Mr. Peanut meets his match

Asmuni was his usual one hour late and then we had to wait and additional hour for the man to bring our other bags from the first village. We naturally just wanted to get going. Finally we were ready. We said goodbye to Kean leaving him with a decent tip, a bottle of coke, my good thermal gloves, the lip salve and a load of wet wipes and Japanese isotonic drink mix for his next walk.

It was a 2 hour drive back to Sengigi and I was in serious danger of dozing off in the car. The roads are so windy that this would have been a mistake and I would have woken up feeling sick so we played our version of the I-spy game to keep ourselves awake. Here are some of our sightings:

- a mosque under construction
- a bamboo pole being used as a washing line
- a goat at the side of the road
- a running chicken
- a thatched-roofed house
- a family sitting on a bamboo shelter outside their house
- a bare-bottomed baby
- a bag of pumice stone
- a broken bridge
- a woman riding a motorbike side-saddle
- a horse-drawn carriage taxi
- gangs of school children walking home along the road
- a blue SUV (like the one we were in)
- a sign saying “Selamat Jalan”. I forget now whether that means welcome, or goodbye.

Soon we were on the aptly-named Monkey Forest Road which Denny had told us about. We stopped the car and gangs of macaques appeared. It was fun to watch them when we threw peanuts (David shared his for the first time in history). They were less enthusiastic about the ones still in shells. Just like humans, they prefer the ready-to-eat variety. Also like humans, they were grooming. The bollards along the road acted as grooming stations for pairs of monkeys.