Out of Bali, into 'Africa'

Baluran National Park, Java, Indonesia
March 4, 2010

On the road again. One of my favourite feelings. The trip didn't start terribly comfortably, though. Paying the price for heading to dive Mecca Amed for some underwater adventures, we had to make a huge journey in an awful smoky boneshaker of a bemo, all the way from Bali's east coast to ferry port Gilimanuk in the west. Still we were moving on, albeit slowly.

The nearest corner of Java is stuffed with national parks to visit. We plumped for Baluran because we were intrigued by its nickname: 'Java's little bit of Africa', a moniker the park got thanks to its open savanna and acacia trees. It also promised some big game in the form of endangered wild buffalo called banteng and the rare Javan panther, as well as various deer, wild dogs and fantastic bird life.













After another bemo ride from the ferry terminal at Ketapang, during which we took the chance to stock up on provisions, we arrived at the park entrance. It is another 16km or so down a rough track to the lodges and ideally you need your own vehicle to get out to get food (the park office charges a lot to drive you out). However, we had been assured that there was food available onsite, as well as a kitchen, so our stocking up was fairly light - some fruit and biscuits etc. It was a bad move.

We arrived at dusk to find ourselves allocated to a comfy two-room bungalow which overlooked a large area of grassland on which the park's many deer collected to graze every day. It was fantastic and peaceful. But we were pretty shocked to find that the food sold in the office was pot noodles and... that was it. Damn.













Still we were in the park and were not going to let a limited and horrendously unhealthy diet ruin our time there. After a good night's sleep, we woke just before dawn to take a walk down the track to the beach - a 3km stroll for us but a big walk for the boys. The grassland was full of deer coming back from a night's grazing and there were jungle fowl (wild chickens) and peacocks roaming around. It was beautiful, and the stunning sunrise was something I'll never forget.













Our long stroll took us past some weird palm trees where cackling hornbills ruled the roost, and finally we arrived at the white sand beach where the park rangers had been seeding coral to promote biodiversity in the region - basically they took small prongs of live coral from elsewhere and cemented them in place in the shallow water beyond the beach. We were also welcomed by a bunch of the usual pesky thievin' macaque monkeys that intimidated the boys and lurked around hoping to snatch any snacks we might bring out from the bags.













Tired of their attentions, we got away from these primate muggers by taking a walk out along the park's mangrove walkway where we spotted some much more delightful but shy Javan gibbons that peered worriedly at us from a distance before leaping away through the tangled branches.

By now it was really hot, too hot for us to consider making the boys walk back to our lodge. Thankfully, some friendly college kids who'd been mucking around in canoes as part of their tourism studies offered us a ride up in their air-condtioned 4x4. Ahh, luxury.











We stayed another day at Baluran, but sadly didn't see anything of the rarer wildlife - no panthers, wild dogs or wild buffalo. Still we had a lovely two days, despite the further attentions of the raiding macaques, before paying the hefty price to be driven back up to the main road in the park Jeep for a proper meal at the roadside warung and then a crowded bus towards our next stop, Ijen volcano and its almost superhuman sulphur collectors.