from the horizon

It was a beautiful day in Banda Aceh, and a group of us had been talking about going for a trek in the jungle to find “The Secret Beach”. However due to a number of people either working, booking flights or generally being lame, only Dan and myself set out on the expedition on the back of his motorbike.

Without the hassle of a group of people to slow us down, we took the scenic route, exploring unknown paths, expecting to find Tigers, or GAM hideouts at every turn. We reached a point where the road turned to offroad, but persevered some more, until it turned out to be too much for the bike, and we had to turn back.

After a quick drink at Joel’s, we headed off into the jungle, attempting to retrace my foot prints from 4 months previous, when a group of us had gone to the secret beach. However my memory didn’t serve me correctly, or it could have been the fact that we got ourselves lost the last time, so I could remember which were the right trials! Either way, one wrong turn set us off on the wrong path, and into the jungle!

As we progressed, I became aware of my folly, but we both felt that we were certain to find some path to a beach at some point. Eventually we came across a couple of huts, and a path that headed down towards the sea. We checked the time, to make sure that we could still get back before dark (when the tigers come out) and headed down. After about 10 minutes the path began getting overgrown, so we started tearing up a plastic bag, and tying in onto trees, to mark our trail back. After another 10 minutes, we found a stream and were convinced that it would lead us to the sea. As we began to hear the waves and smell the sea, we hoped that we wouldn’t be finding ourselves cut off by a cliff face. But as the canopy cleared, we released we made it… to another secret beach!

Our only reference point for the location of the beach (we may or may not have buried treasure)

Monkey prints

How to Get Lost:

1. Turn left out of Joel’s at Lampuuk (this is going AWAY from the beach).
2. Just after a little bridge, take the first road on your left that goes up into the jungle.
3. Go up the hill, until you come to a bridge with planks over the holes, keep going on the main path.
4. When you come to the fork in the path - take the right side (I think this was my mistake, to go to the other beach, I think you have to turn left).
5. Keep going up and up.
6. After the big saddle, follow the path down for 10-15min. Looking out for this turn off to your left:

   

7. Walk about 200m, until you come to this clearing, take the left path

   

8. Follow the path down to the sea!