Babirusa Grylls

---

One of the more unusual animals in Sulawesi is the babirusa, which is a type of big hairless pig with four big tusks in the males. The lower pair of tusks grow out from the sides of the mouth like a regular pig but the upper pair grow straight upwards through the snout, curving back towards the eyes like horns, hence the name babirusa which is Indonesian for "pig deer". Because babirusa are quite large creatures and tasty to eat they are now very rare over the entire island. In fact the only place where they can still be seen with any regularity is at a place called Nantu Reserve near Gorontalo, which is where I headed after Bogani Nani Wartabone national park. The only reason the babirusa are still found in any numbers there is because of a constant police presence to protect them. There are always three guards in the reserve, patrolling to stop poachers. The ones there during my visit all looked about eighteen years old, and seemed to spend the entire time playing with their AK47s, having ping-pong matches, and listening to an interesting selection of Bryan Adams and Whitesnake songs. Nantu is a very expensive place to get to. Just as an example of the costs, the three-hour motorised canoe trip up the river to the reserve's camp is currently 500,000 rupiah each way. I was told that because there are no fixed prices the costs go randomly up or down according to the whims of the local people involved. Apart for the cost of the boat, there are also the hefty permit fees from the forestry department and the police, the required park guide, the local guide, etc etc etc. The rooms at the camp there cost 200,000, the price of a homestay elsewhere, but at Nantu getting you a mattress on the floor. You have to take your own food and pay the cook to prepare it (although as everyone was eating the same food at the same time I'm sure there's an unneccesary step in there somewhere!). There is no toilet -- and I don't mean there was no toilet in the room, I mean there was physically no toilet. The river is the toilet, and also the bathing area. I'm not too sure that using the river as a toilet is really very environmentally-sound so during my stay I did my best to avoid polluting the local water sources!

As previously mentioned, at Tangkoko I had met a chap named Bobby who was taking a Belgian guy to Nantu to see the babirusa and I managed to wrangle my way into the visit. It cost me the equivalent of three weeks of my budget for four days and they were some of the more uncomfortable days I've spent in a long time but it was totally worth it (although I may change my mind about that at the end of my trip when I run out of money and have to sell my kidneys). I could probably have done it a bit cheaper on my own but realistically I don't think I would have even made it because the whole journey there turned into a complete shambles. First stop from Gorontalo was the forestry department to get the permits there and then the police in Limboto about twenty minutes drive away to get more permits. Although the visit had already been arranged weeks in advance it still took two full hours to get these sorted out. If you don't speak Indonesian (or aren't travelling with an Indonesian) it would take considerably longer! Then it turned out that the river was too low for the boat to make it; or rather it could have made it if we spent half the trip pushing it over the rocks. Bobby was not exactly happy with this as he had been in touch with the national park guide every day for the last few weeks and it had never been mentioned. There is a road to Nantu but it was so bad that the car Bobby had brought from Manado couldn't make it (he having assumed that we would only be driving as far as Mohiolo on good roads to get the boat). We did our best but eventually had to ditch the car at a little cluster of huts and try to find some motorbikes. Normally its not hard to find a motorbike in Indonesia but, as it turns out, it is when there are five of you! This was about where we were thinking we were going to be ending up back at Gorontalo with no Nantu. Eventually we did manage to round up five bikes for I have no idea how much money, and we took off for an hour's ride over what could have been an extreme motorcross track. The river was low because it hadn't rained in months but you wouldn't know it from the road we were on. Some stretches were just broken rocks but mostly it was kilometre after kilometre of quagmire. No joke, at one point we passed a truck abandoned in the road up to the top of its tyres in the mud. Then inexplicably for the last ten minutes the road turned to perfect seal, but by that stage of course we all looked like Swamp Creatures. Then there was a raft across the river, half an hour over another very bad road in what had in a former life been a Landrover, another half hour of walking through rice paddies and corn fields, a wade through another river, and finally we reached the Nantu Reserve just after dark, after ten hours of travelling.

The babirusa site is just fifteen minutes walk from the camp. Its a big clearing in the forest overlooked by two hides, one at ground level and one about tree-top height. A little stream runs through the clearing and the babirusa come here through-out the day to drink and wallow in the mud. At some points there were fifteen or twenty babirusa in the clearing at a time. We only had two full days at Nantu, so for the first day I took the top hide and for the second the lower, alternating with the Belgian. The upper hide was, shall we say, none too comfortable. The roof was about four feet high and the viewing hole was at a perfect height if you were a squatting Indonesian. They can squat all day long because they've been doing it all their lives but for westerners it gets very painful after a short period. Worst were the ants though. As soon as I climbed inside the hide they swarmed all over me with stings like burning needles. For an hour they kept up the assault until either I'd killed them all or they had suffered such heavy casualties they'd decided a strategic withdrawal was the best strategy. When I returned to the hide after lunch they launched another offensive, obviously not realising I was the same formidable opponent as in the morning. I was wondering how the Belgian was getting on in the other hide, because he wasn't really a jungle type of person, but the next day when I had the lower hide I realised he'd been in comparative luxury. The roof was over six foot high, there were no ants, and there was even a seat at a perfect height to see out the window.

There were LOTS of babirusa at the site, and they were in a remarkable array of colours: dark grey, pale grey, pale grey with pinky legs and bellies, wholly pinky-brown, blotchy in pink and grey, and even some that were almost chestnut. They're hardly the most attractive of animals. From a distance they somewhat resemble hippos with their skinny legs and fat bodies. Otherwise they're rather like a cross between a tapir and a mangy dog. Very odd creatures. There were also Heck's macaques at the site. These have grey bellies and lower legs, and look very different to the black crested macaques of Tangkoko. The black cresteds reminded me of small gorillas (and the males even develop silverbacks), but the initial impression of the Heck's macaques is that they resemble chimpanzees. Very occasionally people see anoa from the hides at Nantu. Anoa are a type of dwarf buffalo endemic to Sulawesi. Like the babirusa they are very rare due to hunting and I wasn't expecting to be lucky enough to see one, so you could have knocked me down with a maleo feather when an anoa stepped out of the jungle, looked around, had a bit of a wander and then disappeared again. I got some photos to prove I saw it but frustratingly they were all shockingly out of focus. Around the camp there were also Sulawesi warty pigs which were much smaller than I had been expecting. For some reason the young ones kept reminding me of super-sized elephant shrews but I'm not sure why.

So, excellent couple of days. Well worth the expense, especially (at the risk of sounding like a wildlife-spotting snob) as it isn't an everyday experience like the Komodo dragons on Rinca where every man and his dog can go. Hopefully the area remains protected but as they are currently building a bridge and fixing up the roads I fear it won't be too many years before poachers have gained easy access and come in and wiped the babirusa and anoa out here as well.

---

Photos

Sulawesi black pigeons (Turacoena manadensis) and a brown cuckoo-dove (Macropygia amboinensis)
seen from the upper hide at the babirusa site