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Across the
Wallace line and the Equator - 23/06/2006
After spending
ten days searching across the length and breadth of Flores we
finally gave up the search for a ferry to Sulawesi and returned
to Labuanbajo for the scheduled 28th May departure to Bira. It
arrived and
departed on time, much to our relief, and was a comfortable 26
hour journey, only about 30 passengers which might explain the
shortage of ferries plying the route!
Sulawesi straddles the Wallace line, the line placed by
naturalist Alfred Wallace to mark the border between flora and
fauna of Asia and that of Australasia. It passes between
Kalimantan and Sulawesi and Bali and Lombok.
This means that the flora, fauna and landscape have more in
common with the Australia-Pacific region although some species
have migrated across the line. It is an amazing
zoogeographical boundary, even more exciting than crossing the
other divide in Sulawesi, the equator, and watching the water
drain out of a sink!
Bira beach
Bira beach was our introduction to Sulawesi. It was a perfect
introduction, amazingly genuine and friendly people welcoming us
everywhere, white sand beaches, crystal clear water and
immaculate, brightly painted stilt houses everywhere.
After a relaxing start, a chance to recharge our batteries after
our long sorties across Flores, we headed on to Makassar. It is
a pleasant city, fairly clean and evidently more wealthy than
many other in Indonesia, but
it was not exactly the Makassar of maritime legend. With
Sulawesi straddling the equator it was a hot and humid city with
distinct districts. We stayed in the Chinese sector to the
north by the port. There are a few examples of
well-preserved Dutch colonial architecture in Makassar,
especially the Fort Rotterdam, and also a couple of really
beautiful mosques. It was the first modern city we had visited
since Mataram and it was nice to be able to check e-mails, a
luxury in Indonesia, and feel slightly less conspicuous than
usual.
Unfortunately Monika was quite ill in Makassar, it seems a mild
bout of Dengue fever, and so a couple of days were spent within
the confines of the hotel room. For those of you who are
familiar with Mirador mansions in
Hong Kong, this was ten times worse!
Mosque in Makassar
We managed to leave and head for the hills. We first travelled
to Pare Pare and along the way saw many of the houses with
several levels on the roof. The amount of levels indicates the
status of the family in society. In
Pare Pare we could not find a bus to Rantepao in the Tana Toraja.
This became a problem throughout Sulawesi, the first place in
Asia where buses leave only once or twice a day and at very
specific times. We just could not get used to it and every
journey we made in Sulawesi started with at least a three hour
wait at the bus terminal, rather strange after so many times
just turning up and finding a bus within minutes, even for a 40
hour journey.
In Pare Pare I
spent the time playing football first on the Playstation and
then in the terminal with the kids waiting to sell snacks on the
buses.
The Tana
Toraja is one of the most distinctive cultures in Indonesia,
easily recognised by their houses, which look not unlike boats
on stilts. Another feature of the Toraja is the 'grave caves',
giant cemeteries built into
the sides of hills. Most of the coffins are sitting around
in the caves or hanging above you. A lot of them are in a state
of disrepair and there are skulls and bones lying around,
seemingly strategically placed for the tourists. All of the
villages and graves are scattered around the Toraja valley,
mountains rising all around and surrounded by lush green paddies
and rice terraces. We took a trip up to Batutumonga on the
side of the Gunung Sesean and walked down through the terraces
and villages.
Kete Kete, Tana Toraja
We also
managed to attend one of the famous Torajan celebrations.
Disappointingly it was not a funeral, the most exciting
ceremony. The funerals last several days and are all held
during the funeral season, which means that if somebody dies,
rather inconveniently, outside of the season then the body is
kept in the house until the funeral. The people still greet the
deceased, offer them cigarettes and food and excuse themselves
when they leave the room. It sounds rather freaky.
When the funeral season arrives then several buffaloes are
sacrificed during a three day ceremony. What we attended
was perhaps a "new house ceremony". There were a lot of
people getting pissed on a strange brew of rice wine drunk from
a hollow bamboo trunk. Meanwhile several pigs were
slaughtered and their blood was being stored in the trunks also,
I hope no-one drunk from the wrong one. After the pigs
were slaughtered, fried and quartered various pieces were then
auctioned to the crowd. One head went for 50,000Rp (over $5!).
We missed the last bemo back to Rantepao and so we had to hitch
a lift in the back of a truck. The farmers in the back
were very happy to share a ride with us, of course Monika was
very popular, she is now the pin-up of Rantepao.
Torajan celebration
En route to the Togean islands we stopped at Lake Poso.
Pendolo, on the southern shore of the lake is a tiny peaceful
village. The lake is straddled by mountains and lone
fisherman in small boats sit quietly just offshore. It
looks stereotypically Scottish. It was really relaxing to
stop there. Our guesthouse was on the lake shore and the
restaurant was on stilts over the lake.
Our final Indonesian destination and the one we had been moving
towards since Lake Toba was the Togean islands. This
required a bumpy, twisty bus journey to Poso where we eventually
arrived at 7pm, due to waiting for three hours in Pendolo for a
bus to come through town. The first bus refused to take us
because it was full (how many times does that happen in Asia)
and the second one only had space on the bags of rice in the
aisle. That is until we tried to get to a small village
outside of Pendolo, were stopped in our tracks by a wiped out
bridge, deposited half the passengers on the side of the road
with all of their worldly possessions and had to reverse back
onto the "highway". In Poso a friendly woman, Enab, ordered her
cousin to take me to an ATM on his motorbike, fed us corn and
fish soup and hailed an Ampana-bound bus for us. We
eventually arrived in Ampana at 1:30am and found the guest house
to be full.
We did find another hotel, more expensive, but the owners also
own one of the two hotels on Pulau Kadidiri in the Togean group
and we managed to get a lift with them in their speedboat the
next morning straight to the resort.
Kadidiri is every cliche of the beach paradise. Blue sky,
clear water, nice beach and great fresh seafood. There is
also amazing snorkelling, the best I have ever experienced, and
if it takes your fancy, some of Asia's most incredible scuba
diving, though of course I could not vouch for this first hand..
The average temperature of the water is around 30 degrees and
the visibility is permanently around 20m. The coral reefs
around here are in pristine condition, so far not really feeling
the effects of mass tourism. There are so many different colours
of reef and fish. The highlight of our underwater experience was
swimming in a lagoon full of jellyfish. I think it is a dormant
volcanic crater as once you cross the coral barrier
protecting it from the sea the water becomes murky and all of a
sudden drops from 2m deep to well over 30m. The lagoon is
teeming with jellyfish, thousands of them, every time you move
you inevitably come into contact with more than one. Luckily
they are non-stinging. It is an amazing experience, diving
down amongst them, pushing them around and stroking their hard,
but slimy domes. They had only been discovered the week
before, it is a new dive site, so I hope the jellies do not
suddenly acquire stinging skills! The dive instructor
Neil, let me go underwater with him on his spare regulator and
further down it was even more amazing, I could hardly see the
surface for the jellies.
Kadideri Paradise, Togean Islands
Back on the land, the 'dry' highlight of the Togean islands was
heading to Wakai, on a larger island in order to watch the first
England game. We thought we would have to pay somebody to
watch it with them in their front
room, but in fact somebody had set up a TV in the market place
and we joined the crowd there. We did upgrade to the
lounge for the second half. The World Cup is massive over here,
people are betting huge amounts on every match, meaning they are
often even more nervous than I am. Every town has TV's set up to
watch every televised match, even though half of them kick off
around 3am over here.
So, after finally reaching the Togean islands, all there was
left to do was to return to Pare Pare and leave Indonesia before
our visas expired on 20th June. The first night we stopped
in Poso. The district around Poso was the scene of heavy
fighting a civil war during the late-90's/early-00's and even
now is prone to sporadic eruptions. Around the port there
is evidence of this in burnt out buildings and displaced
refugees. We felt entirely safe, and as is often the case in
places recovering, or suffering from problems, everybody went
out of their way to be extremely friendly, to make up for any
preconceptions we may have had.
Another stopover in Rantepao, watching the Trinidad and Tobago
game with a very friendly bunch of locals, one of whom had put a
lot of money on England winning by two clear goals, I was very
relieved for him, and then on to Pare Pare. On the way we
were told by many agencies that the Awu ship was still in the
dock and would not be coming to Pare Pare, even the harbour
master was unaware of it, but we had to risk waiting around to
see if it would arrive. The people in Pare Pare were super
friendly, everyone inviting us to watch the football with them,
and it was a great final image of Sulawesi.
The long Pelni voyage, over 50 hours, took us to Nunukan in
Kalimantan. The trip was fairly comfortable and even in ekonomi
(deck) class we had access to TV's showing the World Cup.
The free food doled out from the hatches verged on the unedible,
and our appetites disappeared after seeing, and smelling, the
kitchen so we were thankful that we had stocked up before hand.
We were not short of conversation on the very because, as the
only foreigners, everybody wanted to have a chat to us, the same
as throughout the rest of Indonesia.
Kitchen on Pelni ship
Due to the delays in Flores and slowing down our travelling
speed in Sulawesi we had no time to explore Kalimantan as we
originally planned. We had planned to try to traverse the whole
of Borneo but various reports of the deforestation of
Kalimantan, increased expense and the superiority of the
Malaysian parts of Borneo led us to make the executive decision
to skip it. Nunukan was a nice taster however.
Really expensive, 90,000Rp for a room without a bed in it, just
a mattress on the floor, we stumped up the extra 5,000 for a
bed, which, if you compare with the luxury accommodation for
20,000 on Lake Toba, highlights the cost disparity within
Indonesia. It was a last chance to taste Terang Bulan and
Martabak, which have been our culinary highlights of Indonesia.
And so, after
60 days we left Indonesia. After passing through relaxed
immigration the speedboat whisked us across the border into
Malaysia. I was sad to leave Indonesia, it is a wonderful
country, full of world-class
attractions, something new everyday. However I was also happy to
be back in Malaysia, mainly for the food. Whilst
Indonesian cuisine is very tasty, that of Flores, and to a
lesser extent Sulawesi is among the less impressive, indeed in
Flores we were beginning to get fed up of rice and nettles.
The fresh fish everywhere was delicious but I don't understand
why across Indonesia every restaurant uses exactly the same
ingredients to make exactly the same meals. There is no
originality (is this another example of the laziness) and I was
missing sauces or gravies on my rice. Give me Malaysian,
or even better Indian, cuisine any day where every time somebody
makes the same meal it is different because they might use
slightly less or more or some spice, they experiment at little
bit. Did anyone have a dhal or alu gobi in India that
tasted exactly the same as another? But, did anyone have a
gado-gado or nasi goreng in Indonesia that tasted any different?
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