Apes and islands

 

One of the biggest highlights so far has been the 3 day, 2 night tour to see the orangutans in the jungle of the Tanjung Puting National Park. Together with an American couple on the yacht rally we booked a “klotok” to take us further up the Sekonyer river through the bordering jungle. A klotok is a traditional simple wooden houseboat which has been fixed up to accommodate tourists wishing to see orangutans – it comes with a guide, cook, captain and deckhand to cater to our every need. On the bottom level are toilets and showers, the cook’s kitchen and large sleeping area for the staff. The top level is like a large verandah with a basin, table and chairs and mattresses which are spread out at night under mosquito nets. This is the vantage point for tourists to sit and see what unfolds as the klotok putters slowly along making the sound for which it is named: “klotok-klotok-klotok”. Below the cook worked tirelessly to produce sumptuous platters of food in traditional Kumai style.

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.

A couple of dolphins played on our bow as we sailed to our next stop Gelasa Island, a tiny island with its steep slopes completely covered in very tall trees and jungle growth.

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.