There are both wild
and semi-wild orangutans in the area, the semi-wild are those who
have been rescued elsewhere and rehabilitated into the wild. This
means that they usually have to be fed and so there are 3 feeding
stations set up in different parts, guaranteeing one the opportunity
to observe the orangutans from a few metres away. We also visited
Camp Leakey where Prof Birute Galdikas has spent almost 50 years researching orangutans and according to our guide, is still actively
involved on a daily basis. We were enthralled to see so many
orangutans and so many babies in the area. Robert took over 500
photos! Here is just a handful:
This old fellow had
been in a fight with another male and had come off the worst with
broken fingers, sore foot and a gash in his head. He is being
observed by researchers but seemingly they don’t interfere with
nature taking its course other than he was first at the feeding
station picking out mangoes – their favourite by far.
The jungle is home
to 8 other species of monkeys and we were delighted to see grey
monkeys, red leaf monkeys, long tailed macaque and of course my
favourite – proboscis monkeys whose faces look more human to me
than the orangutans who share 97% of our DNA. Our guide said the
locals call the proboscis monkeys “the Hollanders”…. must be
the big noses….
We also saw bush
pigs and the tan, black and white squirrels feasting on the orangutan
leftovers.
No jungle tour would
be complete without a night walk in the jungle and so we did a walk
with our guide and a ranger. Although we didn’t see tarsius or slow
loris, it turned up the expected tarantula and frogs. Spot the spider:
The vegetation is
very diverse. In the beginning small palms lined the edge of the
swampy river bank, giving way to pandanus as the water became less
salty. Our guide said that saltwater crocodiles inhabit the
downstream river which floods with the tides and freshwater
crocodiles inhabit the upstream area. And to think that on arrival
in the Kumai river we were so hot and sweaty that although we
wondered about crocs, we jumped in and swam off the boat to cool off.
It was a very quick swim.
Sleeping on a
mattress on the klotok under a vast mosquito net listening to the
sounds of the jungle is a good compromise between comfort and
adventure. An amazing experience and we’re so glad to have done it
while there are still some orangutans left in the jungle.
It’s worth
mentioning the town of Kumai’s prominent features (besides its many
amplified mosques) – the high rise buildings for swiftlet birds to
produce birds nests for the birds nest soup so favoured by the
Chinese. These drab buildings are actually bird nest factories in a
sense and apparently built and owned by Chinese (well who else would
eat the nests). Kumai is a scruffy dusty town with no redeeming
features and these grey concrete windowless buildings with many
little holes make it even uglier. The 24/7 loud twittering of bird
noises is produced artificially to attract even more swiftlets to
these slabs of concrete buildings. How the residents can put up with
the constant noise is unbelievable.
And yet at 4.00 am
when the various mosque loudspeakers burst into wailing action, I
have a sense of karma.
On our last day in
Kumai we discovered that the relatively new Tohatsu outboard motor
for the dinghy no longer works. Doctor Robert opened up the motor
and removed a black box with dangling cables – the ignition
electrics have stopped working and is not something that can be
fixed. This is a blow as the dinghy is our car on the water and we
need it to get from boat to shore (shops and beers). Probably not an
easy part to get in Indonesia. We’ll have to see if we can find it
on our next few stops.
We left Kumai for a
very long sail to the next anchorage on Belitung Island. We dodged
some ships moving along the Kumai river – it takes about 3 hours to
navigate. Out in the bay we came across a half sunk barge.
In the beginning we
had a few rally boats on our AIS but soon we had all spread out of
range. We chose to sail closer to the Borneo coastline and had very
few barges and ships to contend with at night until we started to
cross the shipping channel in the morning and it became a lot busier.
It was a long and tedious 40 hours of motorsailing.
We are the red dot surrounded by cargo ships:
When planning our
long route to the north of Belitung Island, Robert had found an
anchorage on the east side of Belitung at the small town of Manggar
situated on a river estuary – and more valuable, the GPS tracks of
Yacht Ocelot going in some years previously. There is a large sandbar
to cross and in the dark we would not have attempted it without GPS
tracks. After almost 40 hours of sailing we arrived at Manggar a few
hours after sunset. We stuck to the tracks meticulously and just as
well, as there were times we wouldn’t have believed we could
advance further up the narrow estuary. We crossed the sandbar with
1,4m to spare and very slowly inched along to drop anchor in a very
calm and peaceful spot. It was too dark to see much and we fell
asleep exhausted. The next morning we woke up to the sounds of small
fishing boats coming past and looking at us in surprise. Manggar
riverfront is lined with lots of colourful fishing boats.
Close to us was an
old Wharram, a classic old-style catamaran sailing boat – guess
that must have an interesting story. We Googled it (Wharram Kali Sara) and found out that it was for sale in Thailand 4 years ago, and was in much better shape back then.
We navigated our way
out over the sandbar again and set off to the north anchorage about
12 hours away. There was enough wind to put up the spinnaker in late
morning. In the afternoon dark rain clouds suddenly appeared and the
wind changed direction completely. We motored the rest of the way
with the wind and current against us. We arrived at the anchorage of
Tanjung Kelayang in north Belitung just before sunset. What a lovely
spot – crystal clear water, white sand and large smooth boulders.
We saw several large turtles close by.
We were surprised
the next morning to be able to sleep late – no audible mosques! We
went ashore and after being warmly greeted by the Sail Indonesia
organisors, we hired a scooter and went into the main town of Tanjung
Pandan about 45 minutes away to find a replacement part for the
dinghy motor. Although the town was larger than expected with shops,
restaurants and coffee bars, it was clear that we wouldn’t find the
Tohatsu part. Eventually we found a shop selling generators, etc and
saw a small Parsun 3,5 outboard engine hanging on the wall. Robert
bought it for roughly R7500 which meant about 7 withdrawals at a
nearby ATM. Indonesian ATMs only dispense limited amounts. The shop
agreed to deliver it while I sat in the truck with the young driver
to show the way. He played excruciating “bemo” music all the way
back to Kelayang and clearly delighted at having a westerner in his
passenger seat, he called up his family and friends on WhatsApp video
call and I had to wave, grin and say hello to various amazed
strangers.
Coffee break
One the way we stopped at a boatyard where traditional Indonesian ships are built on the beach from freshly cut trees.
As in many other
places in Indonesia, we came across a row of scooters parked outside
a building with helmets left on the scooters. No one takes them. This can only be appreciated by crime weary South Africans such as
us:
The
“yachters”celebrity status had not waned overnight and going
ashore the next morning, I was surrounded by a whole class of excited
high school students and their teacher wanting to practice their
English. So Robert snuck off to organise fuel and I had half an hour
of answering what is my favourite food and other fascinating facts
for Indonesian teenagers such as my country’s main export crop. The
school teacher was a nice fellow and filled me in on some of my
questions about the islanders and we had reached the discussion of
post-apartheid SA when Robert returned.
The “gala dinner”
event that evening was held outdoors in an events arena next to the
beach. The music was good, the food was plentiful and the dancing
girls were talented and exquisite.
We never got to try
out Kelayang’s inviting surrounding islets and snorkeling spots
(apparently as good as Raja Ampat said one of the other yachties who
went to both places) as the new Parsun outboard developed a problem
of cutting out all the time. Robert found a mechanic on shore who
agreed to see if he could fix it while we hired his scooter and went
back into town to buy some spares for the Parsun.
All seemed fine
upon our return and we went on a night tour to see the tarsius in the
national park area. The ticket office seems a bit South African
First we were served a traditional dinner in the
ranger’s hut, sitting cross legged on the floor which is a bit hard
on old westerners’ legs.
After dinner the
park rangers went off into the forest with special headlamps and
worked their way around until in about half an hour they had found a
tarsius and sent word. Off we trailed and found them holding down a
branch with a tarsius calmly clinging on and looking around. I’m
not sure if the tarsius doesn’t see us with the headlamps shining
on it but it didn’t appear to be stressed. We were told no camera
flashes and a maximum of 10 minutes to view. That was a well
photographed tarsius! They are much smaller than I expected and
incredibly cute.
The next day we said
goodbye to Tanjung Kelayang on Belitung – really a jewel in
Indonesia’s many islands and definitely a place I would come back
to as long as it doesn’t go the way of the Gili islands and remains
unspoilt by hordes of tourists, backpackers and commercial diveboats.
This island does not seem to have been logged and
it’s probably the original forests remaining. There are no people
living on it, just a resting stop for some small fishing boats during
the day. It also has a great coral reef and we snorkeled in the late
afternoon as two other rally boats came in to the small bay for the
night.
Our next day hop was
to Ketawai Island and we were so thankful not to be doing this at
night as there were hundreds of large fishing platforms dotted about
all over in the strait covering a vast area, in fact the whole east
side of Bangka is a fishing platform nightmare. A few of the
platforms have fishermen on them but most seem unmanned. We had to
keep a constant look out as we weaved our route around them and the
various buoys with a tiny black flag – really! Who can see these
buoys easily in a heaving sea!
To add to our
difficult motorsail, large black clouds gathered above and thunder
rolled as the wind shifted. Robert pulled in the mainsail and dropped
anchor in the nick of time off Ketawai shore as the squall broke.
Wind gusted up to 24 knots and heavy rain came down along with more
thunder and lightning. Our boat tent cover is leaky in such heavy
rain and we moved the cockpit seating cushions but not before some
parts got soaked. Yay, smelly foam cushions…
Ketawai is also the
beach for repairing or building fishing platforms and it seems to be
the best thing to do at night so I had been awake since 3 am with
hammering sounds from the nearby shore. Sound really carries over the
water. I think these guys sleep during the day and do their fishing
platform thing at night. We got up at 4 am and moved off at sunrise
for a long day sail to the next rally stop.
As we got closer to
Bangka we had internet again and our long sail got even longer by the
rally announcement that the anchorage had moved further away owing to
the original anchorage becoming unsafe in current weather conditions.
And so it was that after 14 hours of dodging more fishing platforms
we rounded the top of Bangka and headed into Kelabat Bay. This is a
very big, long bay with ferries and boats of all kinds and night fell
before we reached our designated anchorage. We saw 8 other rally
boats of the 37 we had in Kelayang, a few coming up behind us on the
AIS. It was very dark and Robert had the opportunity to use his
strong beam brought from SA to shine into the water and his fancy
laser beam gadget to measure the distance between the neighbouring
boat and us. We were exhausted and slept like the dead.
Fuel was our next
priority and in the morning we watched most of the rally participants
setting off for a day of festivites as had been planned at the
original anchorage an hour away by bus. We decided to skip the
events and gala dinner and to take it easy and get more diesel. Our
visa is expiring on 5 November and we only have 2 weeks left to day
hop along to Malaysia (night sailing only if unavoidable). There was
a small police station on the shore and when Robert dinghied ashore,
a policeman approached to help him. It turned out the policeman has a
friend who can supply Dex Lite (the preferred diesel for boat engines
and not widely available in most of Indonesia) at a rather inflated
price marked up by 50%. It works out to approx R15 per litre so
Robert asked for 100 litres (get the good stuff while we can) and
left the jerry cans on shore. An hour later 2 policeman came out in
their marked police dinghy delivering our full jerry cans – how’s
that for service! Robert checked while he filtered all of it –
it’s the good stuff indeed.
