Lore Lindu National Park

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The late Douglas Adams, when journeying to Komodo, wrote something along the lines of "Everything we were told in Indonesia turned out to be not true, sometimes almost immediately." He didn't mean it literally of course, but its pretty damn close.

After returning to Gorontalo from Nantu I had time to grab a shower because I smelled like a babirusa, then it was off to catch the night bus to Palu in central Sulawesi. It takes about 14 hours to get from Gorontalo to Palu and while there is a day bus its basically a waste of a day. The night bus would save me that time, and also the money for the hotel that I'd be paying otherwise, and I'd be able to get to Lore Lindu National Park a day earlier. Lore Lindu is one of the most important protected areas in Sulawesi, home to almost all the species of mammals and birds on the island, but because of my restricted time in Sulawesi I was only getting two full days there instead of the seven in my original plan, so any extra days I could get I needed to take. The bus left at 5pm. It was actually going to Makassar right down the bottom of Sulawesi, so I'd be getting off at Toboli and then taking another bus from there for two hours to Palu. I was told we would be arriving in Toboli at 7am the next morning, which seemed about right. As I soon found out the night buses on Sulawesi are not like the night buses elsewhere in Indonesia where they take on their load of passengers and then travel non-stop through the night to their ultimate destination. Instead they are just like the regular day buses except in the dark. There is no sleep to be had because all the way along the route they are stopping to pick people up and fill up with cargo. The position you are in is the position you stay in for the next ten or twenty hours because you are packed in amongst sacks and boxes and other passengers. Its like a mobile Tetrus game with people. And just in case anyone does try to sneak in a few winks, there is deafening Indonesian dance music played constantly. Some stupid woman had brought her two kids onto the bus who were infected with chicken-pox or small-pox or something and they spent the entire trip scratching furiously and rubbing against everything and everybody they could. I can't remember if I've had chicken-pox or not, but so far no symptoms....

At 7am the bus was passing through a town called Tomini and I had one of those moments where you wonder "did I somehow mis-hear Tomini as Toboli, and I'm supposed to get off here?". At 8am we pulled into a petrol station and I asked the driver how far to Toboli. Two hours he says. At 11am I had pretty much given up any hope of getting to Lore Lindu that day. At 1pm the bus finally came into Toboli, after a full twenty hours on the road!! I was in Palu by 3pm but it was too late to do anything about Lore Lindu except go to the central office and get the permits sorted out. The night bus had saved me almost no time at all.

The main site at Lore Lindu for birders is the Anaso track which goes straight up a mountain. As I said in relation to Tangkoko National Park there is a stunning lack of small passerines in Sulawesi's lowland forests, but up in the mountain forests there are loads of them. Its a very striking contrast, and its the reason the Anaso track is so important for people looking for as many of the island's birds as possible. With only two days in the park I decided to spend the entire time on this track. In every National Park in Sulawesi (and indeed in most of Indonesia) you are required to hire a park ranger as a guide any time you're within the park's borders, which works out to be very expensive when ninety percent of your trip is spent in National Parks. The guide I got was called Idris. He appeared at first to be a good guide for a birder but after a few bad ID calls, a lazy attitude which really isn't on when you're paying someone good money for their presence, and some other stuff which I'll talk about a bit later (and some stuff I won't talk about!), by the end of my stay I was well and truly fed up with him. But, the birds were great. The Anaso track is really a rough road that used to be a four-wheel drive track. Now its completely impassable to even motorbikes due to slips. One part in particular is now just a narrow ridge between two great chasms where the track has literally disappeared down the mountain-side. Some of the trees in the chasm still had green leaves on them they had been toppled so recently. I really wouldn't be surprised if that part of the track is gone entirely within the next year and nobody can get up to the top. Some of the best birds there were the fantastically-beautiful purple-bearded bee-eater, the Sulawesi pigmy woodpecker, the red-eared fruit dove, the beautiful fiery-browed mynah, and a wierd thing called the malia which is always described as being "babbler-like" so I was surprised how large it was. Best bird of all though is the one I was most hoping to see, the fearsomely-named satanic nightjar. Its also called the diabolical nightjar and, somewhat less-dramatically, Heinrich's nightjar. It was only discovered in 1931 when one specimen was collected in north Sulawesi and then it wasn't seen again until one was spotted by a birder in Lore Lindu in 1993 and then a few more times in 1996. Now that people know where to find it every birder that comes to Lore Lindu sees them. They sleep by day on the ground and fly at night after moths. I've seen a few species of nightjars now but always in flight at night (identified by their distinctive calls) so I wasn't prepared for how awesome they are when you see them in daylight. Really nice birds, now my favourite bird of the trip (move over maleo!).

At the top of the Anaso track is another small trail that leads to the top of Mount Rore Katimbo. Visiting Rore Katimbo has been a dream of mine for as far back as I can remember -- well, 20th November 2008 anyway, because that was when I found out about the existance of the pigmy tarsier which is only the size of a mouse. The first specimen found was collected on Mount Rano Rano in 1916, the second on Mount Rantemario in the south in 1930, and then it vanished into the depths of scientific obscurity until 2000 when a third was caught on Rore Katimbo. More were trapped accidentally by rat-researchers on Rore Katimbo in 2008 and the news made it to my ears, coincidentally just when I was preparing my trip itinerary. So onto the schedule went Rore Katimbo. I didn't know if I'd have any chance of success but it was worth a shot. There are actually three different species of tarsiers in Lore Lindu. The Lariang tarsier is found in the west of the park so was out of my reach, but the Dian's tarsier is found commonly throughout the lowlands and the pigmy tarsier up on the tops of the mountains. I had wanted to try for both the Dian's and the pigmy but with such limited time as I had I decided to just concentrate on the pigmy. I had been talking non-stop about the pigmy tarsier since meeting Idris for the first time, and he said he'd actually seen them himself on Rore Katimbo, so we set a plan to go up Anaso on the first morning for birds then do the detour to Rore Katimbo in the afternoon to stay until night for tarsiers. I had found out shortly before leaving New Zealand that the pigmy tarsiers were also found on the upper reaches of the Anaso track itself (some birder was complaining on the internet that tarsier researchers had disturbed the habitat of the geomalia so he couldn't find it, boo-hoo), and Idris confirmed this. So anyway, on that first afternoon I asked Idris how far it was from the top of Anaso to the top of Rore Katimbo, and he says "1.3km. Do you want to go there tomorrow?"
"No, today," I say
"Oh, OK," he says back with a note of surprise as if this is the first he's heard of it.
So we set off up the Rore Katimbo track into thick dripping cloud forest. Great wads of moss covered every surface; it was surprisingly close in appearance to the mountain beech forests in New Zealand.
"Did you bring a torch?" I ask him
"No."
"Ah. Well I've got mine." I would have thought he would have brought one too if we were up there at night. It was a bit strange so I ask, "You do remember I said we were staying up here till after dark to look for the pigmy tarsiers?"
"On Rore Katimbo?"
"Yes, here."
"No, there are none here."
"Yes there are. You even said yourself you've seen them."
"Me? No."
"You said you've seen them before!"
Blank stare.
"Have you seen pigmy tarsier?" I pressed
"Yes."
"Here?"
"No, on Anaso." (This despite him having specifically said "some person" had seen them on the Anaso track but he himself had only seen them on Rore Katimbo).
In any event the track up Rore Katimbo was not the sort of track you'd want to be coming down at night by torchlight and Idris was adamant that he wasn't going to be leaving his motorbike down on the main road at night, so the tarsier search that night was a bust. But at least I had stood at the rubbish-strewn top of Rore Katimbo and seen the tarsier's habitat. The next day we returned to Anaso in the morning for birds and this time I had made sure we were staying put for nightfall, although I had decided in the interests of safety that we would look around the top of the Anaso track rather than the top of Rore Katimbo. According to Idris this was where he'd seen them, and also apparently people regularly saw them around the camping site there which sounded a bit suspicious but it could well be the case. You can't have cloud forest without fog, and the fog there is amazing. One minute you'll be standing looking at the view, then you turn your head for a few minutes and when you turn back all there is in front of you is a white wall of mist. You also can't have cloud forest without rain, and boy did it rain! I think I've only once in my life seen rain heavier than on the top of the Anaso track and that was at Khao Yai National Park in Thailand. With rain that heavy there's no point looking for birds so we just stood on the top of the mountain waiting for dark. Idris kept complaining that he was cold and wanted to go but I ignored that. Some people when they want to see some wildlife go to Africa and look at lions and elephants from the comfort of a safari jeep. Not me, I have to be a dumbass and go looking for obscure things like giant rats and pigmy tarsiers that really don't want to be found, in obscure places where the only comfort is that you're not dead.
"So where-abouts did you see the pigmy tarsiers?" I asked
Blank stare.
"The pigmy tarsiers -- where did you see them?"
"I don't know what you mean."
"When you've seen pigmy tarsiers, where exactly have you seen them?"
Blank stare.
"Have you seen pigmy tarsiers?" I asked in exasperation.
"Here?"
"Yes here!"
"Yes."
"Where exactly?"
"Oh, over there," he says with a vague wave of his hand towards the forest. Then, perhaps sensing my annoyance, adds "It was in 2001. We were mist-netting for the pigmy tarsiers. We did not catch any but I saw one. We put nets there, there and there. But now, I don't know if there are any here."
This didn't mesh with the dates I had found out before my trip but what do I know? On the other hand it sounded remarkably like he was making up stories. Because of the rain I decided we would head twenty minutes back down the track (now transformed into a series of mini waterfalls) to an anoa poachers' lean-to shelter and see if the rain abated. With the heaviness of it, looking for tarsiers in it would have been futile, and the shelter was near to the tracks the tarsier researchers had been cutting last year (although whether they had actually caught or seen any tarsiers on those tracks I did not know). In the shelter I asked if the anoa poachers got fines or jail time when caught by the rangers. Idris just laughed and said the rangers eat the anoa too. I decided it would be better for my state of mind if I refrained from asking if he ate anoa. In the shelter Idris was physically shaking with cold despite wearing four layers of clothing (but only jandals on his feet!). I felt a bit sorry for him but he knew what the deal was and this is what I was paying him for. And he still hadn't brought a torch with him!! I was only wearing a shirt and rain poncho and felt perfectly comfortable because in spite of the rain it was still about twenty degrees. After dark and much moaning from Idris that he was cold and wanted to go, I went off the track and into the forest. Idris refused and stayed on the track. There were no pigmy tarsiers to be found. I am fail.

The night wasn't a complete loss though. All the way back to the main road the track was littered with fallen branches and trees brought down by the rain (it was that heavy!). At one point a particularly large leafy mass was blocking the way and as I approached it a big black shape suddenly lurched up from almost at my feet into my torchbeam and lumbered off into the forest while I said words to the effect of "Holy Mackerel that's big!". It was a bear cuscus which is a type of possum, but not just any possum. The bear cuscus is far bigger than a possum has any right to be. Its like a wombat with a tail! Normally they are right up in the very tops of trees and I had been looking unsuccessfully for one for the last three weeks. I can only assume this one was on the ground because it had fallen with the branch. So I may not have seen the world's smallest tarsier but I finally saw the world's largest possum. I think it may well eclipse the spectral tarsier as my favourite mammal ever!

The next day I had to return to Palu for a flight to Makassar at the bottom of Sulawesi, but I had the morning free and I wanted to spend it looking for Tonkean macaques. Idris said they were common in the plantations and he knew right where to find them. They weren't there. A local farmer came past and said the macaques were only in the plantations very very early in the morning and in the late afternoon (basically when there weren't any people around to shoot them); during the day they were off in the forest. So we set off for the forest. What Idris didn't tell me was that there were no trails through the forest around Wuasa village where I was staying. We headed straight up a hill, the sort of hill where when someone is standing in front of you their feet are at your eye-level, hacking through vines and bamboo and spiny palms. Once at the top we headed straight down the equally steep other side. It did cross my mind that Idris was getting back at me for keeping him on the mountain after dark the night before. There was no way we were going to see any macaques with the amount of noise it took cutting a path through the jungle, so the macaque hunt was a waste of time. On the downhill side we came across six snares, four set to catch macaques and two for ground birds. I destroyed them all, which Idris found immensely amusing which I suppose it was because doing away wth six traps isn't going to make much of a difference but it had to be done. By the end I had a pocket-full of nylon rope and fishing line. On the way back to the Sendy Inn where I was staying we stopped off at a house where they had a pet Tonkean macaque chained to a tree so I could at least see one and get some photos. It was a poor sad creature, eating despondently from a bowl of rice, leading a miserable existance. I asked where the people had got it from, knowing full well the answer but wondering what they would say with Idris the park ranger standing there. They said they had got it as a baby from the forest after shooting the mother for food.

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Photos

the Grand Chasm of Anaso
the track skirts it to the right

cloud forest on Rore Katimbo
where the pigmy tarsiers live

cloud forest on Rore Katimbo
where the pigmy tarsiers live

me and the guide
I take no responsibility for the quality of the photo. But I think my "19th century naturalist" beard is coming along nicely!

Comments

[Andy]

Ahh you look like Bear Grills with a beard

[Justin]

Wow you look like you are towering over that guide like some kind of Giant dirty Wizard!!