The Ghost That Walks

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Ujung Kulon National Park sits on a tiny triangular peninsula at the extreme western end of Java. It is famous as being the last home of the Javan rhino (although actually there are two last homes of the Javan rhino, the other one being in Vietnam, but that's just nit-picking because there's only about five or ten there). Despite their common name Javan rhinos were historically found throughout southeast Asia, from India in the west, China in the north, and eastwards through the Greater Sundas to Java. They were so common in Java in the 18th century and caused such damage to plantations that in 1747 the government placed a bounty of 10 crowns on each animal killed. The bounty lasted for two years and 500 rhinos were shot. Despite this the species remained relatively common for the next 150 years. They became officially protected in 1908 but with no implementation numbers dropped rapidly due to poaching. By 1967 there were an estimated 28 left. That's twenty-eight. Total. Today there's about 50 or 60, all in Ujung Kulon (plus the few in Vietnam which were only discovered in the 1980s). They are one of the world's most critically endangered mammals. There wasn’t really much hope that I’d see a rhino if I went to Ujung Kulon but to not try is to have no hope of success, so that was where I was heading.

From the small village of Carita I had to go first to the small town of Labuan and from there to the very tiny village of Tamanjaya. I got to Labuan at 8.30am and was told the bus would be there at 9. In fact it arrived at 8.20 which I thought was all right, but we just went to another bus station where we sat until 10 before heading back to the first station where I’d been picked up where we waited for another hour. Then we were really off, at least as far as the next village where we sat for yet another half an hour. So instead of getting to Tamanjaya around noon like I’d been expecting I didn’t get there till 4pm and it was too late to get to the national park that day.

There are basically just three ways into Ujung Kulon and all of them are costly (but still cheaper from Tamanjaya than from Carita where most tourists go from). The first option is to stay on Handeuleum Island off the northern part of the peninsula, and take boats across to the adjoining mainland where you can do canoe trips on the Cigenter River for wildlife-spotting. The most expensive part should be the boat to there from Tamanjaya which is one million rupiah return, but it turned out that the ranger post on Handeuleum doesn’t have a boat of its own so I’d have to charter the Tamanjaya boat for the whole stay to get back and forth to the river which would run to 3.5 million which put the kibosh on that idea. A better notion I thought was to camp on the mainland there because the river’s right there and there’s also a grazing ground for banteng, but I was told that I would need a park ranger the whole time as well as a local guide but the ranger couldn’t be off Handeuleum at night, and in any case camping isn’t allowed in that part of the park.

The second idea was to stay on Peucang Island off the west coast, to which the boat costs two million (these are ridiculous sums for a boat ride but there’s no other way except to pay it). There’s a grazing ground there as well called Cidaon, and the ranger post has boats to get back and forth. The third and cheapest option is trekking round the south coast for which technically you’re only paying the cost of the local guide, food and park fees, but unless you turn around at the end and walk back again for another three days you still need to pay for the boat back to Tamanjaya from Cidaon, which is 1.5 million. Also it seemed to me that most of the trek was along the beaches which wasn’t much good for wildlife, and trekking’s not really my thing anyway because you just can’t keep stopping all the time to look for birds because you have to reach a certain point before each nightfall.

Considering the options I came up with a cunning plan that meant I’d stay on Peucang and pay the two million return boat fee, but stop off at the Cigenter River on the way to and from. It wasn’t ideal because it meant I wouldn’t be doing the Cigenter at dawn and dusk which was the whole point of staying on Handeuleum but you work with what you’ve got. The boat from Tamanjaya wasn’t quite what I was expecting, just a little beaten-up fishing boat with no life-boat, no life-jackets, no radio, no hope of survival. The boat ride from Tamanjaya to Handeuleum took an hour and from Handeuleum to Peucang three hours. It was very odd being on the ocean in a little fishing boat and for there to not be albatrosses and petrels swirling in its wake. Apart for a few great crested terns and some flying fish (“flish”) the sea was empty.

The trips on the Cigenter River are in an actual dug-out canoe with rough-hewn wooden paddles. No mod-cons in this national park! Its a nice experience, sliding gently up-river with only the quiet sweep of the paddles through the water to break the silence of your passage. There wasn’t much wildlife to speak of because it was already 9am, well past the prime activity hour, but at several points there were great stomp-holes in the river banks where a rhino had come down to drink or had climbed out after swimming across. It made me feel like just round the next bend we’d surprise a rhino at the water’s edge, but of course we didn’t. Its definitely a place where you’ve got better odds than elsewhere though.

The headquarters where you stay on Peucang are much like those anywhere else in southeast Asia with crab-eating macaques, wild pigs and monitors roaming all over the place picking up scraps, but I wasn’t there for such common fare and headed straight over to the grazing ground at Cidaon. I was looking forward to seeing wild banteng for the first time. I thought it would be exciting, but it wasn’t. It quite literally felt no different to looking at cows in a field. The area in front of the watch-tower is mown right to the ground by the banteng, which are just sitting around in the shade under trees chewing their cud -- and it didn’t help that the cows you see in Asian fields actually are domesticated banteng and don’t really look any different to the wild ones. On the third day though there was a bull banteng at Cidaon which completely shattered the farmyard illusion. In no way did he resemble a common barn cow unless you put it on steroids and stuck a couple of giant Viking horns on its head. A most impressive animal. Apart for the banteng there were always several green peafowl sauntering around on the lawn with their chicks, a few fly-bys of pied and wreathed hornbills, and a colony of blue-throated bee-eaters nesting in holes in the ground right in front of the tower. When a cobra slid by the whole colony turned out to attack it and drive it away, and when evening approached all the adults and juveniles took to the air together in a great swirling flock which was fun to watch. And that was pretty much it for Cidaon, a bit of a let-down after the build-up my brain had given Ujung Kulon.

The birding in general was just as uneventful. For two days I wandered along the one forest trail seeing almost nothing. I don’t think I’ve ever been in a forest as difficult to find birds in as this one. Black-banded barbet and grey-cheeked tit-babbler were the sole endemics found, and everything else was common species I’d seen in dozens of other places, although seeing fifty pied hornbills taking off from one tree was a definitely a sight worth seeing!

On one of my days at Peucang a group of four tourists turned up from Carita which initially sort of annoyed me because in Carita I’d been specifically told there were no other tourists around who were going to Ujung Kulon; so I sat down and did the sums and worked out that even though I was paying twice what they each were, I was paying for four nights and they only three (one on Peucang and two on Handeuleum) and because I came through Tamanjaya I was still only paying half of what I would have been as a single traveller from Carita (because there all the tours are based on groups with a minimum of two people) so I’m sort of on the winning side.

On the last day, heading from Peucang back towards Handeuleum, our little fishing boat rounded the top of the peninsula and began battling its way valiantly into the wind, bucking and diving over the crests and troughs of the waves like a rodeo bronco. It was just like that movie A Perfect Storm, except all the crew were Indonesian and the swell was only half a metre. There were still no sightings of rhino on the Cigenter River but they’d certainly been active with even more signs along the banks than last visit. Apparently there are three or four rhinos in the immediate area. I reckon that if you had a lot of money and the time to spare, then spending a month at Handeuleum with canoe trips on the river every dawn and dusk would give you a reasonable chance of seeing a rhino. I did some rough calculations and worked out a cost of 40 million rupiah for thirty days including boat hire, guide fees, accommodation, etc. Put that into a currency conversion website and see what it is in your local money. I guess its an idea to store in the back of my head for a distant date.

The Ujung Kulon trip cost me an arm and a leg (figuratively!) and I couldn’t really afford it at this late stage of my journey, but really if I’d decided not to go or to only go for a day or two then for the rest of my life I would have been berating myself, wondering “what if?”, so it was something that simply had to be done. And when it came down to it I spent less in four full days than I had in two days to visit Sulawesi’s Nantu Reserve to see babirusa, so once again I suppose you could say I’m on the up.

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Photos

floating fishing hut
these are common all round the coast of the park and are a very bizarre sight, like something out of Waterworld