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After finding there were no boats to Sulawesi for 1 month Great !! We diverted our trip to Kalimantan. We flew to the oil town of Balikpapan and jumped staright on a bus to Benjamasin(Welcome back to the world of bumpy busses).
Benjamasin is the Venice of Kalimantan with impressive floating food markets and floating houses, we did a couple of boat tours here which were great such a different way of life on the waters edge (Pretty smelly too!!)
We headed next into the country side and the Loksado hills to visit tribal villages and do a bit of jungle walking. On arrival at the town of Kandangan we Kind of got stranded The so called easy trip to Loxado wasn't so, as transport had all gone and the local drivers wanted a small fortune to get us there.
Very few people speak english in Kalimantan (apart from the 100's of "Hello Mister!"s that we got every day) as few tourists seem to venture here. So you can imagine how relieved we were when Suddenly as we were getting very frustrated in the chaos of bartering, a motorbike pulled up and a friendly voice said
"Is there a problem? Can I help"
Jake a local lad who had learnt fluent english by working on cruise ships, had been told by his dad that 2 tourists were wandering about in town so he jumped on his bike and came to find us. Jake we are very grateful.
Jake took us into his family home and offered food and a room for the night. The next day he and a friend took us on their motorbikes to the village of Loksado where we walked to the village of Hanyuran for a look at the Long house.
At the end of the day we said our goodbyes to Jake he went home and we stayed on in the village. We promised to visit Jake on our way back to Benjamasin (which we duly did).
The next day in Loxado we hired a guide called Amat to take us into the primary forest, we also had the local priest tagging along who wanted to come as he had never been to that part of the jungle. The walk about a 22K round trip with steep and slippy ups and downs. It was like walking in a
sauna but bearable with the fantastic views and trees that you wouldn't believe the size of.
After our short but great trip into the jungle we returned to Benjamasin for a few days and then back to Balikpapan to volunteer at a Sun Bear Sanctuary/ Education centre. The 5 rescued Bears were all looked after by Ali (an American zoo keeper) and her team. There was little for us to do with the bears apart from watch them live their lives in their great enclosure. So our time was spent building cat boxes for the 80 rescued domestic cats that had been dumped there. Cats and Sun Bears yes a wierd pairing but it seemed to work.
Living with 80 cats and kittens was Manic but fun although it bought out allergies galore. At the end of the 4 days there we had built 3 big cat boxes (which was pretty good being as the power kept getting cut off)
Next we moved to Samarinda to meet up with Budi and Danielle from the charity Yayasan Konservasi Yasi.
See sight for all info on the charity, http://www.geocities.com/yayasan_konservasi_rasi
Danielle and Budi wanted our help in the undertaking
of their latest Bio Diversity study in the Middle Mahakam Lakes area. We set off in Ces (pronounced Chess) which is a big canoe with a basic engine ontop and a long shaft and propeller stuck out the back. A Ces is noisy pretty fast allthough uncomfy but really the only way to travel in the lakes area.
1 Ces would survey the bird and mamal life in the lakes area the other team interviewed local villagers who had captured the endangered Lesser Adjutant. In the vast Mahakam area there are roughly 150 wild Adjutants left. During our survey we saw 48 tied up to peoples jetties either for food or just kept as pets, there were also Owls, Herons and Eagles kept as pets or to be sold. Whizzing along the lakes, river and tributaries we saw sleeping ,coiled black and yellow banded snakes, probiscus monkeys, hornbills and many other types of birds, monkeys and beasts.
Spending 10 days with this team was a great experience, we were doing something worthwhile for the area and seeing some fantastic places. We stopped off at one village and got to see the Dayak tribes equivalent of a Harvest festival.
This festival involved loads of singing and dancing and then the slaughtering of a Waterbuffalo, it was pretty gruesome stuff. The events for us were made all the more special for us as we were the only 2 tourists there with maybe a 1000 from the community.
Just walking around the villages on an evening became an event, we heard chanting and drums one evening and followed the noise. After a bit of hanging around outside someones house we were invited in to a Dayak Bullian, which is a traditional healing ceremony performed by a Shaman. These events for us were enthralling and sometimes a little scarry but it was an honor to be invited in.
This was a great 10 days it sounds idyllic whizzing along in a speedboat in the sun, let me tell you that it was uncomfy, roasting, deafening and sometimes we entered Mozzi Hell. So to Budi, Daneille and the rest of the team thanks for a really great time.
After the bumpiest 16 hrs on a bus since Bolivia we reached the port of Berau another 2hrs by speed boat we reached the Derawan Islands. Our hostel was on stilts
over the sea and on our first morning there we watched 5 huge Green Turtles swim beneath us.
After 2 days on this paradise island no more than 500m long we set off on an island hopping trip for 5 days with 2 other travellers. Our rickettey fishing boat set off for Sangalaki where we snorkelled for most of the day. That evening we went onto the island which is a turtle sanctuary we got to release 100s of hatched baby turtles as well as watching the huge mothers laying eggs. It really was great watching the little babies swimming off.
Our accomodation was the deck of the boat, luckilly we bought hammocks in NZ which made things bearable.
Our next port of call was the Island of Kakaban which has 1 of only 3 salt water lakes in the world. When snorkelling in this lake you are surrounded by millions of Jelly fish (luckily non stinging) It was a very strange sensation trying to swim through this jelly soup.
The next 2 days were spent snorkelling and diving off different island reefs, all was going well untill CLUNK!! OOPs the drive shaft had snapped... We diverted
to a tiny village with a welder, I think he tried to weld with chewing gum because after 5 minutes PING lets spend the day in the bay. We were still able to dive and snorkel in the area due to our elastic band powered spare engine (MMM!! no good in an emergency then as it wasnt powerfull enough for open water Brilliant!!)
The second welder was better although we were now 2 days behind schedule which for us meant that we had to leave the boat on a separate charter as our Visas were running out.
2 days later a combination of hair-raising speedboat and car rides saw us at the border with Malaysia. For us Kalimantan will be a special part of our journey one due of the adventure and remoteness of the place and 2 because of the great people we met there.
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david
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best blog ever!
I really enjoyed reading your interesting tale!.