Wildlife Spotting on the Togeans

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Our main reason for visiting Sulawesi's Togean Islands was to dive, but we ended up getting more than we bargained for in terms of on-land wildlife.

The guidebook states that the Togeans are an adventure to get to. This turned out to be not so bad for us, mainly because we decided to "flashpack" it a bit by flying into Luwuk and then getting a chartered car for the remaining six-hour trip to Ampana. Here, we spent the night close to the pier and awoke to an inedible breakfast of strong gritty coffee accompanied by what I can only describe as a flourescent green piece of dough!

We boarded the boat to Bomba, our first stop in the Togeans, and found a spot inside due to the impending rain clouds. Sure enough, it soon started to pour. Unfortunately, I seem to have a bad reaction to engine fumes so I had to go outside as soon as the rain eased up enough. Three hours later, we were dropped off on Island Retreat's scenic pier. A light rain fell as we were shown a nice-looking ocean-front cottage, but then we had to confess that, in fact, we had booked the cheaper garden cottage. This was when things went downhill. We were shown the room and it was a total contrast to the oceanfront one - just two single beds and a grimy looking shared bathroom. Then, Scott looked up. There in the rafters were six webs, each containing a huge spider! That was it for me. We went to talk to Gunta, the person in charge, and told him we'd like to switch to the oceanfront cottage but he said that there was a reservation on it. When we pressed it, he said that if the person hadn't turned up by 6:30pm, we could switch.

For the rest of the day we waited and watched each boat arrive, hoping that the mysterious person named "Laura" would not show up. At 5pm we decided to "shower" in the shared bathroom. You can't really call it a shower as instead it is a "mandi", a big bath of water which you scoop out with a plastic bucket. It's fine it it's fresh water, but there is no running water at island retreat so they just fill up the communal bucket from the well when it is low. The problem with this is that standing water gets stagnant and nasty if left too long, and this looked as if it hadn't been changed in months. What choice did we have, though? We quickly sneaked into the ocean-front cottage and stole two towels (we'd been asking for some all day and they were always "coming") and got on with it. We later found out that there had been a rat stuck in it for a day before anyone bothered to get it out - yuck!

Finally, the clock ticked over to 6:30pm and still no Laura! True to his word, Gunther let us switch to the ocean-front cottage. By the price, we were definitely flashpacking it, but by the standard of accommodation, we were certainly not. We ended up staying five nights but had very mixed feelings about the place. The days were fine as we tended to lounge around on the pier and go snorkelling. Mealtimes were good as the buffet-style meals, for which the resort is famous, were indeed tasty and varied. Night times were not so much fun as that's when all the "wildlife" came out. In the restaurant area, the spiders got active, the cockroaches emerged,and Sylvie's band of dogs became more argumentative with each other. In our cottage,, the three resident huge cockroaches came out as well as various spiders and the rats that chewed a hole right through my plastic conditioner bottle! There were also snakes around. We didn't see any but we were told stories of them falling from the rafters onto the table during dinner, and saw a photo of a 5-meter long python that the resort had recently killed as it had been eating the kittens! Quite a few of the other girls were scared of snakes, I am petrified of spiders, and Scott is creeped out by cockroaches which made for some animated evenings around the dinner table. I felt less embarassed about my spider phobia when a Swedish girl confessed to being scared of geckos, and a German girl confessed to being scared of fish! We wished we'd had the chance to snorkel with her just for the comic value!

Another more legitimate "wildlife" issue presented itself on our second night when we came to shower/mandi. We emptied the tub so as to get it filled with fresh water and clean out the rat poo at the bottom and discovered a colony of tiny worms! Yuck! We decided to forgo the worm bath and instead filled up empty water bottled for our shower for the rest of our stay.

After five wildlife-filled nights, it was time to move on to our next island, Kandidiri. By this time, I was ready to say goodbye to our three giant cockroaches, but nervous about what we'd find on Kindidiri. We chartered a small boat wth an Australian couple, James and Liz, and for the two hour trip. When we arrived at Black Marlin resort, the first thing that greeted us was a huge spider in a web right at the entrance. I have to admit that I got used to it as it never moved our whole stay. It was kind of like a pet I think. The Australians found a scorpion in their mosquito net one night and freaked everybody out by showing the picture around the restaurant. Generally, though, our room was much nicer than Bomba (and cheaper!) in terms of wildlife, and we really appreciated a real shower instead of a mandi - pure luxury! After eating rice, fish, and vegetables (i.e. rice and veg for me) every day, however, we really did start to miss the food at Island Retreat!

Much of our time at Black markin wa spent diving. We'd done one dive at Island Retreat and seen a giant barracuda and an eagle ray and then rescued a family of six from a sinking boat on the way home, three of whom couldn't even swim! At Black Marlin, the same thing happened, this time with the guys in a tiny boat carrying bananas and coconuts. By the time we found them, the coconuts were bobbing all over the ocean. We did several dives around Kandidiri and saw lots of gorgeous coral, big shoals of darting fish, including schooling barracudas, and a turtle (but just one as the population has apparently been decimated by hunting). There were no shark in the ocean but another resort had five small black tip reef shark in a pool of seawater sealed off from the open ocean. James, the Australian guy, had a hair-brained idea to prick his finger and put a drop in the pool in the hopes of causing a shark frenzy - he never managed to draw blood!

After six nights at Black marlin, it wasd time to get the overnight ferry (nicely named the Tuna Tomini) to Gorontalo. We'd heard rumors of the crew renting out their cabins to make some additional money so we had our resort look into it. We ended up staying n what seemed like the captain's cabin!

The next morning we were awoken by the loud ship's horn signalling that we were arriving at Gorontalo. We quickly took down all the things we'd hung around the room to dry and stuffed them into our backpacks. We ended up sharing a taxi for the 12 hour trip to Manado with two other couples. At $75 between us, it didn't work out to be much more than the bus, so we really can't call it flashpacking this time! We checked into a lovely hotel in Manado (no spiders or roaches!) and went off for a mammoth email session. The next morning we headed off to Bunaken Island.

*** This blog ends with a few funny pictures that I took while bored in Makassar airport ***

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Comments

[Patricia Somewhere]

Hi from Greece
Hi Guys. You are in Asia again!!! That's great. Amanda and I are in Greece, this time with John and Yannick, so the travel style has changed. We were in Brazil at the begining of the summer. I haven't blogged yet but hopefully will soon. For how long are you guys traveling this time? As always, I love your entries. keep them coming. Patricia