A walk on the Wallace Line

A walk on the Wallace Line

On April Fool's day, I traveled to the village of Batuputih. It took two minibuses, a "medium" bus with amazingly little leg room, a journey over a mountain in pickup bed with nothing but bare wooden planks for seats, and a lot of time, but I did make it.

On arrival, I was met by a freelance guide and learned two things: Ranger Homestay, listed as being in the park, was actually right next door to Mama Ruus, listed as being in Batuptih. Secondly, prices had increased by a factor of 4 from the last published Lonely Planet.

So far, I have seen little of the legendary cheapness of Indonesia. The smallest price difference I have seen was 40% on a room in Balikpapan that had already been on the high side and wasn't even available. Overall, prices in Kalimantan and North Sulawesi are similar to Sabah, the most expensive region of Malaysia. Despite the cost, I settled in the for the night.

At the recommendation of the guide, we left at 5:00am, the next morning in search of Sulawesi's wild and weird. Although the time was right, we didn’t see all that much. A few hornbills. Black macaques close-up but it dim light. Black macaques aren't all that different in temperament from the long tail and pig-tail macaques of Borneo and mainland Southeast Asia. However, they see far fewer tourists so they are still a little timid. And of course, they are completely black. Not quite the abyss level darkness of a mountain gorilla but close.

In early afternoon, a German traveler showed up, doubling the tourist population. That night, we went out looking for tarsiers. There are tarsiers in Borneo, too, but I never saw any. Sulawesi's forests are apparently full of tarsiers and our guide knew where to find them. The world's, smallest primate, they are cute little buggers. Not much bigger than a rat with a tail twice as long as the body and huge eyes. They like to sit on the trunks of small saplings, fireman style. When they become annoyed at the light, they hop to another tree. But they ever go very far: no more than a meter or two. I took what I thought were several good photos.

Next morning, we managed to find an excellent photo op of a pair of cuscus's starting at us from moderately high tree branch. The cuscus is a type of possum, an example of Australia type fauna not found west of Sulawesi. We also saw many more red-crested hornbills and black macaques in better light. On the return walk, we stopped briefly to view the beach and its black, volcanic sand.

No anoas, babi rusas, or accessible maleo birds in Tangkoko. So I retured to Manado near noon. The return trip was about as fast, and efficient as the trip out. I returned to the Victory Inn in late afternoon. I had just enough time to drop off two rolls of film for processing. I thought there had been 3 but I could not find the third.

By the time I ate my dinner, I was extremely tired and had a little bit of a headache. But I had just completed a hard journey. I had been dodging cigarette smoke all day, and I hadn't had any lunch. It seemed reasonable that I should feel a bit off.

As I retired for an early night, the light headache became severe with a fever attached. The headache responded to Tylenol and both where gone in the morning.

I was still tired but not too tired to retrieve my photos. That's what I learned the true nature of the April Fool's joke.

The first roll was from Sepilok. It was fine. The second should have been Tabin and Tangkoko. It was completely empty. I managed to locate the missing roll and pulled out the partial roll still in the camera. I brought both to a different photo finisher. The newest roll was completely empty. The older roll stopped at about frame 24. Looking at the camera's operations, it appears that the shutter moves but never opens. 10 calendar days and less than two rolls of film. That's how long it lasted. It doesn't say much for Minolta quality control. There doesn't seem to be much hope for repairs here or anywhere else in Indonesia.

Meanwhile, the operator hasn't fared well either. The same overwhelming fatigue, but not the headaches, returned that evening. I was out by 9:00pm. Next morning, I could barely eat my toast. I went back to bed and slept until noon. After nearly falling over coming back from the toilet, I had visions of malaria in my head. I rested some more and walked to a nearby hospital to find out what was going. I was almost suprized that I was strong enough to make the trip.

The small hospital's prescription of milk of magnesia, antibiotics,a nd vitamins wasn't very helpful but they did send me to the general hospital who where a little more capable and clued. They did a blood test. (single use needle. I watched the nurse open it).

No malaria. No dengue. Just some sort of nasty virus. Probably not SARS either as the symptoms don't line up.

As I write this, April 6, I am still not entirely well, though functional and much better than yesterday. I need to be fully healthy to dive so I think I will delay my Bunaken trip for another day.

Long term is unclear. If a round trip flight to Singapore were cheap, then maybe I could go there, get the camera fixed or replaced and return. But that is probably fantasy, even though I have heard there were some unusually cheap flights between Manado and Singapore. Probably, I will just scale back the Sulawesi leg. Keep most of the diving but visit the dry land parks only to filll time in the schedule. Leave a little early for Singapore.

Well, maybe Singapore. SARS is getting rather serious there. Maybe go via Johar Baru+KL or Melaka+KL. But Johar Baru is essentially an extension of Singapore and KL are probably affected too, even if it isn't making headlines.