Camp Leakey

The dawn brings a misty landscape; tendrils of fog wreathe the tree canopy and lie softly on the water. The klotoks emerge from the darkness as misty apparitions. The sun is making a watery appearance through the moisture, colouring the view with gentle hues of pink.

We set off for Camp Leakey, founded by Louis Leakey who trained Dianne Fossey in primate research. Louis chose women researchers because he had more faith in their observational abilities. He believed that women are more able to pick up subtle non-verbal cues.

The Camp is situated in Tanjung Puting National Park; the largest, most diverse and extensive example of the coastal tropical heath and peat swamp forest which used to cover much of southern Borneo. The area was originally declared as a game reserve in 1935 and a National Park in 1982. While the Park has a chequered history of weak protection, nonetheless, it remains substantially wild and natural. It contains 3,040 km2 of low lying swampy terrain punctuated by blackwater rivers which flow into the Java Sea.

The best known animals in Tanjung Puting are the orangutans, who are the primary reason for our visit.. Tanjung Puting also boasts the bizarre looking proboscis monkey with its “Jimmy Durante” nose, (called longnose by the locals) as well as seven other primate species.

Clouded leopards, civets, and Malaysian sun bears cavort in the park, as do mouse deer, barking deer, sambar deer, and the wild cattle known as banteng. Tanjung Puting also has two species of crocodiles, the fresh water and the garigal, dozens of snakes and frogs, and numerous endangered species.

Excerpts from A Guidebook to Tanjung Puting National Park, Kalimantan Tengah (Central Borneo), Indonesia, by Dr. Biruté M.F. Galdikas and Dr. Gary L. Shapiro, published by PT Gramedia Putaka Utama and the Orangutan Foundation International, 1994. © All Rights Reserved.

Our arrival at the Orang-Utan rehabilitation centre is rewarded by a welcoming representative. Terry, a juvenile male is waiting in a tree by the dock, and as we alight from the boat, he ambles down to check us out. He climbs up to sit beside us on the railing, discreetly observing with down- cast eyes and indirect gaze. Humans go into a frenzy with their cameras and iPhones morphing into papparrazi.

When Terry has posed long enough, a wet blanket, (of the blanket variety) catches his eye. He climbs off his pedestal, grabs the sodden prize, throws it over himself and ambles along the boardwalk. Sensible chap – it’s 32 degrees in the shade and evaporative cooling works for me too.  From time to time he plays peek-a-boo from under his blanket. Soulful brown eyes peer at us and invite more photos.

We relinquish Terry and continue to the camp – hoping that Terry is not our only encounter. And indeed we are not disappointed. As soon as we arrive at the camp, Mut and Mario are waiting for us. Mut is mum, and Mario is her son, a cheeky chap who reminds me of Homer Simpson. Mum sits at the base of the water tower contemplating life, while Mario is busy trying to suck the water out of a down pipe. Mario pulls faces, sucks on the pipe, and generally clowns about until one of the rangers decides he’s being naughty and shouts. Mut rises gracefully, climbs up to her recalcitrant child, and drags him unceremoniously back to earth.

My thought is they are bright –preferring clean drinking water to that from river or stream. We are warned not to wave our plastic water bottles around – they are quickly appropriated by the orange locals who don’t even bother to take the lid off, but puncture the bottle top with an incisor and then suck out the contents. If the plastic lid comes off, it quickly disappears into a baby’s mouth and proves a choking hazard. I cannot understand the humans who can’t understand this basic rule, and are surprised when their bottle disappears up a tree in a hairy hand.

We are also treated to a visit from Boswell, a gibbon with a handsome black, grey and white face who swings elegantly from tree to roof to tree, looking like a super athlete. Boswell is a rescued monkey, who now has a wild wife and several children. His family is too shy to come visit, but Boswell regularly stops by for a chat and a feed.

One of my travelling companions has had bad experiences with the other species, the long tailed macaque. These ones have eyes that are altogether too close together, so they have a bit of a suspicious look about them, despite their feigned innocence. They have quick, expressive faces, eyebrows that twitch up and down, and look ready for a bit of biffo. Their brethren in Bali are hit and run thieves, responsible for bag snatching, and petty theft of designer sunglasses and cameras. These ones are more circumspect, though I do keep a watchful eye in case one of them is eyeing me up.

All the cottages are open air, but fortified by wire over all the windows. Marauding wild life poses a threat to any possessions, most especially edible ones.

After our time up close and personal with Mut and Mario it’s time to hike through the jungle to the feeding station, a platform where rangers put out highly aromatic fermenting bananas and some liquid drink. At any given afternoon there will be more or fewer Orangs arriving, conditional on the availability of food in their forest. We are blessed; about 15 Orangs arrive to partake of the feast.

They come in various ways. Some arrive early, scurrying in and grabbing everything they can, shoving bunches in their mouths and grabbing more in their hands, then racing off up the nearest tree where they can consume their booty in private. Others swing on to the platform and make themselves at home, slowly stuffing oozing fruit into their gobs until they look like they’ll burst. The containers with liquid are surrounded, and the younger Orangs do forward bends until their heads are invisible in the buckets. Someone else puts their hand in and licks the solution off their dripping fist. Boswell the gibbon swings by and takes a position at the edge of the platform until one of the much larger orangs claims his space, when Boswell takes a breathtaking leap into the nearest tree until it’s safe to swing in again.

The rather less glamorous creatures scrounge around underneath the platform – wild boars desperate to woof down any droppings left by the apes. But they are wary – if one of the larger Orangs takes umbrage, one smack from a fist is enough to kill.

Eventually the bananas are gone, and the Orangs retreat again, silently disappearing back into their jungle. They are so well camouflaged, the only evidence of their presence is the shaking of the trees as they move through.

It’s an awesome experience, only marred by humans. Princess mum continues to obliviously hog the space. Wherever you turn, there she is right where you’ve managed to get one of the locals in your view-finder. Between her and Princess, it’s difficult to get a photo without some part of one of them intruding, and sometimes the only thing you can see is the back of their heads as they crowd in with one of their digital devices. I reflect about their likely reception at a professional photo-safari: after their first outing with true photographers they would be banned from any further participation due to their unfathomable disregard for anyone else’s objectives.

Sigh – humans – what can you do? Even the Orangs seem to make more effort to share than these two humans.

Heart of Darkness 2

Day two, fly to Pangkalan Bun and transfer to our first houseboat.
The road from the airport to Kumai is long and full of pot-holes. The best way to get about seems to be by motor bike, swerving to avoid the holes in the road is so much easier on two wheels. I am tempted to try to ride on our cycle mounted guide – it looks way more fun!

We arrive at the river and the National Park office where our klotok awaits us. They are ptly named after the noise they make with their two stroke motors. As opposed to the takatak that the motorised canoes make.

One of our travelling companions has arrived, a delightful woman from Adelaide who teaches music and plays trombone in a jazz band. We discover that we have all subscribed to the same deal, a bargain tour of Camp Leakey.

Unfortunately we have to hang about in the heat for another two travelling companions. While we are waiting, we are surrounded by the loud sound of bird calls – not the birds themselves, but piped through loudspeakers atop massive warehouses. The bird song is to entice birds to move in – these warehouses (larger and nicer than the average house), house nesting birds; all mod cons provided. When the chicks have flown, the nests are harvested and sold for a fortune to be made into birds nest soup. I must confess, the thought of eating broth made out of sticks, bird saliva and other excretions does nothing for my stomach. Well, there’s no accounting for taste!–

Finally our late travel companions arrive; mother and daughter who give some story of being given the wrong information. I am not sure why they are late, since they over-nighted in Pangkalan Bun, whereas we had to fly in from Jakarta.

A premonition of things to come happens when mother comments to daughter “I’ve booked you a really nice hotel in Jakarta so you should be happy with that.” My friend and I roll eyes at each other, hoping against hope that we are not travelling with a princess.

Without any ado, briefing or drill, we cast off and start our journey up the sluggish brown Kumai River towards the Sekonyer tributary. There is no safety drill, no emergency information, no overview. No life vest demonstration, rules about wash rooms, toilet paper, flushing. No sign of beds either, and our bags are whisked away below decks.

Our captain is called Tonno, our guide is Muk and the boat boy is Onyo. So we discover as we go along, but only by asking. We also have a cook, a nameless woman who spends the rest of our journey below decks where she cooks, eats sleeps and prays. Mostly hunched over because below deck is only 1 meter high and even Indonesians are taller than that. Every now and then we see her to congratulate her on the food and are rewarded by a beaming smile, and she beats shy retreat.

Princess mum helps herself to the best seat in the house, which she proceeds to do whenever she can, with nary a thought about her fellow travellers. By the end of the trip I am convinced we are travelling with a narcissist, since she seems completely oblivious to the needs and desires of any of her fellow journeyers. But that unfolds slowly.

The river banks are lined with townships, replete with bird houses, wooden houses, mosques, boats tugs motor canoes and klotoks. The sky is sullen, the air sultry and close. After an hour up river we leave the main river and motor up the tributary. The morphing of the vegetation is clear – for the first hours on the Sekonyer, the banks are exclusively lined with palm trees. Evidence of the replacement of the rain forest with palm oil plantations. The seeds float down river and embed themselves so the banks are an impenetrable mass of palms. The brown water follows us up stream, effluent from the gold mines which work night and day, pumping their wastes into the river system.

Within an hour we are treated to a tropical downpour; plastic covers are hastily released side back and front, so we can travel in relative dryness on the boat. The afternoon has darkened, and we motor along in the gloom watching the water pelt onto the river surface and lash the palms.

Dinner, when it arrives is delicious. It is hard to imagine our cook putting out such marvellous fare with a kerosene burner and a couple of woks. We are treated to fish, rice, fried tempeh and vegetables, followed by tropical fruit. And kopi – coffee for the uninitiated. I feared our fare would be instant coffee, but no – we are served Indonesian coffee, which is the same as Arabic or Greek coffee; rich, finely ground and served with carnation milk. Delicious, though one has to beware the fine grounds left at the bottom.

When it is bed-time, we get to know the sleeping arrangements. Our bags stay stowed below, they bring 5 mattresses on deck, slip on sheets, throw us a pillow each, hang sleeping nets, and hey presto, the upper deck is our communal bedroom. Care must be taken at night not to garrotte oneself on the sleeping net ties if we stumble our way to the bathroom. Sleep is elusive: the mattress is lumpy, two of my companions (Princess and Princess Mum) snore loudly enough to breach the ear plug barrier, and the night gets cold enough to need blankets – which do not exist on the boat. I am required to wear a woolly top and use my sarong to try to keep warmth.

But hey – it’s only a week and we have great Apes to look forward to!

Heart of Darkness 1

Well, leg one of the journey to visit our long lost cousins, is successfully complete.
We enjoyed an eventless flight to Jakarta, which is always the best kind of flight don’t you think? We both agreed airline food is much maligned as we hoed into our chicken and vegetables and cous cous.
9 hours passed relatively quickly with inflight entertainment and kindle books. Christine fell asleep minutes after we took off, rousing from time to time to enjoy the splendour of the red centre as we flew over it – water water everywhere! A most amazing sight to see water courses and lakes where there are usually only red dust dunes..
We arrived at Jakarta airport to go straight through to the baggage hall – no queuing at immigration, because immigration comes to us – in our airline seat! Three hours after we took off, a couple of trolleys were wheeled down the plane and I kid you not, two immigration people checked passports, visas and declarations and we were processed!!!
In fact we came out so quickly we even bounded past our pick-up…
I felt like one of the competitors of the Amazing Race or whatever it’s called – back pack and running shoes on, trying to get clues about money changing and where we would find the guy who was to get us transferred to the hotel. So we were in and out of terminals under the instructions of a variety of people until eventually one of the security guards allowed us back in to the arrivals area and we managed to quiz some hotel limo guys who pointed us in the right (or rather left) direction and we found our guy, who was definitely wearing a very yellow uniform, but not the yellow had we had been advised to expect.
All is good now – hotel is great, shower even better. We were shown into a room with a ginormous king-sized bed at first; they obviously didn’t follow our request for two singles. But soon enough we were transferred into a new room, so all is well – Christine and I won’t have to worry about thrashing about in bed, or inadvertently cuddling each other in a forgetful moment…
It’s 30deg C and I even had a cool shower…
My overall impression of our first landing place is polite, friendly and helpful. Sleep, perchance to dream of red-heads until an early start tomorrow…
ZZZZZZZZZ