After the monoculture palm oil forests of Riau, the villages on the fertile mountain soils of West Sumatra look like paradise on earth. The lads found us a guide and I was a little concerned when he put on gumboots, I was wearing Roman sandals.
He led us up through the rice paddies. We saw tomatoes, chillies, eggplants, lemon grass, cumin and all manner of herbs and vegetables. There were coconut and betel nut palms, mangoes, bananas, guavas, jackfruit, pepper and nutmeg. A woman passed carrying a bundle of cinnamon bark. It was as close to an exemplar of tropical horticulture as one could hope to find.
All land, including the surrounding jungle, was collectively owned, and the right to use it passed down through the women.
At the forest margin we passed a massive durian tree, a cylinder of corrugated iron around the first five metres to stop monkeys climbing. They didn't eat the fruit but threw them down and wild pigs ate them. There was a small hut were villagers slept to get the durians before the pigs.
Under the trees grew wild coffee, allowed to reach for the light and grow tall. Wild civet cats ate the fruit and the villagers collected their "poop" for the world's most sought-after coffee.
We followed a path of concrete slabs paid for by the provincial government to make walking easier for tourists in Roman sandals. "You won't see a Rafflesia flower," whispered a descending French tourist conspiratorially, but we already knew that.
The concrete slabs ended and we carried on up. Gibbons howled over head and there was all manner of other wildlife. There weren't many poisonous snakes but pythons were common. Tigers were very rare but their signs were sometimes seen, our guide told us.
The jungle reminded me of New Zealand bush. There were treeferns and something that looked like kawakawa with leaves twice as big. I snapped off a branch and it smelled the same.
On the final ascent, beside a waterfall, my sandals lost traction and I came a gutser, rolling down the bank. Scrambling back up, I found a parasitic Rafflesia plant growing on a liana.
Beside a decaying black flower from last year there was a swelling pink bud.
� When Fred Frederikse is not building, he is a self-directed student of geography and traveller. In his spare time he is co-chair of the Whanganui Musicians' Club.
