Gunung Palung National Park

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.
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