Bukit Lawang, Sumatra, Indonesia 5th February 2023

We have been in Sumatra for a week volunteering at Batu Kapal Conservation Sanctuary (www.batukapalconservation.com) and took the opportunity on our day off to come into the village of Bukit Lawang, twenty minutes by motorbike, for an overnight stay (with the bonus of being able to access Wi-Fi.  

Our duties for the last week have included early morning and mid-afternoon monitoring hikes along different routes where we gather information on the wildlife, mainly primates, i.e. location and behaviour of the primate, such as whether they're feeding, foraging or travelling, what type of tree/fruit they're interested in, and recording this later onto a database for analysis.  We've also been out collecting discarded plastic, which we later washed and compressed into plastic water bottles to create eco-bricks, tree planting and weeding, and collecting topsoil which we put into pots for seed propagation.

It's often hard dirty work and we have to keep our eyes open as there are snakes, scorpions, centipedes, leeches and mosquitoes in the area.  We have both been "leeched" (Sue more than Paul) but we feel we're making a small difference and it's been immensely rewarding.  The people here are amazing, both staff and volunteers, although we're at least twice the age of most.

We're headed back to Batu Kapal this afternoon so again we'll be out of touch for another week until we leave next weekend.