Sumba nights

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I set off for Sumba with excitement and a little concern. The plan seemed easy enough but I didn't know how it would go in practice given that my fluency in Indonesian didn't extend much beyond "punya pacar?" (do you have a boyfriend?) and "umur anda berapa?" (how old are you?). I got lots of small bills changed at the bank because the ATMs give the cash out in 100,000s which are of absolutely no use in the eastern islands (or pretty much anywhere else for that matter). Getting the money from the ATMs was a mission in itself actually, with the first three machines that I tried all rejecting me. The first said "cannot comply" or words to that effect; the second said to contact my bank (eep!); the third just spat the card back out at me, which is at least better than swallowing it completely I guess. Pretty worried by now - and after checking my online banking to make sure all my money was in fact still in there - I finally found a machine that didn't want to test me any further. Anyway, the upshot of all that was that I was now walking around with three million rupiah in small unmarked bills. Anyone want to paint a bulls-eye on my back?

The flight to Sumba was delayed by over an hour, and seeing as I'd just been talking to a Hawaiian family who's Merpati flight had been cancelled three days running I was a little apprehensive as to whether I'd even reach Sumba. Once off the plane at Tambulaka some guy hurriedly rounded up the six or seven foreigners disembarking and herded us off to a side building -- but when he found out I wasn't bound for whatever resort he was pimping, instead being some rare independant traveller, he lost all interest and abandoned me without a second word. And rare I appeared to be! On the bus trip to Waikabubak every single person along the road stared almost open-mouthed, and in the town itself kids followed me around yelling "hello mister!" and giggling when I said hello back. The downside of being a rarity is of course that precious few people speak more than two words of English. I had been going to stay at the Hotel Arta which is apparently quite nice but its also more on the outskirts of town so I went instead to the Hotel Pelita, chosen for its relative closeness to the bus station, but also because its basically right opposite the police station and post office, both places which I figured would be likely points of enquiry as to the whereabouts of the parks office, which I had to find to get a permit for the Langgaliru National Park near Lewa where most of the endemic birds are found. It was easier said than done to find this office. I had "PHKA - Perlindungan Hutan dan Konservasi Alam" written on a piece of paper because everything I'd read called all the parks offices around Indonesia "PHKA offices". Turns out that (apparently) the PHKA office is in Jakarta and all the other regional offices are just called Departemen Kehutenanan ("Forest Department"), so my little note got me absolutely nowhere. But here's where blind chance -- or the hand of God, again -- came into play, because at the Hotel Pelita there was staying a chap from Ruteng in Flores who spoke perfect English, who went out of his way to help me out of pure kindness, driving me all round town on his motorbike and translating everything as we tracked down the elusive office. Of course I had to ask him about the Flores giant rat in case he knew of any localities but he'd never heard of it which was a bit unsettling. My initial plan for tracking down the giant rat when I get to Flores was to begin by asking the locals if they know where they are found. I figured that if there were rats the size of house-cats living in your area you'd probably know about it. I'll just have to hope for a better reaction once there.

The cats round Waikububak are all docked and invariably only have one eye. Docking the cats' tails is supposed to bring good luck. I'm not sure about the eye. The drug of choice round here, coming in second after cigarettes, is betel-nut. Apart from being addictive and carcinogenic, long-term use rots away the teeth and gums and stains the mouth bright red from the juice. Not only do betel-nut chewers look like they've just been smacked in the mouth with a baseball bat, but because it increases saliva production they are also constantly spitting streams of blood-red saliva into the street. The bus station-slash-marketplace, which is the main meeting point, as a consequence looks like a set from a zombie movie.

The next morning I went to the zombie bus station. All I had to do was catch a bus to Lewa and once there find what had been described on an internet bird-trip report as a "basic losmen owned by Cornelius and Katy Hary" (sic) who were used to the strange ways of birders. I figured that Lewa would have to be just a small town so it shouldn't be hard to track the place down. The guy in the Forestry Department had also said that lots of foreigners stay at a place called Mamariwu House, which I thought would likely be the same place. So, I go to the bus station and they tell me the bus is full (even though its empty) and I end up paying 50,000 rupiah to some guy with a car that he uses as a bus. I was pretty sure I was getting ripped-off judging by the way they were all laughing about it, but it was the same price as all the other passengers (locals) were paying and apparently it is a fair price, so I guess they were just laughing because I was a wierd tourist -- I was the only one in the whole town after all. We leave at eight, I'm told, but because its Indonesian time I sit around till ten then we drive round town a couple of times picking up and dropping off various other people, then sit at the station for a while longer. Eventually the guy comes up again and yells "go, go, go, now we go!"...in another half an hour apparently. There's all sorts of interesting sights along the roadside in Sumba, from the semi-skeletal colts tethered to trees to the millions of dogs roaming everywhere (except for the ones trussed up in the marketplace next to the goats and chickens of course). At one point two half-naked men charged past the car wielding seven-foot metal spears, obviously hunting something for the dinner pot, possibly a small foreign child. Once in Lewa the driver asked a few people for directions then dropped me right at the door of Mamariwu House which was indeed the guesthose owned by Cornelis and Kati Hary. In days gone past, any birders coming to Sumba had to stay in the main eastern town of Waingapu and hire a taxi and driver for the day to visit the forests around Lewa, but not any longer fortunately. I wrote my name in the guestbook and saw that just two days before I arrived, two birders I'd met in Malaysia in 2006, Conny and Ingo, had been staying there. They appeared to be doing the same route through the Lesser Sundas as I was, just a few days ahead of me. Funny old world.

Once settled into the most excellently pleasant surroundings of Mamariwu House I headed out to the forest via a short motorbike ride. Really all the forest birds of Sumba are doomed. The forest is being destroyed left right and centre, its over-run with introduced macaques, and poaching is rampant. Even protected areas like Langgaliru National Park are in reality composed of little more than isolated degraded patches of trees dotted about like islands in a sea of man-made grasslands. Even the biggest remaining stretches are just thick wedges either side of the main Waikabubak-Waingapu highway. The localities that birders visit are generally referenced by the kilometre posts of that highway. The one I went to on that first afternoon was km 51 (although I kept inadvertantly calling it Area 51!). I stayed inside the forest till after dark hoping to spot the small Sumba hawk-owl which was only discovered in 1991. I heard some owls calling -- along with the calls of great multitudes of the introduced tokay geckoes -- but none of them appeared within my torch beam.

The next morning I went on a longer motorbike ride, 45 minutes or so on what could only graciously be called a roughly-sealed road, to a place called Watumbelar in search of the citron-crested cockatoo, probably the most endangered bird on the island. Everyone I talked to about parrots said that maybe ten or fifteen years ago they were commonplace, in gardens and even coming into kitchens to steal food, but now they are rarely seen by anyone because they have all been hunted out for the international and domestic pet trade, a situation that goes not just for the cockatoo but for all five species of parrots on Sumba. The requisite National Park and local guides led me from isolated forest patch to isolated forest patch trying to find the cockatoos but all I got in return were cattle ticks burrowing themselves into my ankles.

In the afternoon it was off to another highway site, km 69. The National Park guide took me into the forest -- and got us lost! I was not impressed. I mean, I can quite adequately get lost all by myself for free! What was even funnier was that after an hour he finally admitted he had no idea where he was, and I had to lead us back to where we started from. Once back at the road he wanted to go straight back to town, but if I was having to pay to have him there then he was jolly well going to stay there till after dark so I could look for owls! As dusk fell I got some good flight-views of the recently-described Mees' nightjar, found only on Sumba and Flores, but the small Sumba and large Sumba hawk-owls refused to show themselves.

The next day was more of the same, along the road at km 69 to 71 (where the forest ended) looking unsuccessfully for the hoped-for Sumba hornbill, then back to km 51 in the late afternoon where I again saw no owls but did see a ricefield rat (and got my fingers filled with thorns struggling back through the scrub in the dark). In the morning I gave the hornbills one last try, once again without success, then had to give up on them and head off to Waingapu to make my way to West Timor. The hornbills will probably be extinct before I ever make it back to Sumba again, but being at Lewa was really the first time I've properly enjoyed myself on this trip, simply because I was out there looking for birds, doing what I came here to do, instead of just struggling to actually get anywhere. I've said it before but I hate the travelling part of travelling -- I like the bits in between the travelling.

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Photos

Sumba
this is at km 51. The forest is that patch to the side

Comments

[Peter Ericsson]

betel-nut
I love your description of the betel-nuts. I was a bit surprised that they have this habit in the Lesser Sundas. It is common in Northern Thailand as well. You are a brave man going around like this. Staying humble (I know it isn't our natural state but something we must choose to do) is a key to protection and receiving help. Keep smiling and the world will smile back to you. Remember that nothing happens by chance in our lives. There is a force that not only controls but helps our circumstance and choices to blend together for good, provided we stay humble and keep our senses open. How is your hair coming along? Peter

[Peter Ericsson]

Kids want to know if you ever found the Giant rats?? We just exterminated 5 baby rats from a nest in our air-con in the living room and believe me, the folks here were 'scared stiff'!

[Scary Israel]

re the giant rats, I'll be in Flores in less than a week, and that's where I shall be trying to find them. I hope my search goes well!