[simage=2627,200,n,left,] In October, we received the final set of visitors from Canada. Bjoern, Britta, Tabea and Andrew were keen to meet our orange cousins in Borneo, so off we, plus our Bogor friends Karen and Michael, went for a 4 day 3 night boat trip to Tanjung Puting National Park in Central Kalimantan.
Getting there was an adventure in itself, with the Canada contingent delayed in traffic for hours while the rest of us enjoyed the beverages at the airport hotel.
After multiple time changes on KalStar Aviation, we were relatively reliably informed that we would be leaving at 10am. We checked in. We got too few boarding passes. We got more boarding passes. We waited until 10.30am. I noticed the boarding passes were to somewhere other than Pangkalan Bun. The air staff didn’t know so suggested flying to Pangkalan Bun and then asking. We got on the plane. It turned out that it did go to to our destination after a stop somewhere else.
After getting picked up by Pak Herry and his crew, things got easier! Our guides, Pak Jeni and Pak Pardi spoke English and we all went off to our klotok (houseboat) for lunch and the start of the cruise. As well as the guides, we had a cook, a head captain and 4 crew for our 2 boats.
After the first of many great meals on the boat, we set off for the first mooring for our first night. Arriving in the late afternoon we took our first walk into the forest to a feeding station, and saw our first orange friends enjoying a supper of bananas. The animals were amazing to watch, and appear to have 4 arms instead of 2 arms and 2 legs! Our guides were knowledgeable and really respected the animals, and made sure we weren’t disturbing them with our presence. As dusk fell we went back to the boat for our evening dinner, and then the boat was converted into sleeping quarters with mosquito nets and mattresses in the open air on the decks.
The next morning we were up early to get to a feeding station further inside the park, we walked through some land that had been cleared, and then really enjoyed seeing the animals feeding. We then headed upstream to the famous Camp Leakey station. On the way to this station, we passed from the main over into a side stream, and saw how much impact the upstream mining has on the water quality, but adding huge amounts of silt to the water. In contrast, the water should really be very clear, despite being dark brown in colour due to tannins in the peat. Pak Jeni described it as looking like milky coffee mixing with black coffee, which really was an accurate description. The ride up this side river was lovely, with kingfishers, hornbills, macaques, and proboscis monkeys, plus flying foxes later in the day. After an afternoon of watching the animals at the second station, including an impressive game of “how many bananas can I get in my hands, feet, and mouth, and still climb a tree”, we headed back to the boat for yet more food. That night we went out for a night walk, in the hope of seeing some loris. Sadly we didn’t see any of these but did see a pair of sleeping kingfishers and some glow-in-the-dark mushrooms.
On our final full day we started off with a 3 hour hike round the forest, seeing orang-utans, plus lovely mushrooms of all shapes, sizes and colours, and some large old trees. After the hike we were all worn out so we retired to the boat for an afternoon of watching the forest slip by as we headed downstream towards the final mooring place, surrounded by fireflies.
[simage=2654,200,n,left,] On the final morning, we decided to hire a speed boat and head up to the artisan gold mining sites upstream of the park. Although the word artisan makes it sound romantic and like some kind of cottage industry, it’s actually a devastating process for the environment, as sand is dredged from the river bed and washed over a series of sluices to separate the gold and other heavy valuable minerals such as titanium from the sand. The people also live and work under harsh conditions for very little money. It was a fascinating and rather subduing side trip. We headed back to the boat for a snack and the final journey back to town, and then on to the airport. Flying back on Trigana turned our to be more straightforward than flying out on KalStar and we were all back in Jakarta on time. We said our farewells to the Vancouver crowd and headed back to Bogor after a wonderful adventure. We cannot recommend Pak Herry’s tours and wonderful guides enough.
[salbumphotos=87,64,6,n,n,picasa_order,center,]
[salbumphotos=88,64,6,n,n,picasa_order,center,]