Sumatra

Our late-night shuttle bus pulls up to a dark set of steps leading down to an even darker pathway that trails off in the direction of the sound of a roaring river. A middle-aged Indonesian man, who was leaning on the handle bars of a moped parked at the base of the steps pulls on his clove cigarette and says “Welcome to Bukit Lawang, we’ve been waiting for you. Just follow me, okay?” Before we can reply, he slings our two backpacks onto the seat of the moped in front of his lap and drives away. We’ve been on the road long enough to not even question these sorts of scenarios, so we cast each other a glance and start off down the path in the direction of the fading glow of his tail light.

This might be the only place in the world where you can see wild orangutans in their native habitat and sip coffee that has recently taken a trip through the intestines of a nocturnal, cat-like mammal. The Asian Palm Civit (Paradoxurus hermaphroditus) is a small, adorably cute creature that is native to Sumatra. This clever little fellow eats the only the ripest of the coffee fruit without chewing up the beans, which pass intact through the animal’s gut, gaining flavour all the way. This “in-house” fermentation is akin to oven-roasting the beans, and imparts a strong, pungent and somewhat fruity flavour to the coffee. The coffee is quite rare (you can imagine that it is a labour-intensive job to follow civits around the jungle hunting for their poop) and fetches upwards of $300 dollars a pound in North America. Here, in Sumatra, it is not uncommon for people to keep a “pet” civit, and harvest the daily coffee as do chicken farmers collect eggs.

Marching through the steamy Sumatran jungle, my wandering thoughts of keeping a pet civet of my own were interrupted by the sight of our first Orangutan. We had joined a small group of travelers for a 2-day jungle trek, on safari to hopefully spot Orangutans (primarily) and any number of unknown creatures inhabiting this leafy, noisy, sticky biome. We were a total of seven – a pair of Austrian fellows, a young woman from Denmark, and our two local guides. I can fairly comfortably say this was the most trepidatious activity we’ve tried on our adventure so far – not for the remoteness or the lack of any safety standards but for the sheer uncertainty of our immediate fate with which we marched off into the jungle. Our itinerary was simple: one full day trekking, pitching camp on the shore of the river, followed by a rafting trip back downstream to Bukit Lawang. In reality, warm, torrential rains combined with the steep topography and earthen (mud) paths turned the trekking into a full-body activity. Clawing for roots and vines and toe-holds, with hair and clothes saturated with sweat and rain, socks and shoes squishing with mud and the occasional leech, we ascended and descended the hillside all afternoon in search our quarry. It was absolutely grand.

Our shelter that night was a sheet of thick, black plastic wrapped around a bamboo frame, long enough to sleep all of us side-by-side on foam mats. We shared a candlelight tofu curry dinner and played cards on a large tarpaulin spread out on the rocks and I went to sleep trying not to think about how easy it would for a green viper to slither between the folds of plastic and cozy up next to me during the night. The following afternoon, after a little more trekking in the morning, our guides constructed our river-worthy vessel for the trip home. Our raft consisted of a half-dozen tire tubes tied together in a row, with the foam pads we had slept on strewn across the tops of the tubes as a sort of make-shift decking. In the bow and stern, equipped with long bamboo poles to keep us from bashing rocks along the way, our guides navigated the white-water back to Bukit Lawang while we took in the jungle scenery. Soaked, filthy and thoroughly satisfied, we made our way back to the hotel where we had left our backpacks for safe keeping. By the time we had each showered, the afternoon rains had set in so we sat down to relax on the porch overlooking the glistening jungle and the river we had just floated down. Vesna ordered fresh passion-fruit juice and I a fresh-brewed cup of civit-poop coffee. It was, incidentally, delicious.