Setting up

It was as good as it was gonna get, I thought to myself. I stood back and looked at this very shabby-looking structure made of sticks and leaves. While it did look like an Igloo, it also looked like a large deflated balloon. It was not quite round and not quite circular and it was filled with holes. Ventilation is needed I thought to myself. 

Steve returned with enough twigs and pieces of wood and some dried-up coconut bits, that we would be able to start a fire. It was more mood lighting and keeping mosquitoes away since we had nothing to cook and only dry snacks to munch on. 

We never planned on the camping bit of our trip and we never thought we would be preparing to spend the night. This was to be a trip to the Wisata Gelar River. It was the last spot before the road ended. Steve was thinking we could make it to a point on Google Maps, to Air Terjun Yeh Mesee then to Mount Merbuk.

This should have been a four-hour hike until we got lost and lost signal and now here we are. Trying to get a fire started in a damp humid forest is not easy. We used a few pieces of toilet paper and some semi dry leaves to get the fire started. Which is when we also heard noises from the bushes behind us. 

This made sense, no animals like fire. The smell of smoke would certainly scare off a few animals. We did scare off the monkey, but other than that nothing much as larger animals went. When we got the fire going, full darkness set upon us and we had nothing left to do but wait.

Yet, the dark and the night didn’t seem right. There was a stillness, an eerie quiet in the jungle. I never thought a jungle would be quiet. I always imagined it teaming with life, but only stillness filled the air. Any amount of wind and breeze we had earlier also vanished. The jungle was dead. Not a sound to be heard, no birds, no crickets, no owls, nothing like we felt it should have been until…