Indo West

(click on a place to go there)

In some cases it's hard to convey the sheer distances involved, in this case 1,000 nautical miles. May not seem like much when you are in a 747 but when you are sailing at 7 knots it can seem like forever!

We were anxious to get moving at this stage as we had read that travel becomes, er, exciting at this time of the year when the monsoon changes and brings nasty squalls with huge electrical storms and waterspouts to the South China Sea. So, with all that fear going for us we left Bali in mid September to get to Batam. Our main stop in this passage was to visit Tanjung Puting National Park and its orangutan reserves. Beyond that we were mostly making miles, which was a shame as we bypassed many places that were both beautiful and interesting.

One thing you can say about Indonesian boats is that they are colorful. Here we see a trawler just north of the large island of Madura (left of the 2 in the map above). If you look closely you'll see the crew waving. Everyone was extremely friendly to us in Indonesia.

Here's another, complete with unpaid advertising for Pepsi and Nike.

This is the high island of Bawean. This is one of the places where we wanted to spend more time. One reason we didn't was because we were there during Ramadan, a not especially fun month in Islamic countries. Fasting all day can make one cranky.

They still get in a few jollies, like this boat, which appears to be named "Sir Cool".

You may be sick of sunsets but we aren't: deal with it.

Our next stop was the town of Kumai, on the Kumai River at the SW end of Borneo. The flags you see aren't for the Communist Party, they are for the party of Sukarno's daughter and sport a rather sinister bull in the center. Kumai is the jumping-off point for visits to the nature reserves.

Travel to the Park and its reserves is via long,narrow "African Queen"-style boats called klotoks. What we didn't appreciate at first was that orangutans live in a low-lying swamp and peat bog area. It is also home to the buaya, or crocodile. Many an ill fated park volunteer has been lured for a swim whilst ignoring the "no swimming" signs. Oh, no bottles of gin on this Queen.

This is a klotok-eye view of the river. Note the latte-hued water. That's not its natural color.

This is where two tributaries converge. The real color of the water here is black. The "cream" is caused by massive gold-mining activity upstream, one of the many sources of environmental degradation in the area. The mines are mom&pop panning operations, more of the outdoor, family sweatshop variety. The children don't attend school, they just pan for gold all day. It is akin to a tropical Dickinsonian setting where tots toil long hours. No child labor laws here.

Here's where the environmental rubber meets the road. One of the main threats to orangutans is loss of habitat. This is especially pressing as orangutans, unlike most simians, are solitary creatures and require a lot of area per ape. If you look closely, the police post sign says "Funded by Orangutan International".

How many of you cinema fans saw the movie Apocalypse Now? This could be any third world Southeast Asian outpost scripted by some Hollywood mogul. It brought memories of Viet Nam to this aging baby boomer.

As we headed upriver the passage increasingly narrowed. The water here is the color of coffee owing to the large amount of rotting vegetation it contains, hence the term "blackwater swamp".

Well, enough complaint and reminiscence, let's look at some monkeys (OK, apes - so sue me). This one is saying he's hungry. Remember, these guys are loose in the wild, this is not a zoo.

Score! He's taking time out to smell the 'nanners. These shots are from Camp Leakey, where they operate feeding stations for orangutans that have been orphaned or otherwise are having trouble feeding themselves. This may create a dependency problem, but the habitat loss makes such welfare operations necessary.

Because we share 99% of the DNA with our fellow orange 'mates', we can also infest them with various human diseases, e.g.TB, which is one reason social contact is prohibited. Oh, in case you're wondering, orangutan is actually two words, orang (man,person) and utan (forest), i.e. "forest person".

Note how the feet resemble extra hands. As they spend most of their time in the trees, this works much better for them. These guys are the strong men of the jungle. They have massive amounts of strength in their shoulders and arms and CAN be very dangerous at close range. We definitely did not want an E.T. Encounter.

Here's a busy young mom on the go. Note the baby, as well as bananas held with both mouth and foot.

These guys show up for the feeding too, hoping to grab any stray bananas. They also carry off baby apes when they get a chance. They are no doubt glad for the Muslim ban on the eating of pork. No cute "Lion King" critters around here. The above "porker" is the Evil one in the neighborhood forest due to the fact that he is always snuffling around for infant apes.

Mother and Child studying the humans below at the forest floor. Such a serious couple. But that is just a biped's casual observation. I know they are not worried about the economy!

Speaking of serious, this little guy has priorities that transcend existential brooding.

The dexterity of these creatures is amazing, not to mention facial expressions that are all too human. She definitely has "a leg up" on most ballerinas!

What appears to be a moment of tenderness is actually the mother feeding her baby by chewing a mouthful of bananas and sharing the mush with her infant.

One mom admires another. Actually, the admiral thought maybe she was just a leetle too close. So much for being the recommended five meters away!

The jungle version of the Cable Guy.

Everybody scattered when this dude showed up. Bigger than a man, he commands respect (and lots of bananas).

We found this pose interesting as it shows how much the feet look like hands.

Look at the schnoz on this guy! This is a male proboscis monkey, for obvious reasons. Note the long, stiff tail, which seems to be mostly for balance. They also have huge bellies, because their diet of nothing but tree leaves compels them to eat vast quantities to make up for the low nutritional content. We were amazed by the way they moved between trees in what appeared to be controlled free-fall. These monkeys are big, about the size of a 6-7 year-old child.

We spied these monkeys while spending the night on the river. This was a special treat, although the stunning quantity of bugs involved made the enjoyment somewhat limited. We nonetheless spent a very comfortable evening swathed under mozzie netting, much to the chagrin of jillions of jungle music makers, i.e. insects. An Entomologist's Heaven.

Here the admiral enjoys our primitive bathing facilities. The water was clear but black, which tended to dye any clothing placed in it, not to mention skin. Fortunately, we only spent one night and couldn't get truly dirty.

On our second day we encountered this handsome male. We're not sure what purpose the cheeks serve other than to impress the ladies.

Speaking of impressing the ladies, here's Capt hub with our guides. We were given a tour of a forest being re-established after a major fire in the late '90s. The trees surrounding us were ironwood and teak, the soil however was just sand, a typical problem in these equatorial areas, i.e. the fertility is mostly due to the enormous amounts of dead organic material, which washes away when the trees are cut down. We also discovered just how many leeches and mosquitoes can inhabit a given volume of our planet (answer:gobs).

Speaking of impressive ladies, here the admiral looks as cool as ever on our personal klotok. Long sleeves and pants were often necessary, even if they could be most uncomfortable. The woman inside was our cook. She served up great meals in spite of the fact that during Ramadan she couldn't eat during the day.

As we mentioned this is all blackwater swamp. What made it endurable were boardwalks that kept us tenderfoot explorers out of the peat bogs. No wonder the monkeys live in the trees.

After two days of relentless clouds of mosquitoes and torrential sweat we were ready for the relative cleanliness of the river.

Ah, tub sweet tub! It was a memorable adventure but nothing beats a nice hot shower.

We spent the next day in town doing the usual port-clearance paperwork then departed for our final stops in Indonesia. After a tough night & day getting around Borneo we stopped at the lovely island of Serutu, which we unfortunately have no pictures of as we arrived and left in darkness. We then spent a day & night crossing the South China Sea, anxious about both shipping traffic as well as....

Waterspouts! We watched with a certain morbid fascination as a feature looking like a carrot dropped out of a cloud then began to resemble a tentacle.

OK, this is a big picture but then so is the sky. The tentacle looped around lazily until we thought it was largely gone. However, with binoculars we could see it was very much still with us and had touched the ocean, as you can see in the lower right of the shot above. I was once told that the only reason you see a tornado is because of the dirt and debris churned up on the ground. At sea all that's churned up is water, which makes the funnel cloud almost transparent. We suspected it could pack a punch nonetheless and didn't want to contribute to any debris in the area. It followed us for about 10 minutes then seemed to disappear. All we could picture was Dorothy in The Wizard of Oz when she awoke to find her house swirling away in the sky and the wicked witch maliciously cackling, bicycle and all.

Adding to our sense of urgency was when the admiral awoke one morning to find her left eye swollen and very red. No foreign bodies could be seen and it was thought to be an infection. It grew worse and we were over 100 miles from the nearest medical facilities. It's dangerous to travel this area at night due to numerous fish traps and nets so all we could do was bounce off the islands of Ligga and Mensenak and hope things didn't get too bad before we could arrive at Nongsa point, Batam.

Civilization! This is Nongsa Point Marina, at the north end of Batam. We liked Nongsa a lot. Besides being our first marina in months, complete with power and water, the people were very nice, did not rip us off, and helped us in any way they could. We'd happily go back there. As you can see, the marina was almost empty when we were there. This is partly because the Sail Indonesia people decided to have Rally boats check out at the island of Belitung, just why we don't know. It also had a bad reputation for underhanded dealing but that seems to have all changed. If we were checking out of Indonesia alone we could not find an easier place to do it. They even have free WiFi Internet at their restaurant. Anyway, we just wanted to provide a positive review as so many articles we read unfairly made it sound unattractive. It is truly a first-world facility, nicer than many marinas in Australia and way cheaper.

Ships! Big 'Uns! The ship with MSC on the side is a container ship, i.e. those tiny boxes are semi-trailer-sized containers. The weird ship on the right is a car carrier. They are doing about 20 knots. Being road kill here is all too possible. Weaving in and out and around these monsters is heart stopping for the Admiral. Anesthesia is the best remedy for one who finds it difficult to navigate in such close quarters!

These ships are anchored, also huge. The Singapore skyline is obvious and if you look closely you can see the cargo docks with their giant cranes toward the left, looking like guns pointed at the sky. There are only 15-20 ships in this picture, just a small percentage of the ships parked in these Straits. Some 30% of total world cargo flows though these Straits and half the world's oil. The sheer quantity of commerce is staggering and we're hard-pressed to show a picture that does the scene justice. We'll cover Singapore on its own page, the coverage of which will be a work in progress as we plan to be in the area for months.

We really enjoyed Indonesia and would have liked to stay there longer. While they do want tourists, the bureaucracy required for small boats is a definite hassle, even if you join the Rally. However, that was the worst part for us, i.e. the people were wonderful, especially in the eastern islands. You could not imagine a warmer welcome. The notorious corruption we'd heard about now seems limited to officials asking for $5 to do paperwork and even then they don't insist. A few people had some things stolen, but it was no worse than most places and much better than the Caribbean. Indo gets 2 thumbs up from this crew!

Thus a major cruising chapter draws to a close. Please join us as we continue on to Malaysia and Singapore!

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