Having spent the last year on the organizing committee of the Association for Tropical Biology and Conservation 2010 meeting (and doing very little else in the last 3 months!), we took advantage of the pre-conference trip to Gunung Palung National Park in West Kalimantan. The Research Station in the park is usually off limits to everyone apart from researchers so this was a very special opportunity to visit the Station and view wild orangutans, populations of monkeys, gibbons, birds, fabulous primary lowland rainforest and pristine rivers. The park is famous for its variety of habitats, including lowland peat and fresh swamp forest with huge trees, riparian forest, lower montane forest, and montane forest near the summits of Gunung Palung and Gunung Ponti. The folklore character Pontianak (which gives her name to the town of Pontianak) is a female vampire who comes at night and drinks the blood of her victims; the Malay believe that women who die in childbirth will rise again as Pontianak.
The park is close to the town of Sukadana in West Kalimantan where our friends Cam, Kinari, Kari and Loren live and work in and around the park. We started out from Bogor and met the 12 other lucky people who were part of the group at the airport before flying to Pontianak and then on to Ketapang. In Pontianak, Sophie’s luggage didn’t arrive, so we went to report it missing. Strangely enough we did find our trip leader John’s bag in the lost luggage room, although there was no sign of John himself. Enquiries revealed that John was still in Jakarta trying to get on a flight to Pontianak, having been delayed from the USA, but that Lion Air had helpfully sent his bags on ahead. John just made the flight to Ketapang, literally running across the runway and jumping on the plane as they closed the doors!
Arriving in Ketapang, we paid the required visit to the park office to meet the staff and be officially welcomed, then it was another 2 hours drive in a fleet of Kijangs to Sukadana and the Mahkota Kayaong Hotel – Cam had described this as “on the beach” but “on stilts over mud flats” would have been a better description.
Next morning we were off again by Kijang to the trailhead that leads into the park, a hike of 18 km that takes 4-5 hours over flat but tangled trails. Luckily our gear was sent by boat so we weren’t too loaded up. The first few kilometers have been logged, even though it is inside the park, and is now a wasteland of drained-out peat swamp. However, as you move into the park, the forest improves. It poured with rain and we got well and truly soaked, and also discovered that it was true that keeping your feet dry in Gunung Palung National Park is impossible. However, there was a feeling of liberation after wading through the first river and being resigned to boots full of water for the rest of the day. We also met a lot of the infamous leeches, but did see some gibbons as a consolation.
We arrived at Cabang Panti Research Station mid-afternoon and divided up the sleeping quarters: Andy, myself, Robin and Marty chose AP15, Loren’s usual home, which is furthest from the camp. The shelter is in a beautiful location on the river, with macaques sleeping overhead. Apparently they are keen on midnight snacks and throwing the leftovers onto the metal roof, but they didn’t seem to be doing this much during our stay so it was relatively peaceful apart from the cacophony of night insects.
The next day we were up early and off out for a spot of orangutan viewing, although Walima, the female who is often near the Research Station was not cooperating and stayed high up in the canopy. After a late breakfast, we set out with Jasmyn, Marty, Pak Udin and Pak Herman to one of the large waterfalls in the park. We tested out the natural swimming pool underneath the fall and had a great hike through lovely forest. We then went back to take another look at Walima, and this time we did see her much closer, including swinging across the river to find a tree to build a bed for the night.
After another great dinner at the station, we got an early night, as the next day was the big day for bagging Gunung Ponti. We (Jasmyn, John, Sophie plus Pak Heri, a porter, and one of the other staff from the station) were up and off fairly early with a packed lunch for the trip up to the summit along the UB trail. According to John, no one has been to the summit at 1116m since he last went 8 years ago because the monitored vegetation plots stop at 1000m, where there is also a weather station. We got up to the weather station in time for en early lunch before starting the battle to the summit through rather overgrown forest. About 20 mins from the top, the heavens opened and we were all thoroughly soaked by the time we made it to the summit. After a quick victory photo we were straight back down the trail, arriving back to find that the river we crossed earlier in the morning was now a raging torrent, meaning that we had to take the long route back to the station. We arrived to find hot chocolate and cake waiting, and also polished off a bottle of spruce and cucumber gin that John had brought from a micro-distillery in Portland.
The next day it was time to hike back out of the park, and get cleaned up and our gear dried at the hotel in Sukadana, followed by a few beers on the hotel veranda overlooking the ocean. Our final day was spent traveling 5 hours to Pontianak by speedboat from the town of Melano (nothing like Milano, unfortunately) which has a large Chinese population and many buildings that are specially designed for raising the swallows that produce bird’s nests for soup. Then it was straight on to Bali for the start of the ATBC conference. Andy had one night in Bogor sorting out everything that our pembantu needed to wash (lucky us) before heading off to Laos for 2 weeks of work.
Gunung Palung National Park
PPLH and Gunung Penanggungan
We decided to escape from our German and Dutch friends who were smugly still enjoying the World Cup, with both their teams playing quarter final games. Actaully, we managed to watch Brazil lose to the Netherlands before leaving on our trip, leaving the Dutch celebrating in the pub. We decided to return to PP Linkungan Hidup (PPLH), a sort of eco-centre near to Surabaya, and try to bag Gunung Penanggungan.
Gunung Penanggungan is a relatively small volcano (1,650 m), but one that is dotted with Hindu temples and really accessible from Surabaya. We left Bogor early in the morning for Jakarta Airport, and arrived in Surabaya to meet up with the PPLH driver who was waiting to pick us up. By 1 pm we were eating a nice organic lunch including tempe and tahu, and drinking good juices and Javanese coffee. PPLH has a good restaurant, nice simple accommodation (with solar heated water for the showers), a medicinal plant garden, and seems to do good business from its meeting room. It’s got a nice vibe and does reasonably well in some environmental education – worth a visit.
There was some confusion over the best time to hike, since we had not planned to hike for sunrise, or even to get up before sunrise! PPLH organised our guide, and we agreed to start at 3 am so we would be at the summit early, before the heat and the clouds arrive. It worked well – neither of us were feeling too energetic, but we started the hike at 450 m elevation and made it to the summit in about 3.5 hours. We had good view of close neighbours Gunung Welirang and Arjuna, both over 3,000 m and Welirang is really quite active. We could also see Semuru (Java’s highest peak) to the southeast. The summit is quite pleasant with an old grassy crater, where we encountered approximately 30 children who had climbed a different steeper route to the summit (yes, many “Hello Misters” were exchanged).
The decent is a bit trickier than expected, since the steepest part is quite rocky and loose and so there’s lots of sliding and having to concentrate on where you’re putting your feet. A few tumbles were taken. On the way back down there’s a chance to take a closer look at some of the temples, most of which are small, but actually very well maintained. As we re-entered the forest near the starting point there were some great old trees, but mostly the forest is very degraded and taken over by agriculture as high up the mountain as possible. The trail is really quite free of litter though, and our guide was great, and picked up any plastic bottles that as usual people throw to the floor everywhere in Indonesia.
After a much needed mandi (shower) we had another fine lunch before being dropped off at the airport to come home. It really was a short weekend getaway, but otherwise it would have been another weekend of late night football and catching up on office work. Gill has now climbed 11 volcanoes/mountains, and Andy 14. Will we reach 20 Ribus this year….?
Gunung Merbabu and Solo
For the long weekend at the end of May we decided to head to central Java to climb Gunung Merbabu and to take in the sights of Solo. We flew into Semarang on Thursday night and took a taxi directly to the hill village of Kopeng, where we met our trip organiser Pak Totok. It was straight to bed as we arrived late and we were aiming for a 5 am start the next morning. We dragged ourselves out of bed at 4.30 am and forced some fried rice down our necks before setting off for the trailhead in an angkot with our two porters. By 5.45 we were already on the trail. After about 15 minutes the porters stopped for breakfast; we knew then it wouldn’t be a record breaking climb in terms of speed. Andy and I hiked on ahead and waited at several points for the porters to catch up, including a 1.5 hour break with a nap at lunchtime! We learned our lesson on Tambora – don’t get too far ahead of the porters, especially if it looks like rain, as they might decide to stop for the day without bringing your tent to where you are waiting! The forest was pretty along the way, not too dense and as we got higher it turned into grassland with sparse trees. We got some good views of Gunung Sumbing and Gunung Sindoro to the west.
After lunch we took some of the weight out of the porter packs to speed things up a bit, but the weather was already closing in – luckily we were only caught in the rain for about 10 minutes and then we got back out of the clouds the final push to the summit campsite. The camping area is actually on summit 4 (from a total of 7). Summits 4 through 7 are spaced along a ridge and all have great views; summit 7, at 3171m is the true summit. The weather brightened up and we got some great views over to Gunung Merapi smoking and looking mean to the south. After a dinner of noodles and bandrek (a hot drink made from ginger, pepper and palm sugar) it was an early night for us after our lack of sleep the night before.
We were woken up about 3.30 am by the arrival of a large group of Indonesian students who were hiking up to see the sunrise, and we got up about 5.30 and joined them for the sunrise. After breakfast (porridge and nescafe) we set off to conquer the true peak which took us about 30 minutes. After admiring the view we dropped off the other side of Merbabu and made our way back down to the village of Selo which lies between Merbabu and Merapi. Pak Totok was waiting for us in his trust angkot and we found a car in Selo to take us into Solo.
After arriving in Solo, it was first stop for a shower and then off for a cold beer and a very nice Italian meal at the cleverly name Oh Solo Mio restaurant. Solo is famous as a center for Javanese culture and arts and has thriving traditional dance, music and arts scene, including handmade batik fabrics with traditional patterns. The next day we took a look around the town which was smaller and nicer than we expected, with many old shophouses down small lanes in the old quarter. We visited the kraton and another palace, ate some very good street food (srabi, a pancake with rice pudding and banana on top, and tahu kupat, tofu served with rice cakes cooked in a banana leaf) and of course bought some batik. Then it was time to hit the road and fly back to Jakarta ready for work on Monday morning.