Goodbye Indonesia

Back in Surabaya we have spent the last two weeks thoroughly cleaning the van in preparation for shipping it to Australia. Australia have very strict bio-security regulations and the vehicles are thoroughly inspected by a special team looking for any insect or soil / dust contamination. Thorough cleaning involved taking everything out, including anything relatively easily unboltable like the fridge, front seats and flooring and the front bull bars. These were all thoroughly cleaned before being replaced and after having the outside of the van cleaned by a local company spent two days underneath with a pressure washer before the whole of the underside was undersealed to make it look like new.
Every item removed from the van was cleaned and then replaced. Eventually after nearly two weeks it was all back together and we carefully drove it to the shipping yard where it was loaded into a 40ft container which was then fumigated. By now it should be safely loaded onto the ship and on its way to Perth via Singapore.
We now have a couple of weeks before the van arrives in Perth so once we have collected the carnet and bill of lading we are heading to Australia to enjoy some cooler weather.

Reflections on Indonesia - a fantastically varied country both in terms of scenery and cultures. Lasting impressions are: soaring volcanoes; crashing waves on empty sandy beaches; intense agriculture, and high population density on Java and Bali, but miles of empty undeveloped places on Sumatra, Sumbawa and Flores; extraordinary wildlife on Sumatra and Java; vast cultural differences on different islands, Islam on Java, South Sumatra and Lombok, Hinduism on Bali and Christianity on Flores and North Sumatra; a huge programme of building mosques; traffic congestion; motorbikes everywhere; friendly inquisitive people; heat and humidity on low ground;
An extraordinary country where we have only really scratched the surface, there is so much more to explore.   

Fabulous Flores

 

 
Flores, named by the Portuguese "flowers", is a wonderful varied island which is just seeing the development of tourism, particularly at the western end near to Komodo Island (home of the Komodo Dragons). Our two weeks on the island enabled us to explore places off the beaten track, which we had not visited on our previous visit three years ago. The trans Flores highway runs the length of the island and twists and turns up and down the mountains which form the backbone of the island. It has been rebuilt over the past three years, joins the main towns and now provides a relatively easy, though not fast, route across Flores. To either side of this main route the roads have not been maintained and so few tourists venture into these areas. Having our own vehicle enabled us to explore some of these areas.
The south coast of Flores consists of rocky shores where the mountains meet the sea, with occasional white sandy beaches facing the crashing surf from the southern ocean. These are virtually completely deserted offering that Robinson Crusoe feeling of only seeing your own footprints in the sand. We spent several nights by one beach at Repi where each evening the local water buffalo walked along the beach to their overnight resting place amongst the dunes.
Camping by other beaches it was fascinating to watch the morning arrival of the fishing boats to offload their catches, some at formal jetties, others by young boys swimming from the boats with large barrels of loose fish which they passed to waiting motorbikes, or small pickups for onward transport to market. All along this south coast fishing is a significant occupation.
The central mountains are home to many small villages and we visited both a traditional village built on a fantastic hillside location, and the cave where the Flores Hobbit (an early hominid Homo Floriensis from 60,000 to 100,000 years ago) was discovered in 2003. There is still much debate over this dwarf Hominid and whether it represents a dwarf Homo Sapiens of a separate branch of Hominid. Although there is a little museum (sadly closed) it was easy to imaging the hominids living in the cave and exploiting the fruits and wildlife of the valley, which is still relatively undeveloped.


Heading further north the mountains become steeper, and the once tarmacked roads considerably worse (thank goodness for, high clearance, 4 wheel drive and low ratio gears) with some steeply terraced hillsides for rice production, until to the north of the mountains the scenery suddenly becomes very dry. This is another undeveloped area where the government is just starting to put in irrigation to allow year round crops and the relocation programme is bringing in people from Java and Bali. The coast is mainly mangrove interspersed with undeveloped sandy beaches facing a very gentle sea lapping at the shore. Again few people and very peaceful.
One feature of all these beaches is the variety of shells and on Flores in particular beautiful coloured sea washed stones in greens, blues and reds. They are so attractive we ended up collecting lots of extra ballast for the van, which we will need to ruthlessly sort before long.


All along Flores are volcanoes and we revisited Kelimutu which has three craters each containing a different coloured lake. We had planned to camp in the car park to climb and see the sunrise, but were told we were not allowed to, so had to settle for the sunset from the top and sunrise from part way down - but still a beautiful sight.

Flores has presented the most spectacular sunsets, with fantastic colours most evening ranging through beautiful pastel colours to vivid orange and red skies.
So now we have taken a 26 hour ferry ride back to Surabaya on Java (the city where we entered Indonesia) and have booked for the van to be shipped to Perth Australia in two weeks time, so we will have to spend the next fortnight cleaning the van inside and out to be like new. Australia has very stringent bio security requirements so there must be no grease, oil or dust, or insects etc anywhere.

          

Lombok and Sumbawa

Mekaki Bay - Lombok

The last two weeks have been spent exploring the islands of Lombok and Sumbawa, and we have just arrived in Flores.

One of several Hindu processions

Lombok - the island east of Bali remains relatively unspoilt in the south, though there has been a lot of development in the north around the Gili Islands, however they have ambitions to attract tourists away from Bali and have built a large new airport and are putting a lot of effort into developing Kuta on the south coast, with the whole seafront being paved to create a large promenade. However it is still early days and Lombok offers fantastic deserted sandy beaches along the south coast. As a result of the government relocation of people from areas with high populations there are some interesting mixes in villages, with one half of a village Muslim, from people relocated from Java, and the other half Hindu, with people relocated from Bali. These villages have generally ben created in areas on Lombok, and Sumbawa where there is little population, and the countryside has not previously been used for agriculture. In addition to the building of some infrastructure, mainly roads, there is also some development of irrigation which is essential for these areas to develop. Several times we have driven along beautiful new roads - with signposts, and white lines, to find they suddenly end in the middle of nowhere and we have to backtrack.


Ebony Langur

Looming over Lombok is Mount Rinjani, the second highest volcano in Indonesia and a popular trekking destination. For a few days the top was unusually clear - it normally attracts a shroud of cloud, and on its slopes are rainforests. We were fortunate to see a troupe of ebony langurs as we drove over the shoulder of Rinjani on our way to Terjun and Sendang waterfalls.


Sendang waterfall

Sumbawa comes as a complete contrast to the previous islands, as it is very dry, with mainly sedimentary rocks rather than deposits from volcanoes. The central area is very mountainous and almost completely undisturbed supporting a much drier forest, many of the trees showing autumnal type colours as we are in the dry season here. The south coast of blessed with extensive deserted white sand beaches, and on west facing shores more excellent surf.  There had been very little tourist development so we always attract a lot of interest as we pass through. The north coast is very dry, and undeveloped, but again transmigration is planned with some roads laid out for new towns but with no houses. The ground supports little natural vegetation, but where it has been cleared and irrigated lush crops grow. Huge areas have been roughly cleared, but now need the manpower to create the paddies and plant and manage crops. Around Bima on Sumbawa is a huge area of salt farming, where shallow "fields" are flooded with sea water and left to evaporate with the salt scraped off the base manually using wooden rakes. Again very labour intensive.
Yesterday we caught the ferry to Flores, arriving in Labuan Bajo in the late afternoon after sailing past Komodo Island.





Dry landscape of Sumbawa



Houses for transmigration

With no rubbish collection - some roads are blighted



Bima salt farm



Sumbawa traditional houses

    

Back to Bali

Southern tip of Bali

After a wonderful four weeks in the UK, culminating in our youngest son's wedding we arrived back in Bali at the end of June. We have spent most of the last two weeks on Bali as we have been waiting for an extension to our Carnet for the car, so have managed to relax and recover from a hectic four weeks in the UK, and explore some of the lesser known areas.

Filming cigarette commercial

We found a great place to camp at the southernmost point of Bali where we spent a couple of nights, including one with Javi and Ines, (fellow travellers across China) and a couple from England, Aldo and Vera who are planning to ship to Australia in Mid July. It was great to catch up and share experiences before we each had to go our separate ways. We were nearly in a commercial for Lucky Strike cigarettes which when we woke up we found was being filmed on the road past our campsite. The location manager came and chatted for half an hour making sure we were out of shot.

Tiny temple for 6 houses by crater lake

As a mainly Hindu island Bali is very different from other Indonesian Islands, and is also very much more developed with western style shops and goods available, and a huge amount of traffic. There are thousands of temples, from tiny serving a few houses to large famous ones. We were surprised at how many ceremonies are held, especially at the period of the full moon, with one village where we stayed holding three days of celebrations which involved several thousand people from the village and adjacent villages. In other places where we camped were smaller ceremonies either for a community or for an individual family, all of which include quantities of offerings of flowers and fruit in small wicker baskets.
To avoid the crowds we headed for the centre and the north of the island. We spent two nights on a campsite, the only one we have found in Indonesia, by a crater lake and enjoyed wandering along the lake shore to a typical tiny temple for a community of half a dozen huts. As it was the school holidays there were lots of youngsters each night enjoying singing round campfires, so not the quietest of places at night, but very peaceful during the day.

Family ceremony

The north and east coasts are much less developed with very few tourists, mainly divers for the few ship wrecks and at Amed a very low key pebbly beach with a coral garden just by the beach, so great for snorkelling.
As soon as the Carnet extension arrived we wasted no time in stocking up on western essentials we are unlikely to see again in Indonesia and headed to the ferry for Lombok, where we were the last vehicle on, but packed in so tight we had to climb out of the passenger window.

Beach campsite

We are now on Lombok, a much more relaxed island with beautiful stretches of white sand and not a person, or hotel in sight. Desert Point - a basic surfers location at the end of a 4km rough track has one of the longest surf waves and surfers come from all over the world when the swell is up. Camping by the beach we were treated to the sunset over the rolling surf.

Boats on North Coast of Bali

Bali and back to the UK for a month

Ijen Crater

Green Turtle returning to the sea

Java continued to surprise and delight. After leaving Surabaya we headed back to the south coast where we made our way to the south east corner of the island stopping at two National Parks on the way. The first, Betiri National Park includes Sukamunde Beach, a 5km stretch of sand where on average 6 turtles nest each night. The beach is patrolled by a team of park rangers who collect all the turtle eggs as soon as they are laid and move them to a protected hatchery. between 45 and 60 days later the turtles hatch and they then release them at night, to try and make the process as natural as possible. They have to do this as there is an overpopulation of wild boar and hunting lizards who will dig up and eat the eggs, not to mention local poachers for whom the eggs are a delicacy.

Turtle Hatchlings

Surfing the Wave

Consequently every night 6 rangers patrol the beach between 7.00pm and 4.00am. Despite being very difficult to get to - it requires a 4WD with low ratio - tourists, us included, can join the rangers and watch as the turtles come ashore and lay their eggs. the night we were there 6 turtles came up the beach around 8.00pm, but none laid eggs. All six turtles returned later in the night and six lots of eggs were collected. To build a better understanding the hatchlings from 10% of a nest can be released by tourists in the early morning - around 6.30am (all the others are released at night) so we could see the hatchlings scuttle down the beach to the sea. In daylight they have more predators, and a couple of sea eagles were waiting in the trees behind the beach. It was fantastic to watch the green turtle as she made her way back to the sea, and amazing how large they are. With just flippers to move themselves it takes an enormous effort.
The second National Park - Alas Purwo - is at the south east corner of Java and is noted for two features; first it houses the largest herd of wild Bantung cattle in Indonesia, and secondly it has one of the worlds best surfing waves. The surfers are concentrated in one small area where there are two very exclusive surf camps, again accessed by a very potholed, muddy road, and they tend to stay in the camp. The Banteng cattle roam the other side of the park, grazing on open meadows. In with the banteng there were some deer, and green pea fowl, one which repeatedly displayed to its harem of pea-hens.

Banteng Cattle

On our last couple of days we went to Ijen Crater - famous for its sulphur miners who carry 70kg loads of virtually pure sulphur out of the crater. This is a desolate but beautiful location with a turquoise, and very acidic, lake in the crater and clouds of sulphur vapours emitted from the vents. The amounts of vapour increased in March this year making the downwind side of the crater very unpleasant.
We are now on Bali and after spending a night in the crater of another volcano at the foot of a lava flow from 1968, we have parked our van in the car park of a small hotel, whose owner has been kind enough to let us leave it here while we return to the UK. There will be no more blog postings until July!

Javan Black Langur

Sulphur Carrier

Displaying green peafowl and three disinterested pea hens

 

  
 

Java - and the hunt for Gas

Temple at Jambi

In thinking about Sumatra we don't generally think of old civilisations, but the temple complex at Jambi, constructed in the 10th - 13th centuries demonstrates that there were major conurbations 1000 years ago. The complex of dozens of brick built temples stretches for 7kms along the banks of a river. Each temple complex has a major central building which presumably housed a deity, with four smaller temples arranged round it all bounded by an enclosing rectangular wall. Bricks were used as in this flat part of east Sumatra there is little rock, but plenty of clay. the site is superbly maintained with cut grass and surfaced paths and is well used by locals for picnics and days out with open space to play games etc.

Leaving Sumatra for Java

East Sumatra has little else to detain the visitor so we headed south down the main road to spend a couple of days at Way Kambas National park, home to 200 wild Sumatran elephants and where they are seen relatively often as they invade the farmer's fields. This relatively small reserve is mainly secondary lowland forest with areas of swamp around several rivers. Taking an afternoon river cruise we saw many birds and a large crocodile, but sadly no elephant were at their grazing area.
After 8 fantastic weeks on Sumatra we were sad to leave and were bid farewell by a tremendous thunderstorm which followed us across the straits to Java.

Rock Pools at Krakal Beach

We had been aware that our supplies of LPG which are stored in a built in tank and which we use for cooking were running low so headed for Jakarta where their tuk tuks had been converted to run on gas. After asking at garages with no success a local man offered to escort us, and took us first to the tuk tuk filling station, but they use LNG, then to the LPG filling station, but they only fill bottles. It seems the only place to fill an auto tank with LPG is in Surabaya.

Wave Watching

The north of Java is relatively flat and very developed so we headed to the south coast where many sandy beaches are shown on the map. This area is so different with limestone mountains stretching down to the sea, with beautiful sandy coves. For four days we travelled along the road nearest the coast camping each night by one of the beaches, enjoying watching the waves crash against the rocky headlands and wandering over the rocky foreshores probing rock pools and finding various exotic creatures, sea slugs, sea snakes and many star fish. The south coast roads on Java are so much better then Sumatran roads and the infrastructure somewhat better, though maintenance of paths etc is not a high priority. Parts of the coast are very reminiscent of north Devon with narrow twisting roads to bays with glimpses of blue sea, the main difference is the vegetation, and temperature.

Pelang Beach

With gas our gas tank now registering 1% we have headed back to Surabaya to refill, before we head east along Java to Bali where we are planning to leave the van for a month while we return to the UK for our son's wedding.


Christmas Frigate Bird

well camouflaged Sea Slug



Venemous Blue Lipped Sea Krait (sea snake)

Starfish
 

Waterfall at Pelang beach

           

Back to the Southern Hemisphere

Fishing Boat on roof of House - Banda Aceh

Pulau Weh provided a fantastic break from travelling, but after a week we were back on the main Island of Sumatra. We spent a day visiting the extraordinary sights, one a fishing boat which was stranded on top of a house, and is now a memorial, and a 20,000 ton generator ship which was washed 1.5kms inland. The tsunami museum in Banda Aceh displays some graphic photographs and a video of the tsunami showing how fast and devastating the flood was after the damage already caused by the earthquake. The city has now been rebuilt into an attractive clean modern city.


20,000 ton ship washed 1.5kms inland by the tsunami

Aceh Province in the north of Sumatra is a semi autonomous state run on Sharia Law, but is tolerant of non-muslim tourists and even hosts a number of churches.
North Sumatra, the next province south is mainly Christian, with lots of churches and few mosques. Further south again the communities are mainly muslim, with huge numbers of mosques being built, and almost every village with a road chicane where people wave large fishing nets at you to collect for the mosque building. 

Elephant bath time

Feeding 18 month old elephant

Our return route has followed the mountains along the western side of Sumatra giving us the opportunity to see some more of the wildlife, including Thomas' Leaf Monkeys. Near Medan we visited an elephant rescue centre, set up by locals who were concerned by the conditions of working elephants, and also by the encroachment of palm oil plantations on the Forest reserve. They take ex working Asian elephants and provide them with a more friendly environment, also using them to patrol parts of the adjacent forest to deter poaching and timber felling. The elephants live as a herd and you can join them for their morning wash in the river, armed with a scrubbing brush and bananas. The herd has three very playful babies aged between 8 and 18 months.


Having re-crossed the equator to the southern hemisphere we called at a small reserve near Bukittinggi where they protect Rafflesia plants (the worlds biggest flower) and were fortunate that one flower had opened that morning. Our guide took us through the beautiful village and after an hour including a scramble up a muddy path we came across the Rafflesia Arnoldii bloom which grows as a parasite on the roots of a creeper. This particular bloom was around 60cms across so only a relatively small specimen of flowers which can reach over 1m in diameter. In the village we had a reviving cup of Lauwak Coffee from a small coffee producer who has set up a home based business using coffee beans retrieved from Civet droppings collected from the jungle by 100 local farmers. She cleans, roasts and grinds the beans in her house and has set up a small café where you can try the coffee. She also sells 100g packets for around £12!


After another night by the ocean with a fantastic sunset, we tried a night drive through Kerinci National Park and did see a palm civet, though no tigers or leopards. and have now crossed to Jambi to visit the hindu temple complex. 

Thomas Leaf Monkey

Palm Civet

Young Pig Tailed Macaque