Field Trip

 

Monday:

We were supposed to leave early the next morning to drive about 6 hours away to look at some forest that Dr. Galdikas wants to buy in order to preserve it. However, Dr. Galdikas has so much on her plate that she often runs very late to things. We waited around all day until 7:30 pm. A wasted day, but we seemed to fill the time mostly by playing Jenga. We’ve gotten very good at the game! We piled into two cars and started driving down some of the worst roads I’ve ever experienced. For the first time in my life I felt extremely carsick. I then got to sit in the back of the truck under the beautiful starry night sky. It was a rainy, wet, bumpy ride. We arrived at the tiny village in the mountains at around 1:30am. We rocked up to someone’s house, still not sure where exactly we slept. It was a large wooden house with two large empty rooms. We picked a corner and put our stuff down. We all fell asleep almost instantly, right there on the floor, with nothing but the clothes on my back and my backpack for a pillow.

Tuesday:

We awoke the next morning to see our surroundings for the first time (since we arrived at night). We were in one of the most picturesque little villages. We took a short walk through the village to a river that led right down from the mountains in the distance. The water was clear and cool and very refreshing. After breakfast we started out hike into the forest to check out the land that Dr. Galdikas wants to buy. At the edge of the forest was our first obstacle; we had to cross a swift-flowing river. Our guides got a little boat and two by two they guided us across.

The hike was semi-strenuous for a few kilometers but we were all doing this hike in flip-flops, so I felt pretty silly. We hiked through virtually untouched natural forest .

 One interesting thing in the forest were the rubber trees. The locals would set up taps on these trees to collect the slowly dripping rubber. One guy told us that he taps and then collects rubber from 400 trees daily, which nets about 250 liters per day of liquid rubber that he then sells. 

 The last stretch of the hike was almost straight up hill, which took us to the most beautiful view of the Heart of Borneo. There were just miles of small mountains and preserved forests. Definitely worth the hike!

On the way back a few of us booked it down the hill so we could go for a swim in the river. It was glorious and refreshing. We then piled back into our trucks for the very bumpy 6 hour drive back to Pasir Panjang.