of the volcano the gusts of wind were so intense! The rocks were all rough and sharp and many were still formed together in a huge solid piece of hardened lava. When we finally got to the top, we were surprised to see how big the crater of the volcano was and that there were so many gas leaks. Our guide told us that as long as a volcano is venting the inside pressure via these gas leaks, everything is okay. The people can predict when a volcano will erupt because they stop leaking a few days before they blow! This news was only mildly comforting. To see the force of the air coming out of these holes, to know there is a hollow, hot center of the mountain were standing on, to be pushed by the wind-to be reminded of how small you are in the face of nature…The whole experience was slightly terrifying. Luckily, we climbed off the really steep edge of the top; I started to breath like a normal person.

We hiked out through beautiful bamboo forests, a different direction than we had climbed before. At the end of our hiking, we stopped at a place that pipes hot water off the volcano into pools (hot springs). The place had 7 different pools all with varying temperatures. The hottest pools are filled right from the pipe off the volcano while the other pools are in contact with the air for different lengths of time to cool the water. It was so nice; especially since that was the closest thing we have had to a warm shower in days.

Lake Toba

Then we drove 4 more hours, and caught a 30-minute ferry ride to Lake Toba. Lake Toba is the biggest crater lake in the world, and even I (having been raised on lake Erie and expecting “great” lake-size) was surprised at how massive the lake it. The initial crater was formed by a volcanic explosion (some estimate it was the largest volcanic explosion ever) several thousand years ago, so the lake is surrounded with the remaining jagged edges of the top of the volcano (which look like mountains..think: BEAUTIFUL). We are staying on the island in the center of the lake, which is also VERY large. Our driver said it takes a whole day to drive the perimeter of this lake. We are staying 30 minutes from the ferry and basically, got to our lodge (were grateful for the intermittent hot water in the shower), grabbed a quick bite to eat and went to bed. LONG DAY!

Day 14

This morning, we got to sleep in until 7:30am! Then we went to tour some of the local area and visit the Baytak museum. The Baytak people are the natives of Indonesia who were cannibals (eating only of male criminals) until the early 1900s when European missionaries introduced the island to Christianity. Once converted, the people stopped eating their criminals….but apparently still eat dogs (cooked of course). They live in these really interesting looking “long houses” and have a very separate culture than the rest of Indonesia. We got to see them doing traditional dances and hear about their customs. What was most surprising was that the rest of Indonesia (the non-Baytak people) really respects their natives. The Baytak are known throughout the rest of the country as “Strong and straight” people who have some of the most important jobs in the country…like being the government’s lawyers, doctors, etc.

After our cultural morning, we stopped at this random place and ordered “Grilled fish”. Apparently Lake Toba is known for its excellent fish. I tell you, this grilled fish was the best thing we’ve had in A LONG TIME. We literally licked the bones clean….and much to my amazement, it wasn’t spicy! One of the first meals I’ve eaten all week that didn’t leave my nose running! *they did serve the fish with ridiculously spicy sauce on the side, which Jeremy was brave enough to eat. After lunch we came back to our lodge and went swimming in the lake. There is no shore where we are so we literally had to jump off the sidewalk (or makeshift diving board) into the lake. How nice to have an afternoon to just swim and sit outside.

Tonight will be our last night in Indonesia, we leave for the ferry tomorrow morning at 9am, then a 5+ hour ride back to Medan, and eventually to a plane to Singapore at 8:30pm tomorrow night. Because we are ahead of EST, we will actually lose a day returning home and should be home sometime Monday late morning. We aren’t looking forward to the long trip home, but we have experienced so much in these past 18 days that it will be good to have time to savor our experiences and recapture our favorite moments.

Check back Tuesday for some more pictures and a short video to tide you over until we get a chance to see you!

Sumatra

Sorry this is a long one...we have been writing as we go, but this is the first we have had access to WiFi.

Sulwesi to Sumatra, day 8

We spent most of the day traveling. Who knew getting from one island to the next in the same country would be so involved! We road a boat from Lembeh Island back to the mainland. Then this incredibly crazy (female) Indonesian driver took us on the ride of our lives. We were literally white knuckled and sweaty from our nerves! 2 hours later we miraculously arrived at the airport. A word about driving in Sulwesi: the roads are paved and really nice, there are 4 motorbikes to every car and there seems to be no real “driving rules” for motor drivers. Sometimes they were helmets, sometimes they have 3 small children on the back of their motorcycle, sometimes they pass cars kamikaze style on the right and sometimes on the left (everyone is supposed to drive in the LEFT lane here). Anyway, you can imagine that these motorcycles are really the wildcards of driving here. But our lady driver was something else. At one point she was driving in the middle of the road to pass a motorcycle while at the same moment another motorcycle was coming at us in the opposite lane, luckily they both moved to the edge of their sides so we could go in between them! The worst moment was when we were (briefly) stuck behind a cement truck on a single lane road, but there were several cars between the truck and us that were also waiting. The first straight shot of road, our lady takes off like a bat out of hell…Jeremy and I exchange glances that mean “are you believing this!?” so she flies by the first 2 cars, passing them in the wrong lane, she hasn’t even passed the cement truck when another vehicle starts to come towards us (we are completely in the wrong lane at this point). So our lady, very nonchalantly, slams on the breaks, gives a few polite beeps and squeezes back in between the car-to-car traffic in our lane. This kind of move would have left any number of people yelling and gesturing wildly in America, but here they all seem to accept each others insane driving habits and just give these little polite beeps from time to time!? I should note that there doesn’t seem to be much in the way of standards or directions while driving, during the entire two hours of driving we passed 2 traffic lights and 3 traffic signs that were only this “!” …that might have something to do with it.

Anyway, we flew to Singapore, then took another flight to Sumatra and are now an hour closer to you! Sumatra is only 11 hours a head of Eastern Standard Time. We got picked up by a guide from our Sumatran tour and taken to this “fancy” hotel, by Indonesian standards. It was the first night we haven’t slept in a mosquito net and we had a/c! Tomorrow we leave at 9 am to drive to Tangkahan to stay in the jungle and do some elephant trekking.

Welcome to the Jungle, day 9

We have been hoping that our main guide for our 8 days here would speak some decent English. We experienced all types of fluency (or lack there of) with our dive crews and were really hoping to have someone that could tell us all about what we see. We met Edy this morning in the hotel lobby, after a breakfast of fried rice and eggs. He is enthusiastic and is really easy to communicate with! YAY!

We rode in a car 4 hours passing all kinds of palm and rubber tree plantations. The last hour in the care was unpaved and seriously rough…we were both a little sick by the end of it. Finally, at the end of the road we stop at some random and makeshift looking visitor center. Our driver, whose name is Jiya, says, “its like the Guns-n-Roses song, ‘Welcome to the Jungle’”! Jeremy in his best (which is bad) Axel Rose impression sings “You know where you are?” and Edy breaks in with his best Axel Rose impression, “You’re in the jungle, BABY!” Too funny…apparently, Indonesians love ’80 hair band music; strangely enough we heard a bunch of in Sulawesi!

We “sign in” and then the driver says he will see us tomorrow. So we grab (what we now understand to be way too much stuff) our bags, I have a big pack on, Jeremy has an even bigger pack, and dear sweet Edy is carrying our awkward small but freakishly heavy pull-along suitcase. We start winding down some incredibly steep stairs, I am panting and sweating and thinking to myself “breathe, breathe” when we come out at the shore of this river, which is maybe 50 ft across. There is no apparent indication of how we will cross it, just that clearly our destinations is on the other side (which appears to be more hellish steps…up this time). Anyway, we notice this totally rickety looking covered raft thing that is floating on the water and these skinny logs that lead out over the water to this raft. Packs and all, we walk out over these little logs and get onto the raft. Then the guy “driving” the raft lets go of a rope and we swing to the other side of the river (where more skinny pieces of board are waiting for us). These people have rigged this raft to be anchored to the shore and work on a pulley system of sorts so the raft just swings back and forth all day as people need to cross the river! 

On the other side we climb an obscene amount of steep stairs with our luggage. We are literally wet from sweating and both breathing hard. We pass a few structures that, at that point, we would have been happy to stay at (anywhere that would end this hiking bit). But we keep going and going and I am grateful to have sneakers on, although our guide is carrying our most obnoxious piece of luggage and seems to be doing quite well in his plastic flip flops. We finally arrive at this place which is as Robinson Caruso as anything I have ever seen. We are in this small, open-air, restaurant with bamboo tables and chairs and all around is this massive jungle. Turns out this place is on the side of a cliff overlooking the river we crossed earlier. Way down below we can hear and see this beautiful clear river going past. It is outrageously beautiful! They tell us “this is where you eat” (!!!) Then they take us to this great bungalow that is also on the side of the cliff overlooking the river and surrounded by the jungle! We have our own little balcony and hammock!

After much deliberation “what are you wearing to ride the elephant?” “I don’t know, I’ve never ridden an elephant before” we put on what we believe to be acceptable clothes when riding an elephant and go back to the beautiful eating place. We try to order 3 different things that are not available until after 6pm, the waitress tells us that they only have electricity from 6-11pm each day. So we have fried rice. They also tell us that if we want to order chicken for dinner, they need 3 hours advanced notice…we suppose to kill the chicken?!

Eventually we walk down those damn steep stairs again and wait by where the raft thing was and we see elephants coming up the river towards us! 5 of them to be exact. We climb onto this holding area and they walk past and we just jump aboard. Our elephant was Augustine and she was 37 years old! The elephant people have 7 elephants and a 5-month-old baby elephant. Every other day they do these trekking tours, but otherwise they use the elephants to patrol the jungle and address “illegal jungle activity” and poachers. The elephants are native to Sumatra and are smaller than their African relatives. There are still quite a few wild in the jungle around here, we saw this mashed down area of the jungle and our guide told us that last week a wild Sumatran elephant crashed through their camp!

Riding the elephant was surreal, although slightly uncomfortable as it was like riding a really wide horse. Augustine kept trying to stop to eat plants and our little elephant driver kept getting off to encourage her to move forward. Each time he got back on her, he would give her a command and she would raise her right leg. He stepped on her leg and then said whatever “higher, higher” is in Bahasa language and she raised her leg (and him) up until he could jump on board! We spotted all kinds of wild Long Tailed Macaque monkeys eating in the trees as we walked up the river on the elephants!

Once we got to their “home” the 5 elephants joined the remaining ones (and the baby) for a swim. They actually go completely underwater! Then we got to clean them and feed them and one of them even gave Jeremy a sloppy kiss! Their trunks are amazing, and they are so dexterous with it, just like an arm with a hand at the end instead of a snout. It was an incredible experience.

We hiked back to camp and our guide said, “put on your swimsuits and I will show you the waterfall and hot springs”. All day we passed people in the river, swimming, bathing, and washing their clothes. So we did. As we were walking back down to the river after changing, we spotted a new kind of monkey-the Thomas Leaf monkey, which are grey and white and have the most incredibly human face! Once again we were surrounded by monkeys! The guide said “they usually don’t let you get that close!” Just another day in the jungle with random wild monkeys all around! The waterfall was sooo cold and refreshing and then we swam over to these huge rocks on the side of the river….it started to smell like sulfur and we knew we were getting close to the hot spring. It was just this little hot hole in between the big rocks, and poured really warm water in the river! Then it started to rain….then it became an all out rainforest down pour. There was this spectacular thunder and lightening and we could see the river swelling and getting stronger! We raced to dinner in the rain (having ordered our chicken 3 hours prior) and went to bed in the jungle in the rain! We are blessed!

In the Jungle, day 10

This morning, I wrote for the blog while Jeremy took some photographs. Unfortunately, the huge thunderstorm we had last night left the river raging and brown this morning. We had pineapple pancakes for breakfast then Edy took us to “butterfly beach” where we saw 10+ different kinds of butterflies…and there were long tailed macaques in the trees beside us. Then we took a quick swim, not too long because Edy gets freaked out when the water is not clear…he says he is afraid of pythons ever since he came across one on a trail that was eating a deer! Then we packed up, showered and ate lunch before leaving this part of the jungle. We were mentally preparing ourselves to haul all our stuff up the winding and steep stairs up and out of the jungle when Edy casually mentions that we “will take the high bridge out”. So we took a straight line to a narrow, moving suspension bridge 50ft above the river….SO MUCH EASIER THAN THE STAIRS! Whew! Then we got into a 4x4 that was waiting for us and drove for 3 hours on impossibly rutted and terrible dirt roads.

Now we are in Bukit Lawang, the home of the endangered Sumatran Orangutans. We are in a little guesthouse overlooking a different river. There was an incredible thunderstorm again tonight. We were eating dinner at this little place overlooking the river and we had to move tables further away from the river because the rain was coming in on us! We have seen so many monkeys climbing on and around other “hotels” that we are keeping our balcony doors shut so we don’t have any visit us in our sleep! Tomorrow we will trek through the jungle for “4 or 5 hours”, looking for orangutans and whatever else we can find.

In the Jungle, day 11

We packed up our things and separated a small amount to take with us into the jungle. The items we didn’t need…you know, like our flippers, we left at the bungalow where we stayed. After breakfast, we started trekking. Edy told us a few things before heading into the jungle: 1) “it is many steep up and downs in the jungle” 2) “I am wearing these [ridiculous plastic] shoes that have no traction (think: jelly-shoe meets a croc) instead of flip flops so you won’t feel bad in your hiking boots” and finally 3) there is a really mean orangutan named Mena that has attacked Edy on two separate occasions. Mena is a legend around here, everyone has heard of her, and everyone is afraid of her. Almost weekly there is a new report that she has attacked a guide or tourist. Indonesians tried to take her further into the jungle away from people, and she broke through her crate/cage twice. When she sees a tranquilizer gun she climbs high into the trees.  So Edy is actually bringing a “friend” (basically a bodyguard) along just in case we run into Mena. This friend will carry fruit and other tasty smelling things and if we see Mena, we will go one way and this guy will tempt her the other direction. Edy says “its lucky for us, she bit a tourist yesterday and she is usually happy for a week after an attack.” The name “Mena” strikes such fear and trembling in the people around here that we are more than just a little nervous.

Almost immediately into the hike we realize that Edy was downplaying the “steep up and downs”! We were literally climbing straight up or rappelling down the mountain on whatever roots or vines we could grab! Did I mention it was over 85 degrees out? Suffice it to say we were sweating and breathing hard when we took our second break of the day. About 5 minutes into our break, we are sitting down eating these lychee-like fruit called rambutans when Edy stands up all freaked out and says “there is an orangutan, put your packs on!” and points (this is the 5th orangutan that we’ve seen at this point). This orangutan is seriously moving fast through the trees and right at us. Edy yells to his friend “it’s Mena” and to us “run”! Miraculously we were on as close to a level grounded path as we came across all day…the better to run from a crazed orangutan. Jeremy said, “Liz, I have never seen you run so fast!” Anyway, about 3 minutes into our mad-dash in the jungle, our “friend” (i.e. sacrifice) is long gone with Mena and we seem to be out of her range. We stopped for lunch about 30 minutes later (Still no sign of our friend) when finally our friend arrived and explained that he offered Mena bananas in exchange for his life. Whew!

not Mena, but another oragutang with her baby

We did some more of the straight up/straight down trekking and then finally arrived at our “campsite”. Expedition Jungle (the group we booked through) had already sent a cook ahead of us and he had already set up camp by the river and was furiously cooking when we arrived at 3pm. We swam and explored around the river and saw several huge monitor-lizards, which is some cousin of the komodo dragon. They look like small alligators but with a freakishly long tongue that sticks out all the time like a snake. The lizards were a little creepy; I might have even told Jeremy “if one of those would have swam by us while we were swimming I would have died.” Eck!

Eventually, Dani, our cooking guy, tells us that dinner is ready. He has been cooking non-stop since we arrived over a fire with a wok, occasionally he went to the river to rinse out the wok and start a new dish. So we sit down by the river and he lays out this ridiculously delicious spread…a curry vegetable dish, a sweet and sour chicken, and a spicy tofu dish…with rice of course! We told him that it was the fanciest food we had ever eaten while hiking. He said “no problem!”. For dessert we had fresh pineapple and peanuts. What a treat! Before we were chased inside our makeshift tent, we saw some Thomas Leaf monkeys and said “we hope they don’t come sleep with us…” When we got into our “tent” which was a 3 sided (huge) plastic bag, stretched out over bamboo, Dani said he had some tricks to show us. Basically we relived summer camp glory days all over again with songs, card tricks, and trivia questions- around the candle. Dani was quite a character! Then we slept on the hardest ground EVER! We had Indonesian sleeping pads under our sleeping bags, which were basically like laying on a tissue they were so thin. Although the ground was hard; we were so tired from our up and downing and the river was such a nice lullaby that we slept pretty well.

In the Jungle, day 12

We woke up to monkeys all around our tent! We got up and it was sunny, so we laid the tissue-like sleeping pads down by the river and laid on our backs watching the monkeys in the trees above us. Dani made us a delicious omelets/toast breakfast and then we wrapped all of our stuff in plastic and tubed down the river! Soooo much easier than the up and down trekking! On our way out in the tube, it was more like white water tubing-Dani used a long bamboo pole to stop us from careening into huge rocks. He began singing a song about Bukit Lawang (the place we were) to the tune of Jingle Bells!

After arrive back where we kept our flippers, we jumped into the sidecar of a motorbike and rode 15 minutes to a village where we stayed with an Indonesian family. This family lives in a really nice home, by Indonesian standards. They have 4 rooms, and rent 2 of them out (one was ours). The two rooms that they rent out had balconies that overlook rice paddies as far as the eye could see. The family of 6 shared the smallest, windowless room. Although the house was big, they had no furniture so we ate and talked on the floor. After lunch we learned how to grow rice. We got barefoot and climbed into this rice paddy, which was a field of mud up to my knees. It was actually kind of pleasant and since you were so far into the mud, and the planting surface was knee-high; it didn’t require as much bending as planting tomatoes. It does require a freakish amount of patience and gentleness, as you first dig up the tiny growing plants from a small patch that works a little bit like an incubator. Then after gently digging them up (while preserving the roots) you plant them, 3 or 4 tiny pieces of grass-like stalks at a time…in the mud. Edy said he was impressed with us as we were planting for an hour. He said, “most westerners want to see for about 10 minutes, get a photo, and then they are done.” Of course we were inspired to leave a different impression so we wanted to keep working but Edy said “no, we will work again tomorrow morning when it is cooler.” So we took a bucket shower and visited with the family.

The financial situation between Indonesia and America is more than striking, it is absolutely humbling. We brought coloring books and crayons for the 3 boys and a small rattle for the baby girl and you would have thought we had given them an ipad by American standards. The little 5 year old could not believe he had an entire box of 26 crayons all to himself and he just kept coloring page after page after page. The mother, Anna, said that they never had crayons before because they are too expensive. This family owns their home, but rents the land around them to farm rice. In addition to farming, Anna’s husband is a guide like Edy when it is high tourist season. They also have additional income from the room renters. The family of 6 lives on $50 a week. It seems like even the hardest working people in Indonesia only make just enough money to scrap by. We probably had more clothes and crap in our backpacks than this entire family owned. As I said…humbling. We are in Indonesia during Ramadan, the most sacred holiday in the Muslim faith, which lasts about a month. During this month, Muslims fast all food and sometimes even water while the sun is up. So the family gets up early in the morning (think: 4am) and the mother makes everyone food. They do not eat again until the sun goes down around 5:30pm. Mothers and small children often do not fast, which is the case for Anna and her 3 younger children. Her oldest son, who is 12 years old is fasting this Ramadan for the first time. At night before we went to bed, we heard the local Mosque singing/praying the Koran. Most Mosques in this area read the Koran out loud since so many villagers cannot read.

The next morning, Anna made us eggs even though her family eats rice 3 meals a day. We took a walk with Edy to see more rice patties. As we neared a field where an old woman was working to harvest the rice, she said “look here, a snake!” and we weren’t quick enough but apparently it was a cobra. Then Jeremy and Edy had a conversation like this: Jeremy: “I’d like to see a cobra, these aren’t the spitting kind right?” Edy: “yeah, they spit.” Jeremy: “but they eat mostly mice and birds, they don’t attack humans, right?” Edy: “yes, they have been known to attack humans.” Edy must think we are really special.

After our walk we talked Edy into letting us work the rice field again, American pride you know? So he had a good laugh (so did Anna I think) about the “American rice farmers.” We thought we were getting good at it, but on our way out we saw two Indonesian woman planting 4x faster than we were….we need more practice I guess. Then we took another bucket shower and packed up and headed to Brastagi, a town at the base of two volcanoes…Mt. Sibayak, which we will be climbing tomorrow and another volcano, Sinabung. On our way up and up and out of the low jungle into this cooler higher elevation by the volcanoes, we passed roughly 30 baboons, known locally as “pig tailed macaque” because their short tails stick up. In total we have seen 6 six different kinds of primates since arriving in Indonesia! Currently, we are in a fancy hotel again, which feels especially extravagant after staying with Anna’s family-even though it does not have hot water. Now, you are officially up to date, thanks for enduring this long post.  We will hopefully post again this weekend.

Safe and well in the Jungle

Hi All!
We have written a detailed account of our recent adventures in the Sumatran Jungle...Complete with elephants, long tailed Macaques, Thomas Leaf monkeys, and Orangutans! But we cannot find  a place for wifi to post our pre-written info. Just wanted to let you know we are having an amazing time! We just spent the night in the jungle last night and tonight we will stay with an indonesian famiy and do some farming. Internet is rare so dont worry if we dont post again until the weekend. XOXO

Rest of Lembeh

 

Under the Sea…the rest of day5, day 6, and day 7

After relaxing in our hammocks, we headed out for our first night dive in Lembeh. We anchored the boat in some small port; there were literally tons of boats all around us! As we descended, the first thing that stood out to us was all the trash under the water. It is such a shame, there is litter everywhere here, Indonesian people have a lot of trouble removing their garbage from the small islands so they have gotten into the habit of just throwing the trash into the sea. Undeterred by all the litter, the most amazing animals have used the trash to build habitats for themselves! We saw several false fire sea urchins that were neon red and purple on the inside, at night the inside of them glows and their black thorns blend into the night, so curious fish swim up to see the light and whammo…dinner.

We saw this little green and gold cuttlefish, which was the size of Jeremy’s finger. It was

“anchored” to a plant that was exactly the same green/gold color! Cuttlefish are masters at camouflage, we have literally seen them change texture and color before our eyes. The have these weird tentacle like things in the front of them..when they get threatened they spread them all out in crazy directions to intimate the potential predator. We saw another white cuttlefish that dive and I shined my flashlight on him, and literally within a minute he was glowing yellow just like the color of the flashlight! It’s really unbelievable! Our dive guide found this tiny, tiny purple bobtail squid that was no bigger than a thumbnail! He was just bopping around right in the sand looking like something right out of a spongebob cartoon.  We saw a sea hermit crab, which is called the “common hermit crab”, but it was anything but common! It had these fancy “feathers” poking out one side of it and it was all kinds of colors. It looked like a crab that had gone through a dress up closet!  I wasn’t sure what it was so when we got to the surface I kept trying to explain it…”you know, the crab that looked so fancy!” We saw a sponge crab the size of a football walking around with bright orange coral stuck to his back to blend in! It was really a cool dive, the creatures that you see while muck diving are soooo strange!

Day 6

We did two boat dives in the morning and saw all kinds of things as always, several eels, these things called ghost pipe fish which “hang” right beside these sea corals that are black and white and look like a hairy plant. You guessed it, the ghost pipe is this thin creepy creature that is as skinny as the plant-coral he lives in and he is hairy and colored exactly like it! Then we saw this soccerball sized green frogfish, called the “giant frog fish”. It doesn’t swim like a normal fish, it has 4 strange “legs” that are a cross between a webbed foot and a fin and he walks on them. But when he finds a coral that he likes and wants to sit in, he wedges himself in it and stretches out his little “legs” to stay perched in place! He has a little whitish colored “string” that comes out of his head and dangles around like a worm. This “string” attracts other fish to him and then he eats them! They were really prehistoric looking! We saw sting rays, porcupine fish, a ton of nudi branchs. Nudi branchs are the most amazing little creatures, they look like the shape of a slug and they can be sooooo tiny like a fingernail or as big as your arm. They come in the most outrageous colors, orange with white polka dots, deep purple with white and black stripes, sleek with pink “feathers” sticking out of it, they never cease to amaze me! Its like God took out his tiny tiny paintbrush for each on of these little creatures! Towards the end of the second dive, Jeremy starts gesturing wildly (which in our underwater language means “look at this!”) so I swim over to him and he is pointing out some purple clam-like thing on the underside of a rock. Our dive guide is giving the “good find!” signal, but I am still not sure what I am looking at. Our guide then stirs the sand right by this purple clam and whala! The clam becomes the most brilliant octopus! He “climbed” out of his hole so we could eye him up, then was happy to quickly retreat again! We got some great video of this to show you in person! Good find Jeremy!

Lembeh is a Straight, less than a mile wide, so when we are diving all around us are these beautiful islands of jungle and sharp cliffs. People are always going by on these impossibly fragile fishing boats! This place is really something.

My ears have been a little sore, so I passed on the afternoon dive today, but Jeremy went out. He saw a blue ringed octopus, tons of lionfish, anemone cleaner shrimp, scorpion fish, and more of those creepy pipe fish.

Then we rested up for our last day of diving! 

Day 7

Today is our last day of diving in Indonesia. In total we have done 17 dives here, and the experience has been totally incredible! We cannot even explain or summarize these experiences very well. The creatures that our under the sea are really just something that everyone should make it a point to see…on google, on tv, or in a aquarium. We feel VERY BLESSED to have gotten to see these creatures in the wild. Today we saw a lot more of the same kinds of bizarre creatures, but we did see a new type of frogfish…called the “shaggy frogfish”. Remember this is the weird “fish” who doesn’t swim, he walks on his little leg-fins. Well the Shaggy one has these….i don’t know what they are…but they look just the a hairy sheep dog or a rug from the 1970s! The bits of debris and algae floating along get caught in this “shag” and the fish almost completely blends into the muck around it! JUST CRAZY! We are sad to be done diving, but we are looking forward to the next leg of our jungle adventure, which actually started before we even left Sulawesi! You shouldn’t dive within 24 hours of flying due to pressure changes, so we booked a little trip off the island of Lembeh to the mainland to visit national park/nature preserve. We went with this lovely Scottish couple that we had met at the “resort”. We took the boat to the mainland, then drove forever through these intense winding roads. While en route it began to pour rain and we began to question our deep rooted interest in this little excursion. We arrived at this little shack where a man charged us $8.50 for a tour and “to see the monkeys”. We peed in a hole in the ground. All signs pointed to this being a bit of a sham. We followed these 2 guides (it was just us and this Scottish couple) and the one guide suddenly gets on his walkie talkie thing and says this way. So we walk “this way” for a while, all 4 of us are really suspect about what is happening, when the walkie talkie guy starts walking REALLY FAST saying, “the monkeys are fast tonight!” We were thinking “what the…?” So we are walking fast in this incredible, wet jungle; sweat is literally pouring off of us when all of a sudden we are IN A FAMILY OF 18 BLACK MACAQUE MONKEYS! I mean they were on the ground all around us! Big ones, little tiny baby ones, they were walking, sometimes leaping from tree to tree, sometimes stopping to watch us. We just kept walking with them (they were fast). At one point, I crouched down and waited, and a middle-sized Macaque came within 2 feet of me and just sat down! UNREAL! We had no idea we were in for this kind of treat! Then just as suddenly as we came upon them, they knew it was bedtime and all took to the trees all around us! What an experience! But we weren’t done….

Then our guides took us for more sweaty fast walking to a huge fig tree (the trees in this jungle were enormous and jurassic looking!) and says “the tarsiers lives here". Tarsiers are one of the smallest primates in the world. They look like an overgrown rat with huge eyes and those suction cup feet. We waited and waited and the guide said “they come out at 5:30pm” and sure enough, right on the dot the whole family starts climbing out of the holes in the tree! We saw five of them…they were 3 feet from us! WILD!

So then we returned and after the windy road back and the boat ride, we could have slept through dinner if we were so hungry!

Today we are off to fly to Sumatra (via Singapore). Will check in with you as the internet allows!

Here's some photos...

 

Lembeh...Day 5

Under the Sea….Day 5

Well everyone told us that muck diving was totally wild and completely mind-boggling…which is exactly how we have experienced it so far! The visibility is not good, like 12 feet, and there is trash and muck and lots of black sand…but the creatures that grow and live here are beyond your imagination! Instead of being overwhelmed by the color and splendor of a reef all around, diving in Lembeh is like a scavenger hunt, where we savor each discovery! It is a much more relaxed pace underwater. 

We saw this incredibly rare fish today called a Ambon scorpion fish-we met people who came from England just to try to lay eyes on one of these! They are sort of hairy and look exactly like a little clump of seaweed..with eyes! We saw a coconut octopus and they we saw it being attacked and eaten by a flounder! We saw 3 swimming spotted sting rays; we saw a black and white banded sea snake, a demon scorpion fish, and loads of lionfish. So many little weird and wonderful creatures that our guide started writing them down on this underwater tablet because we had no idea what we were seeing! We saw 2 long armed octopuses, a school of razor fish, which “stand” straight up in the water…down close to the sand so they look like a group of plants not fish. My absolute favorite thing I have ever seen underwater is a flamboyant cuttlefish. Today I saw it for the first time and we saw 2 of them! Google it, I am sure I cannot fully explain these things. They are no bigger than the palm of my hand, and they look EXACTLY like the dirt and sand all around them, but if you stir the water near them (which our dive guide did) they turn these outrageous colors and actually shift back and forth in colors in front of your eyes! It is almost like they have a band of color moving over them, one second they are brown, then white, then, yellow, then purple! It is truly a miracle to witness this color change! They change colors to freak out potential predators. I just cannot even begin to explain the astounding way that they rotate colors! Seriously, google it. We did two dives this morning and plan to do a night dive tonight.

Our “Resorts”

The places we have been staying at are called Two Fish Divers and are run by a British couple. Almost 100% of their employees (including all the dive masters and handlers) are Indonesian and they really couldn’t be more helpful. They took the entire boat, and a crew out just for the 2 of us to do our dawn dive in Bunaken. While diving, we have always only had one guide and us…which is so nice! There is no crowding and our guides have this uncanny ability to spot even the most camouflaged creatures! Half of the things we have seen so far in Lembeh we would have never noticed on our own.

We eat in an open air pavilion which can be very exciting…the pavilion here in Lembeh is cathedral like (maybe 20 ft high), last night during dinner a gecko fell from the ceiling and landed right in Jeremy’s water glass...he didn't try to sell us any insurance, because he's busy training for the Olympic high dive! The food has been really great, although pretty spicy; I leave most meals with my nose running from the heat (although I am a total weenie about spicy). We have some kind of rice and noodles with every meal. For protein we have fish, chicken, pork, or tofu. There is always fresh fruit and veggies. We are not planning on having much of either one in Sumatra, so it is nice to get to eat them here. For breakfast they make us eggs to order….we have ordered “tomato omelets” which is a fried egg with a (whole) slice of tomato in it. We have not seen any cheese yet. For dinner, they give us dessert of some kind, last night it was coconut custard, which tasted great but had a weirdly crunchy texture (from the fresh coconut). We eat community style with the other divers. Each place has less than 20 guests. So far we have only met one other American.

This afternoon (currently), Jeremy and I are relaxing in hammocks outside our room. We are sharing a fresh pinapple, carrot, and orange smoothie. Today is the first afternoon that it has not poured rain, we are grateful to be outside in the cool ocean breeze. The weather continues to be hot, but not nearly as humid as Bunaken.

We will try to post some photos later.

Bunaken to Lembeh...day 4

Under the Sea…day 4

Today we got up at 5:30am and did a dawn dive for our last morning in Bunaken. As we road to the dive site from the boat you could see the sun rising over the water behind huge volcanic islands all around! We saw a turtle before we ever suited up! This morning’s dive was a dift dive, meaning that we just floated along with the current. We saw a turtle, a black with white spotted moray eel, a blue spotted sting ray (which are brown all over with quarter size bright blue spots on its back), and 15+ barracuda. The barracuda were pretty big, like 3-4 feet long. We were surrounded by thousands of red tooth trigger fish that have electric blue tails…they were all around us in the blue and then suddenly ALL the fish started swimming sooo close to the reef that they looked like a black blanket over the coral…thousands of them! And we realized that there were barracuda all around which is why all the fish got so close to the coral! Then we said goodbye to the incredible coral and returned to the “resort”.

After a quick breakfast and some brief packing, we threw our bags out by the boat and borrowed our dive master’s motorbike to take a fast tour of the island. We got some great video footage of the local village (which is not uploading for some reason). No one on the island of Bunaken has cars, so every walks or dives motorbikes. It was really fun to take a little mini-tour. Then back to the resort, we jumped on the boat and headed to the mainland of North Sulwesi. Then we drove for 2 hours across North Sulwesi and caught another ferry to Lembeh for the muck diving part of our trip. We were so tired from all our adventures that we took a 3 hour nap after lunch and are now heading to dinner. We somehow got our room upgraded to a “Standard room” from the “budget room” that we ordered…which means we have own our bathroom, a ceiling fan (!), and real sheets! It’s the small things in life you know…

Tomorrow we will do 2-3 dives in Lembeh and try to check back with you! Hope you are all well in North America!

Here are some of our photos from Bunaken:

Bunaken Day 3

Under the Sea…Day 3

This morning we did two more incredible dives…we saw 3 sea turtles, a pygmy sea horse that was bright yellow and only the size of my pinky fingernail….it is actually a miracle anyone even spotted it! We saw a black moray eel that was opening and closing its mouth so wide that we could see its bright white teeth. We saw an electric pink leaf fish that has a fin running up its back that is twice as large as its body (which looks like a large leaf), a 2 ft long crocodile fish that blends into the sand. We saw whole schools of trigger fish, damsel fish, some unidentified large silver fish, so many schools of tiny tiny fish that move as though they have one mind. The coral is so wild, today I spotted some that looked almost exactly like little broccoli heads! Some of the corals are soft and move with the current, others are sharp and jagged. Some form enormous tunnels that we could fit inside…almost like a barrel! We swam into, up through, and out of a cavern of coral which was incredible. There are moments when you stop searching so narrowly at the space in front of you and just look up….and see hundreds of fish, and these indescribable silhouettes of the coral cliff outlined by the surface of the ocean so far above. In fact, Jeremy and I have devised a way of communicating with each other under the water…one of the things we “say” to each other is LOOK AROUND!

On our way back to the island, it was low tide so we had to anchor the boat 50 yards from the beach. The water is crystal clear and from the boat, one of the Indonesian guides spotted a bright yellow frog fish, which are really strange looking, so I leaped out of the boat (after asking) and walked over to him to get this picture. Meanwhile Jeremy jumps out of the boat right after and nearly steps on a baby striped sea snake! WHOA POISONOUS! We were only in like 2.5 feet of water! The visibility in shallow water wasn’t as great today because of all the rain last night…but we managed to snap a shot of the snake, although the picture doesn’t quite capture the bright blue and black bands that circle this snake. One of the Indonesian guides had hopped out at that time and he was all kinds of nervous that we were all gathered around this snake. Supposedly they are very docile but extremely lethal. We snapped a photo and moved on!

This afternoon we went right out front of our resort and snorkeled, again the visibility wasn’t fantastic but the fish and coral definitely were! We saw a HUGE lion fish which have all kinds of spines sticking out of it (like a mane) and they are poisonous. The lionfish’s spines confuse their prey so they can get really close without the prey fish knowing it is about to become dinner.

This evening we went on a night dive (Jeremy’s first one!). It was just sensational, we saw a sea snail that was the size of a football…moving all around. We saw 2 eels, 10+ crabs and shrimp, a turtle, clams, 2 frog fish, a leaf fish, a small cuttle fish, a scorpion fish, and parrot fish that were hiding. Parrot fish are bright, neon colors-pink, torquise, green, purples, etc and they hid at night in the coral. After they have picked their hiding spots, they spit out a web of mucus all around them to protect them from little fish “disturbing” them!

I think I got some great photos, but no time to upload right now.  Hopefully tomorrow we'll add some more. 

Bunaken Day 2

Under the Sea…..Day 2

How can we begin to tell you about the underwater kingdom here…the corals, the colors, the crazy strange creatures. Our two dives this morning were cliff-drift dives, meaning we followed the current as we passed this enormous wall of corals. When the current changed, we just went a little shallower or deeper and switched direction. On occasion the current is so strong that it shoots you forward, you don’t have to swim at all….it must be somewhere in the ballpark of what it feels like to fly.

The reefs are so alive here that you could spend an entire dive in one spot and still be overstimulated. “In the blue” (which is the deep blue abyss all around the reef) was hundreds of schools of fish….. schools of trigger fish with electric blue tails, schools of pyramid butterfly fish that are bright orange with a white diamond, little silver fish, and some so far off in the distance you could only make out their silhouettes. On the second dive we saw 8 (!) sea turtles! One was so close to me, I could have kissed it! To see a sea turtle gracefully swimming right at you…its front legs slowly, methodically going up and down…its huge-dinosaur head and intelligent brown, almost cat-like eyes looking right at you. It was moving. Then we “happened upon” the most enormous turtle I have ever seen…5 feet long and 3 feet wide…just hanging out on a little ledge of the reef..eating coral. UNBELIEVABLE! I could watch them all day long. We saw some out in the blue too. These were the first sea turtles that Jeremy has ever seen in person. He cannot come up with words that capture his experience. He does note that the diversity of corals…some stretching 6 feet across that were the highlight of his day.      

A Break from Under the Sea

After we returned from our morning dives, we had this outrageous thunderstorm and RAIN. I had booked an hour massage with an Indonesian woman for right after lunch (conveniently during the thunderstorm). No question, this was the best $10 I ever spent! I have been seriously considering how to bring her home with me! Then we took a nap and I went on a night dive. Jeremy was a little waterlogged and needed some land time, so he did his photography stuff while I went out in the boat.

Night Dive

I have only ever done two other night dives…both in Australia. If diving on a reef during the day is like being in another world, then diving on a reef at night is like being in another galaxy! We each had our own flashlights, otherwise everything is pitch black and all kinds of creatures come out. You might expect that it is hard to see…because it is so dark, which is true, but in some ways it is easier to see. The light from the flashlight reflects more accurately the colors of the corals and fish. What looks mostly grayish to the naked eye, might actually be rich with color that is washed out by the lack of light. So during underwater diving, everything is dark except the beam of the flashlight which shows a ridiculously colorful world! 

We had barely decended from the boat and we spotted an octopus! It started out a light blue color as it moved across the sand. The head seems to be gliding along while the legs just keep folding up under it. It “walked” its way to a rough piece of white coral and magically the octopus turned white and prickly…JUST EXACTLY LIKE THE CORAL! If it had already been on the coral when we got down there, we probably would never have seen it! We saw another huge sea turtle, cuttle fish, and all kinds of crabs. (9 turtles in one day….TURTLE POWER! J) One crab was like the size of a cereal box and had a bunch of coral attached to it’s back for camoflague! If it hadn’t been moving, who knows if we would have seen it! We saw a bunch of shrimp, sea cucumbers, scorpion fish, and creepy worms! And who knows what critters we missed along the way! On our way back to the island, there was so much bioluminescents in the water that we stirred up by our boat passing through that the wake on either side of the boat was literally glowing! It looked like there were blue fireflies in the water all around us! What a cool experience!

Last night we had the most impressive thunderstorm…it literally woke us up and just POURED for hours! This morning, everything is lush and wet and the sun is out! We are headed to breakfast before our morning dives (this is our last full day in Bunaken). We don’t have many underwater pictures from day 2 as we were 60 ft underwater most of the day and our camera only works to 40ft.

                                                     THIS IS WHERE WE SLEEP

                              THIS IS WHERE WE EAT OUR MEALS, COMMUNITY STYLE

Bunaken, Day 1

Under The Sea

So we slept 10ish hours and woke up around 6:45am. The weather here is warm, but not as hot as we expected. It is, however, EXTREMELY humid….so much so that everything feels slightly damp. We do have a nice fan in our room… which comes in handy when the bath towels feel wet before we used them.  We just stand in front of the fan until we are dry. So after breakfast at 7am, we got our wetsuits, and dive equipment and waded through a mangrove forest to get to our boat (it was low tide so the boat couldn’t come any closer to shore).
                                                                                        THE ISLAND OF BUNAKEN



Our first and second dives were on two separate cliff reefs. Diving here is like all incredible things in nature….try as I might words just cannot begin to convey the majesty! We saw all kinds of coral: fire red, electric blue, lime green, pink, purple, black, completely transparent…some of it was spiny and branch-like, some of it was soft like a flower. We saw so many tubular corals; it was like a freaky science experiment gone haywire! The fish were so diverse…big strange fish, and tiny fish with

ONE OF THE MANY TRIGGER FISH WE SAW

 impossibly complex patterns. We saw polka dots, vertical stripes, zigzag lines, camouflage, half purple-half orange, and everything in between! Between the corals and the fish, we were overwhelmed! To name some specifics, we saw: clown fish, box fish, blow fish, barracuda, trigger fish of all sizes and colors, trumpet fish, batfish, sweep lips, lionfish, anemone crabs and shrimp, clams as big as a backpack, blue spotted sting rays, several kinds of starfish, nudi branchs, and so much more.

After our first two dives, we came back to the “resort” and had lunch. Then there was this intense rain that sounded awesome against our tin roof….so we took a nap (diving isn’t a passive sport remember!) We set our alarm and woke up in time to squeeze in an extra dive (we have signed up for 2 a day). This dive left a 5pm, and was called the “mandarin dive.” Mandarin are this crazy fish, approximately two inches, that only comes out at dusk. They have the most incredible skin! Bright blue and orange in this
       JUST FINISHED OUR 1ST DIVE
 intricate design… although we only saw 3 of them, we felt really lucky to have a sighting….but that was only the beginning of our dive. We saw a scorpion fish, which are those totally bizarre fish that is so camouflage and looks so much like a rock that 9 out of 10 times you would likely swim right by it…..if you didn’t have a brilliant Indonesian man pointing it out to you! We saw a sea turtle, a frogfish, and 15 angelfish. It was really neat getting to see the

MANDARIN FISH

 change of day to night underwater. We ended our dive using flashlights to see! Jeremy sums up his first day of indo diving as “mind-boggling and ridiculously amazing”. 

                                               

We just showered from our Mandarin dive and are heading to dinner. Tomorrow agenda looks like 2 more morning dives, an Indonesia massage for me in the afternoon while Jeremy takes photos, snorkeling off the front of the resort on the “house reef” (if we are up for it) and then a night dive. Hope you are all well!




                                                                                                                                                                        CAN SPOT THE SCORPION FISH?

PS. These are all from our silly underwater camera....so far we are super impressed!  

 

Greetings from Indonesia

After a 7 hour flight to Frankfurt Germany, we had a 2 hour layover. Then we got right back onto the same plane, which Jeremy referred to as “home” for 11 more hours, finally arriving in Singapore 23 hours after leaving JFK.  We waiting in Singapore airport for 2 hours (I was careful not to spit or chew gum) and then flew 3 hours to Manado, a city in North Sulwesi. We met our guy at the airport and waited another hour and half for a guy from Denmark to arrive (he was going with us). We drove 40 minutes through the city of Manado, until we reached the port and got on this small wooden boat…and waited another hour. Finally we left and road in the boat for 45 minutes until we arrived at the Island of Bunaken (pronounce boo NA ken)….OUR FINAL DESTINATION! Total travel time from JFK until we reached Bunaken was 32 hours. We are now officially 12 hours ahead of Eastern Standard Time! I have to mention that Singapore Air was the best airline we have ever traveled on! They served us 3 meals per flight, gave free alcohol, and had unlimited movies, games, tv shows, and music in the screen in front of each seat. We flew on an A380-800, which is the “worlds largest passenger aircraft” with 2 floors and 471 seats! When our legs got numb for sitting so long, we got up and went up and down the stairs a few times!

Right now, I am laying under our mosquito net, with my legs blessedly straight. Jeremy is taking a much needed shower. We are definitely a little weary from all the traveling…and the waiting. At 7pm our time (in an hour) we will go grab dinner in the “Restaurant” and then head right to bed. The diving starts tomorrow at 8am so we need to get some rest. Earlier this evening, ss our boat pulled into the island, and we got closer to shore, the water was so clear that we could see like a hundred star fish; red, orange, bright blue, and pink right off the side of the boat! Once we were shin-knee deep, we literally got out of the boat and walked to shore in the water! Going under the surface tomorrow is going to be soooo incredible! XOXO from Indo! 

Why Indonesia and Agenda

Upon hearing that we are going to Indonesia, most people’s initial response has been: “Why Indonesia?” So we thought we would kick off our blog off by answering that very question.


THE LONG ANSWER

Our plan to do a big international trip this summer was hatched sometime early last year.  We love to travel, and save up to try to do a big-travel trip every few years.  There are so many places that we would love to see and experience so we had a bit of a challenge figuring out where to go.  We developed a destination narrowing criteria which included: 1. a place we both want to go 2. a place just this side of adventurous/exotic-the kind of place that if we did not go now in the prime of our health and the height of our what-the-hell-attitude, we would likely never visit.  And so our list was narrowed to: Indonesia, South Africa/Namibia, or Western Australia (we did the Eastern side in 2003).  All three places fit the criteria for #1, but only Indonesia really felt like a place that we would never be adventurous...(read: foolish) enough to go visit in the future.

We first became interested in Indonesia while watching Planet Earth, a BBC series on relatively unknown places, creatures, and happenings in the world. The series featured a brief clip about the underwater world all around Indonesia. Indonesian waters has the highest concentration of marine diversity in the world. Some individual Indonesian reefs contain as many fish as the entire Caribbean Sea. After our interest was piqued, we looking into the country a little more…and found out this: “With over 17,000 tropical and often deserted islands straddling the equator, and with the Indian Ocean to the east and Pacific Ocean to the west, Indonesia has the longest coastline of any country in the world. There are officially 17,508 islands of which 6,000 are inhabited. With almost 240 million people, it is the fourth most populous country in the world — after China, India, and the USA — and by far the largest in Southeast Asia. Indonesia also has the largest Muslim population in the world. Most of the country's islands are mountainous, some so high as to be snow capped, with volcanoes running like a backbone through the country. Laying on the western rim of the Ring of Fire Indonesia has more than 400 volcanoes, of which 130 are considered active (the most for any country in the world), as well as many undersea volcanoes.  It's this volcanic ash that gives the Indonesian soil its rich fertility, spawning such an amazing diversity of flora and fauna including the world's biggest flower the rafflesia and the mighty Komodo dragon.”

So we decided to go to Indonesia.  However, once we actually got to planning the Indonesian Trip of our dreams, we were stunned at the cost. The flight alone is exactly what you would expect to pay if you were flying Singapore Air through 4 cities until you reach the other side of the world---a small, remote island of Indonesia. While we loved the idea of our Indonesian Adventure, we really didn’t love the idea of how much it would cost. So eventually we reluctantly settled on the idea of going to one of our other destinations.....Although no matter how great Australia and South Africa sounded, they still always felt like our second choice.

Not long after giving up our Indonesian dream we mentioned to my mom about why our plans for Indonesia fell through and my mom, (who has almost had a stroke at the sight of a snake, who likes her kids to be far from home about as much as she likes a root canal, and who lays awake at night worrying about the kind of adventures that we volunteer for) said “that is ridiculous!” She went on to talk us into doing this trip of a lifetime because now is the time, and we might always regret it, and we have the rest of our lives to be reasonable and work (hopefully) etc.

THE SHORT ANSWER

 So basically the answer to the question of “Why Indonesia” is because my mom said “Why not Indonesia?”*

 *She has since learned about the animals, insects, health, and natural disasters in Indonesia and her enthusiasm has taken a marginal hit.


WHERE IS IT?

 If you are anything like myself and were wondering, "where the heck is Indonesia?"...it is lucky for both of us that I married a geography teacher. Watch the video below (or click here for a clearer version) to see Jeremy explain where in the world Indonesia is located:

THE AGENDA

Our goals were:
-have as an authentic of an Indonesian experience as possible in 2+ weeks (i.e. experience the culture, nature, and variety of Indonesia as much as possible)
-See the underwater miracles around Indonesia
-Be a little stretched
 So we each planned an 8 night itinerary….while taking each other into consideration (i.e. Jeremy will not have to live on a boat for 7 days, and Liz will not have to bushwack her way in the jungle without being chaperoned by a local Indonesian who knows how to keep people alive in the jungle)


 LIZ'S ITINERARY (from July 13-21)

 Fly (via JFK, Frankfurt, and Singapore) to the Indonesian Island of Sulawesi ("Strangely shaped, this island houses a diversity of societies and some spectacular scenery, Toraja culture, rich flora and fauna, world class diving sites").

We will be spending the first four days on the Island of Bunaken (off the northern tip of North Sulawesi) where we will be scuba diving around some of the most incredible Indonesian reefs. We are planning to do a night dive here at some point.

Then we are spending the remaining four days on the island of Lembeh (east off the northern tip of Sulawesi) and again diving. While in Lembeh we will be doing Muck diving in the Lembeh Straight (called "the best muck diving site in the world"). "Muck diving gets its name from the sediment that lies beneath most dives: A normally muddy or "mucky" environment. [In our case it will be a black volcanic sand background.] The muck is the perfect habitat for unusual, exotic and juvenile organisms that make their homes in the sediment that compose a muck dive. Creatures like colorful nudibranchs, anglerfish, shrimp, blue-ringed octopus, and rare pygmy seahorses." We are also hoping to do night diving in Lembeh. Then we fly on to Jeremy's Itinerary.


JEREMY'S ITINERARY (from July 21-29)

When Jeremy thinks of Indonesia, he said he thinks of rain forests, volcanoes, and orangutans.  Indonesia is the only country in the world where you can see all three, so he wanted to do something that included each.  After some research, it turns out that out of those 17,000 islands Sumatra is only one where you can experience the three.  So we leave North Sulawesi and fly to Sumatra (via another quick stop in Singapore). Sumatra - "Wild and rugged, the 6th largest island in the world has a great natural and cultural wealth with more than 40 million inhabitants. Habitat to many endangered species such as tigers, rhinos, elephants, and orangutans."

 July 21: flight gets in a night...sleep at a hotel in city of Medan in Northern Sumatra.

 July 22: Journey 4 hours direct to Tangkahan in the morning in time for elephant trek at 2pm.

 July 23: Visit butterfly beach in the morning and relax and swim in the river. Journey 2 hours to Bukit Lawang in the afternoon.

 July 24: Visit an orangutan feeding platform in the morning. Continue on trekking and spotting wildlife afterwards. The guide will teach you about the flora and fauna of Gunung Leuser National Park. In the mid to late afternoon the guide will select a suitable spot next to the river to set up camp. Help out with fishing for dinner or learn some jungle skills from the guides.


July 25: After breakfast river tube or trek back to the village from the camp. Go to a rural Indonesian family's home and help out with some farming activities in the afternoon and stay for the night

July 26: Help out with more farming activities etc. Journey 4-5 hours direct to Brastagi in the afternoon

July 27: An early start to climb to the summit of Sibayak volcano. (Approx 4 hours ascent and descent). Visit the hot springs on the descent. Continue for another 4 hours journey to Lake Toba. Visit Spiso Piso waterfall along the way and take in impressive views of the lake. Lake side accommodation on Samosir island.

July 28: Island tour around Samosir Island. Of special interest in this area are the small museum and cultural center at Simanindo and a local Batak king's residence at Ambarita. Also take the opportunity to visit a traditional Batak Toba house, a traditional dance, traditional tombs and a sarong maker. It's also possible to visit the local market or just kick back and swim and relax by the lake. (The car and driver will be at your disposal for the duration of your stay in Lake Toba so you can decide how much or how little you want to do)

July 29: Depart in the morning from Samosir Island. Arrive into Medan and after a rest take a tour around the city. (Visit the big mosque / Sultan’s palace / Hindu temple and Sumatra museum)...fly home via Singapore...returning to the United States on 7/30.