One Last trip to Indonesia with Jess and Spencer

Indonesia - Borneo is the largest island in the center, with oddly-shaped Sulawesi along it's Southwest side and Java to the South.

Part 1: Diving Bunaken
Jess and I decided to go to Bunaken on a whim. We had never heard of the island before – one lunch break we were looking for the best diving spot in Indonesia, and referred to a guidebook, which proclaimed that “when divers go to heaven, they go to Bunaken”. Sounded good!

The day after Wat Bang Prah, we left for Indonesia. We overnighted in Jakarta, on the island of Java, at the most bizarre “transit hotel” I have ever seen – it was like sleeping in a giant storage unit, complete with a garage door, a 6-hour time limit, and no key.

Our "transit hotel"

The next day we flew from Java to the town of Manado, the northern tip of the oddly-shaped island Sulawesi.

Sulawesi, with the city of Manado at the Northern tip

Northern Sulawesi. Bunaken is the n shaped island to the East of Manado, Lembeh is the long thin island to the West of the penninsula, and Tangkoko National Park is to the North.

From the small, dirty city of Manado, we took a boat a few miles offshore to little U-shaped Bunaken. We stayed at a “resort” called Sulawesi Dive Quest – a group of small red bungalows built just off the beach on a hill surrounded by jungle – we were the only guests for 4 days and we only saw a couple other divers the whole time we were on the island.

The volcanic Manado Tua island i the center, Bunaken to the right.

Our little boat to Bunaken.

Sunset from our bungalows

We spent 4 days diving, 3 dives a day, on the spectacular underwater walls which surround Bunaken. The diving was amazing – the visibility was 25+ meters, the water was warm, and variety of underwater life blew my mind. There was usually a current along the walls, so most dives were drift dives, and we could float along the wall at 20m, not moving a fin, and take in the hoards of fish, turtles, nudibranches, coral, shrimp, eels…as we floated past. Our dives were long – 70 or 80 minutes each – and we spent our surface intervals eating fruit on the boat or hanging out back at the bungalows.

Spencer, Jess, and me - ready to dive!

Spencer snorkels

Filling out dive logs in the eating area, which was temporarily relocated to the crew's quarters after a tsunami ripped the roof off of the dining hall last year.
The first night after diving, we followed Nielman, one of the boatmen, back to his village on Bunaken. (He was very proud of his tattoo of Elvis). There are no roads on Bunaken, only a narrow dirt path which winds through the jungle.

We reached the village in half an hour and found a wide paved path flanked by small, simple, and impeccably clean houses. People filled the “main street” at dusk, most were beautiful little kids, running everywhere. They all said hello and looked at us as if we were from outerspace. It felt a bit like Bliss Fest and I half expected to come upon a drum circle at the edge of the forest. Most houses were sparsely decorated. We saw many pictures of Jesus and Mary, and one very large poster of Avril Lavigne!

The main street

The main building in most American cities are the financial power houses – banks and businesses. In Northern Sulawesi, and particularly Bunaken, the church towered above all else. Talk about from outerspace! Most Indonesians are Muslim, but North Sulawesi is a stronghold for Christianity, and it is everywhere.

Towering Christianity

Fishermen a the central gate leading to the beach.

The following night, the local volcano, Soputan, erupted! We looked out from our bungalow to see red lava shooting into the air. The locals weren’t perplexed – Indonesia is a country of volcanoes; the three active volcanoes near Manado erupt every couple of years. The following morning, things seemed quieter, although most airplanes wouldn’t fly into the area for a day or two due to the smoke.

Soputan erupts!

Soputan the day before the eruption

Bunaken boys hunt for treasures in the low tide muck

Part 2: Diving Lembeh Straits

We enjoyed our stay on Bunaken so much we decided to continue diving in the Lembeh Straits, on the opposite side of the North Sulawesi Penninsula, which is reputed to have the best “muck diving” in the world.

Heading back to Manado on the boat

Typical home near Manado

We took the boat back to Manado, drove across the peninsula, and took another boat to Lembeh Island, where we stayed in little bungalows right on the sandy beach.

Arriving at our beach in Lembeh

Our bungalows all had mosquito nets, although the mosquitoes were suprisingly rare.

We spent the next day muck diving – it really reminded me of diving in Lake Michigan – lots of sand and silt, not much plant life. What makes Lembeh exceptional is all of the wild organisms found in the muck. Many scientists believe that life began in the waters around Indonesia. With nearly 60 million years to diversify, the organisms which live around Lembeh Straits, in particular, are remarkably exotic looking; giant 1’-long frog fish, tiny 1 inch red hairy frogfish, flying grunards, mantis shrimp, rays, robust ghost pipefish (looked like a piece of dead grass, seriously would not have identified it as a living organism unless someone pointed it out to me), amazingly colored nudibranches, bizarre looking flounders, pink box fish with sparkling eyes, Solander’s sharpnose puffer, giant spotted seahorse….half the fun was coming to the surface and trying to identify what we saw.

Part 3: Tankoko National Park and The Manado FBI

After the Lembeh Straits, we headed to Tangkoko National Park, which is a little-visited park at the very tip of North Sulawesi, its entrance is reached by an 1:30 drive from Manado on a 1-laned sort-of-paved road winding up and down large hills through the jungle. The tiny fishing-based village that Tangkoko lies next to reminded me of 100 Years of Solitude. We stayed at little homestay there.

Jess checks out the living room - elegant furnature and bare concrete floors... typical of N. Sulawesi.

The wooden hand-crafted fishing boats we saw throughout N. Sulawesi were amazing works of art. We spent one afternoon wandering along the seemingly endless black sand beach at the far end of the village, looking at all the boats. Most had outriggers made of bamboo and were exceptionally thin.

We were fortunate to befriend Gently, a park ranger who spoke English impressively well for learning only from tourists. He took us under his wing, and invited us to go out fishing with one of his friends the first night we were in town. Not knowing what to expect, we ran out through the waves and jumped onto the fishing boat shortly after sunset, and we didn’t come back until after sunrise! We spent a lot of time sleeping in the rain – most of the crew (about 15 men, mostly in their early 20’s) slept under sheets of plastic on the deck. We were fortunate enough to sleep in the captian’s bunk house, and I “slept” on a 4’X 1.5’ wooden shelf, spooning Jess the whole night, but stayed pretty dry. The fishing started at 2am and continued until day break, with the men casting huge circular nets into the water and hauling in small silver fish and some squid. Most of the crew didn't speak English. We had fun translating things, using grand hand gestures, and learning basic Indonesian.

Pulling in the catch

Breaking the ice and getting the tarp ready for the fish.

They caught 4 or 5 species of relatively small, silver fish which they send to a canning factory in Bitung. The fish is exported to Germany, America, and Hong Kong.

Our fisherman friends. The boy to the left of Jess couldn't have been more than 14, he didn't go to school and spent the whole night smoking (most of them did).

Captain of the fishing boat, friend of Gently (everyone in town seemed to be friends with Gently)

Solomon goes out on the fishing boat every night and goes to high school in the mornings. I asked him when he sleeps, and he said he doesn't. He spoke the most English, enough to tell me that he likes Bush because he is "good" and also likes Obama because he is "good".

Our fishing boat at dawn.
The following day, after a brief nap, we went for a long hike in Tangkoko. We were required to take a guide, and it’s a good thing – nothing was marked, we did a lot of bushwacking, and we wouldn’t have seen very much on our own. Our guide lead us to a group of Macaca nigra (black macaques), endemic to Tangkoko National Park. The weren’t afraid of humans and came right up to us, interested.

Macaca nigra

We also were able to watch spectral tarsiers feeding. These are the smallest primates, and the species of tarsiers in TNP are also endemic to the park. The only other people we saw in the park were scientists doing research on the monkeys and the Tarsiers – they seem like ideal species to study since they are so readily accessible. Sulawesi also has an amazing number of organisms found only on that island.

Family members watch from their home tree as a spectral tarsier feeds on insects

One of the Indonesians who was helping facilitate the foreign researchers had started a side-project educating the villagers about sea turtles. When the turtles came up on the beach to nest, the villagers would kill them and eat them. Even though the Hawksbills and Green Turtles are endangered, the law is not enforced, although the last two times a villager killed a turtle, he saved the eggs, buried them, and let the turtles hatch. He also made the villagers bury the turtle without eating it, saying if anyone at the turtle, he would repot them as being the one who killed it. Now he is having a few villagers raise the babies until their shells are hard enough to go back to the ocean.

Local family raising green turtle babies until they are large enough to paddle to the sea.

150 Green turtles rescued from an untimely death after their mother was killed as she attempted to lay eggs on the beach.

We were heading back from Tangkoko to Manado on the local bus when disaster struck - we somehow lost the bag which Spencer carried all of his important things - passport, cell phone, credit cards, money! We spent a harried afternoon at the Manado Police Station, where very few spoke English, and they laughed at us when we asked if they could help track down the bus. We managed to find one man in the office who spoke English quite well and was willing to help, although he told us, "quite frankly, I am not a police. I am a journalist." He took us across the street to a group of rag-tag men sitting in the dirt with their motorbikes. After a breif conversation, all 8 of them got up and we loaded into a paddy-wagon (indonesian style - a pickup with two benches in the back) - and headed to the bus station. I sat between two men in the cab who explained in their few words of English that they were MANADO FBI as they yell profanities out the windows at passing motorbikers and then turn to me, laughing, for approval. I come to find later that they are undercover detectives, although the don't usually do this ("I usually find the guy and BANG -" explains the Cheech-looking leader) Within minutes, we race, lights and sirens, to the bus, search it to no avail, and then track down the conductor and driver. Nobody knows anything, of course, and we don't end up finding Spencer's passport, although we had a fun ride.

In the end, Spencer used the police report to get back to Jakarta, and then went to the Canadian embassy to get a replacement passport. He was quite lucky and made it back to Bangkok the following day (I left with Jess as scheduled, as I had to get back to pack for home), although the other westerner he met at the Indonesian Immigration Office had been stuck there 7 days and was ready to swim to Singapore!