On our way home

Day 30 - February 9

Early morning rise today, 3 AM is really early. We gave Finanda and Rizcky a call because they wanted to join us on our trip to the airport. We were on the shuttle by 4 and off we went. Got to the airport about 4:15. We said our farewells and left Finanda in tears. We got all checked in and looked for someplace to get something to eat. We had breakfast and boarded the aircraft for the journey home. The trip to Tokyo was uneventful and that's just the way we like them. We arrived in Tokyo a little early. That gave us more time to get to the gate for our trip to LA. JAL is really a nice airline to fly. There is lots of legroom compared to US carriers and the flight attendants are very pleasant.

The trip from Tokyo to LA is about an hour and a half shorter than the trip west because of the prevailing winds. We really liked that. But the entertainment system on American is paltry compared to other international carriers. Had already seen most of the movies and one that I hadn't seen I quit in the middle because it wasn't worth watching. Oh well, nothing to be done about that. We did arrive in LA a little early. We jumped on the shuttle and were off to the hotel. They did have a room ready and let us check in late in the morning, very nice of them.

We immediately laid down for a couple of hours, all right, 'til 4 PM. We arose and decided to go get something to eat. Talked with the desk clerk and decided to go to the Fairfield Mall in Culver City. We took the number 6 bus. The fare was $.35. Rode for 20 minutes to get to the mall. We had dinner at Five Guys. Did some shopping and back to the hotel for the night.

This will probably be the end of our foreign travels for the year. So will see you next time. Love and peace to all.
  

Prepping for the Trip Home

Day 29 - February 8

Pretty quiet day today as with the last three. We got things mostly ready to go for the morning. There are a few things that have to wait until the last minute but most is ready. We will have one more bag going home than we had coming. All of the fabric Bonnie bought plus a few trinkets take up more room than you would think. I hope the bags are not over weight. If they are oh well.

Finanda and Rizcky arrived at about 6:30 this evening. We will have dinner with them and spend some time together. Finanda said she has something for us so we will have to find a place to put that as well. In about 12 hours we will be leaving Indonesia. It's sad in a way but also exciting to  be on our way home.

Dinner with Finanda and Rizcky was fun. We had laugh a couple of tears and great fellowship. When we were finished they came to our room with some gifts for us. There were a couple of pictures from the wedding. One was in a frame and the other was not. Both we lovely and we thanked them for their kindness and help on our journey. We went to our separate rooms and turned in for the short night ahead.

Another Restful Day

Finanda and Rizcky

Day 28 - February 7

We nearly stayed in the hotel the whole day today. We were supposed to meet with Finanda and Rizcky but plans changed. We will meet up with Finanda tomorrow afternoon and she will stay at the hotel tomorrow evening with us. The girt just will not take no for an answer. She wants to cry at the airport when we leave.

We left the hotel for only a short while today to get water and some snacks at the Minimart around the corner. The other things we did was write, read, watch TV, and play bridge online. It was really exciting. We are so ready to go home. Monday is Chinese New Year , the year of the monkey, so there re fireworks going off around the hotel this evening. Don’t know if we will get much sleep tonight or not. The hotel did give us a New Year’s gift this afternoon. It was a packet with two oranges and an Indonesian delicacy that does’t have much taste. The oranges are great though.
  

Shopping at the Mall

Day 27 - February 6

This is another laid back day. We went to a Daan Mogot Mall nearby for about three hours and mostly walked around. We talked with a car salesman and asked how much the Toyota Avanza would cost here. We don’t have that model in the US. He asked, stick or automatic, and the discounted price came to about 180,000,000 rupiah, $12,300. This is a cheap model here actually for that price they would probably be sell a billion of the in the States. A Prius here was cost about twice that much. A Camry would be around $20,000. He said only rich people and the government buy  the Camry. I'm quite sure none of the vehicles would meet US emissions standards.

We bought some little spoons at the hardware store, had an ice cream at Baskin & Robbins, bought water, soda, and some snacks at the Hypermart. That was our exciting day.

Of course I wrote and updated the blog. You guessed it Bonnie read. Dinner at the hotel, a little TV and then off to bed.
  

Goodbye Sumatra

Day 26 - February 5 Jakarta

After breakfast we said goodbye to the Marriott. The drive to the airport was much quicker than we thought it would be. That’s fine. I didn’t want to be in a car very long anyway. The flight left on time and we arrived in Jakarta on schedule as well.

There was a little difficulty getting the shuttle to the hotel but we got that straightened out as well and we were back at the J Hotel where we stayed the first night we were in Indonesia. Not much to report about today. We stayed closed to the hotel. I wrote and Bonnie read. That pretty much sums up the day.

Bat Cave

Ribbons

 Day 25 - February 4

So breakfast didn’t have to be as early today. I wasn’t leaving for the bat cave until 8:30. Bonnie had tripped on a root yesterday on our trek and she was hurting quite a bit the morning so she would not be coming along to the cave. Breakfast was good this morning. There are not as many choices as we have had most days since we’ve been here but it was still a nice tasty breakfast. We went back to the room and I got ready for the hike to the bat cave.

The hike was pretty easy. We went through palms that are raised to extracting palm oil. Part of the way was through rubber trees. I had read about harvesting the sap from the trees but had never seen it first hand. It’s done just the way the pictures show. The sign said the cave was a 3 kilometer walk but it seemed shorter than that. We got to the gate for the cave in about 15 minutes. The bank down to the creek we had to cross was very steep and slippery but we negotiated it well.

Small Bat

 The climb to the first chamber was a little tricky and if you weren’t careful you could hurt yourself very easily. I mean seriously hurt yourself as in broken bones. Fortunately my guide, Anuar, had two flash lights with him so we were able to see just fine. This chamber has small species of bat roosting in it. There were probably a couple of hundred dotting the ceiling. They weren’t very active. In the second and third chambers there were larger bats. The ceiling of the cave were not quite as high making the bats easier to see. The small bats and the larger ones did not seem to roost together. There were probably more than a thousand bats here in all. Some were quite close together but most were probably 2 to 3 feet apart. Might just be that the places to grasp were that far apart. Some of these were actually flying from place to place in the cave. It’s interesting to have them flying just over your head. Bats are such misunderstood creatures.

Large Bat

While the bats were very interesting this cave must have been beautiful when it was still “alive”. The old formations have certainly lost their luster over the centuries. The mites and tites, the ribbons, the flowstone, all are here just not in the glory that most people think of when you think of a cave. I can only imagine how lovely it must have been.

 We were in the cave for probably an hour, maybe a little longer. It was most enjoyable and I would be happy to do it again. The way out was the same as the way in so you have to be very careful going out as well. The walk back to the hotel was pretty easy and uneventful.

Large Bat Cluster

Bonnie was sitting on the porch reading when we arrived. Anuar invited us up to his house for some coffee or tee while we waited for our driver to arrive. We chatted and enjoyed the company while we waited. Anuar had been in business here for about 10 years and constructed or supervised the construction of all of the building. They are in the process of building a new dining room or maybe better said a dining shelter. Most of the facilities are quite open to the air. When our driver arrived he came and joined us at the house. He and Anuar are good friends. Seems too soon we had to return to the city.

Flow Stone

The drive was again three hours. I and Bonnie both dozed off and on during the trip. We had to stop at an ATM along the way so we would have enough money to pay the driver. I will never get used to playing people with 100,000 denomination notes. When we arrived back at the Marriott we were  quickly escorted to our room.

Large Bat Cluster

 The room was huge. Seems they gave us a free upgrade to a deluxe room. It was a corner room with a great view of the city. The bathroom had a separate shower and tub. There was a huge window in here that looked out over the city as well. The bathroom even had a TV so you could watch while you soaked in the tub.

Our flight back to Jakarta was at 10:10 in the morning. Our trip was quickly winding down.

The Daytrip to the Jungle

   
Day 24 - February 3

We woke up late this morning. Seems we always do late when we should do early, oh well. We were still able to get ready and do breakfast and meet Anuar, out guide, by 7:30. So everything was fine. He made sure we had the things we needed before set out. Asking specifically about insect repellent and water. We had both. So away we did go.

Wagler's Pit Viper

Thomas' Leaf Monkey

Pig Tail Macaque

Before we were even on our journey Anuar showed us a snake that was next to his patio. It was a green snake with white and red markings that looked like dots. It was a young snake only about 6 inches long. I looked it up on the internet and found it supposedly was a Wagler’s Pit Viper. But I Rachael Bladow identified a much larger snake that looked very different at Wagler’s Pit Viper. I certainly guess the juvenile could look very different than the mature variety. So I sent another post on FB to Rachel. She’s a herpetologist so if she doesn’t know she will be able to find out.

About two hundred yards up the trail we were greeted by a couple of Thomas Leaf Monkeys. They are very pretty and very personable. We saw many more of these along the trail. We also say many long tail macaques as well. They seem to be all over the place including in the area of the hotel. We gave these guys some banana and we were off again. The guide did call them in so they had gotten hand outs before.

As we moved on out guide told us he hoped we would have luck finding some orangutans this morning. It turns out we were not very lucky this morning. We say leaf monkeys, many type of butterflies, ants on a trail to their nest, a couple of really large ants, they must have been a half inch long. We saw a pig tailed macaque, but the forest person eluded us.

At 11 AM or so we finally were able to see one. It was a young female, 7 or 8 years old. She was very friendly. I wouldn’t really classify her as wild. She was definitely accustomed to humans. We fed her bananas and carrots. She liked them both. We probably spent about a half hour maybe more with her. Our guide got a call that there was a female with a baby not too far away. We never did find her but we had a wonderful time in the forest. I guess I should say jungle but a jungle is just a tropical forest.

Interacting with an Orangutan

 Sometime around 1 PM we got down to the river. The river was our trip back to the hotel. But first lunch was in order. We had nasi goreng with tomatoes, cucumbers, and an egg. Was very tasty mostly I think because we were very hungry. Both Bonnie and I ate the whole thing. There was pineapple and oranges for dessert. The pineapple was sweet and tender. The oranges we had already sampled on the trail.

Sweet Young Lady

The next thing was to get all of the stuff we didn’t want to get wet in some waterproof bags. That was done and we were loaded up on the tubes. The tubes we floated were like backhoe tubes, very large. There were four all tied together. The first rapid was probably roiled more than the others and our guide go some pictures of us as we came down. He then put our camera in a bag and joined us on the tubes. The river is very rocky and my butt bumped the bottom a couple of times on the way down but it was a lot of fun and very cooling. The water was cool, probably in the 70s F (22 C). It felt great. We stopped just above the dam and walked back to the hotel.

Long Tail Macaque

Tubing the River

It was a great day to once again get away from the hustle and dirt of the city. We escape to Indonesia and had wonderful time. We also found out where the Bat Cave is. We will visit there tomorrow. Looks like it’s going to rain this evening. Hope it does and cools things off some.