Mentawai Round II (part 3: the jungle)

Greg and I wanted to do one last thing before we left Mentawai. We wanted to go to the jungle. We'd seen and hiked through a lot of what appeared to be jungle, but it was actually all carefully cultivated banana trees, durian trees, patchoili, peanuts, sweet potatoes, taro, giant sago palms and so forth. Greg really wanted to see a 'canoe' tree, from which the dugout canoes are made, and I wanted to see plants and animals. We found out that our ferry would leave in two days time, so we scheduled a hike for the next day. We left in the morning, discovering that our 'guide' was actually our good friend and 'guide' that accompanied us throughout our whole trip.

We left in the morning and hiked through ladang and then through swampy ground where we had to balance on an infinite number of tiny bridges and fallen trees. We stopped to chew on sugar cane, then finally walked through an area where the forest was being cleared for planting and into our little corner of natural forest. We could hear a chainsaw the whole time, but our little bit of forest was beautiful. The canoe tree was as big as a redwood, and there were amazing plants and vines everywhere. We had a tarzan moment, then ate what I think was hearts of palm, which, contrary to common belief, only involves cutting a shoot off of a very prickly tree and carving into it with a machete. Eventually we headed back.

When we returned, later than we'd anticipated, we found that our boat had been canceled but that a cargo boat carrying a load of kopra, had room and was leaving in an hour. We made it on the boat and made our way back to 'civilization.' We immediately ended up on a car trip to Bukkit Tinggi for the day, then left the next day for Malaysia.