Pages

06 October 2013

Friday 4 October From Bali to Borneo

Borneo land of jungles, Joseph Conrad, Kota Kinabalu and Orang Utans. One of two places in the world where you can see orang utans in the wild. The other is Sumatra.
We arrived in Kumai in the southern Indonesian province of Central Kalimantan (in fact Indonesia call the whole island Kalimantan, Borneo being the English name) late this afternoon. It had been a long, slow slog up from Bawean island where we'd made a halfway point overnight stop to bring us to the entrance to the river just after midday. More by luck than good timing we arrived at the beginning of the inward flowing tide and had a knot of current with us. Also by luck we had a small oil tanker entering ahead of us which we used to check our route through the shallow patches. It took three hours to navigate up the dirt brown river passing barges the size of a small tower block loaded with wood chips, a dredger in the shallow section and large fishing boats. As we came in we could see the town on the left hand bank and the anchorage on the opposite side of the river between the tankers and cargo ships. Plenty of room for us in 10m of water.
Naturally there was lots of chatter on the radio between us and our friends who arrived a few days earlier. They'd been on their orang utan trips and were keen to pass on their recommendations. The universal comment was 'brilliant' and 'not to be missed'.
As soon as the anchor was set, and almost before we turned off the engine, the first boat boy arrived alongside to sell us his trip up the river. The arrangement is one leaves the yacht on anchor at Kumai with a night watchman sleeping in the cockpit while we hop on a houseboat, know as a kelotok, and embark on either a day, 2 days / 1 night or 3 days / 2 nights trip with captain, guide and cook to look after our needs. We'd visit the feeding station, see animals in the wild, do some trekking, bird watching and animal spotting all from the comfort of our own floating house. This being Indonesia negotiating a price is king. We have a couple of days before our friends on Geramar arrive so time to get the low down, shop around and wait for the best deal we're offered.
Priority this evening is sleep. It had been a long night passage with literally hundreds of fishing boats to pass and freighters crossing our path. Sleep (in air conditioned room due to humidity here) was much needed.

No comments:

Post a Comment