Island of touts

Indonesia has been Ben's travel favourite for a long time. He has always wanted to go back since spending a month in Sulawesi a few years ago. We debated for a long time whether or not visit Bali, the most famous of all the islands in Indonesia. Over 80 per cent of travellers going to Indonesia visit only Bali. What we experienced so far with most of the famous places is that we understand why they originally got famous, but they are now ruined by too much tourism. That's how we felt about almost the whole south of Thailand, especially Ao Nang and Ko Phi Phi, and some parts of Vietnam, for example. We read in many places how Bali is now drowning in rubbish, loud dance music playing into the early morning hours in Kuta beach and the cheap poison booze killing travellers even in the 5-star resorts. Didn't sound too good. But then again, in a way we were curious to see what all the fuss was about.

What really decided it for us was the flights. Most of the cheaper flights obviously go to Bali. And it is a good place to start exploring the islands to the east. Lombok, Komodo and Flores were all waiting in a reasonable distance. Two days after Ben's sister and brother had left Vietnam we were already off to Bali. Obviously, the cheap flight comes with a cost: it includes a long stop in Kuala Lumpur airport, once again.

Our first experiences in Bali were indeed not the best ones. We arrived in Bali just after midnight, which was okay for us, meaning that we get an extra day to do a visa extension, which should be done one week before the 30-day visa on arrival expires. We had read many different things on the internet about extending the visa, so on arrival Ben wanted to check with the immigration officer stamping his passport that it is for sure possible to extend this visa. Instantly, the officer wanted to help him do it, wanting to give him his phone number and listed all the friends he had in different offices, who could offer him help with the extension, probably for a special fee or something... That was funny, but we got our passports stamped and got out. And then we got to meet the taxi mafia.

Midnight is not really the best time to haggle for cheaper prices. They know you've just flown in, queued for a while, you're tired, and you just want to go to bed. They have all the power unless you happen to feel like walking. We had come to the conclusion that we'd head to Denpasar, where also the airport was located, for a few nights and then keep going north instead of the usual destination of Kuta beach in the south. We really didn't have to see that. We had booked a guesthouse, and on the website they had said that we shouldn't pay more than 90,000 rupiahs for the taxi. We talked a while with the taxi drivers, whose set price of 20-25 dollars (a set price, is it?) was way over two times more than that. We tried to haggle and only got laughed at, all taxi drivers working together and agreeing to the prices in Indonesian right in front of us. Then we walked to the other side of the terminal, and the same thing followed, until Ben said to me "okay, we go back to the guy who agreed on 150 then". We started to leave, and that's when the price started to drop. We ended up paying still too much, but at least we had done our best now. Finally, a 20-minute drive later we got to our guesthouse, Nakula Familiar Inn, happy that we had decided to stay there and not Kuta. Not because of Denpasar being that nice, but because we now knew that Kuta would probably be a place full of similar attitudes and rip-offs and it wouldn't offer that much for us anyway.

After few days of recovering from the long flight we took a bemo, which is a local way of public transport, basically a minivan, to a bus terminal, where we switched to another bemo, which took us to a place in central highlands of Bali, Candikuning. Candikuning is famous for fruit production, flowers and cool mountain climate. We checked into a guesthouse and met a guy called Amin, who works as a tour guide. He's the one who helped us find our guesthouse. Normally we would be a bit wary of these guys. Amin however seemed to be a genuinely likable guy, he spoke great English and his little book of recommendations was full of good reviews in many languages. He made us a good offer for a motorbike-hiking-sightseeing day tour, which would end in Lovina (or wherever we wanted) on the north coast. That was good, because then we wouldn't have to worry about transport to the next destination. We signed up for the next day. Candikuning itself is nothing special, it has nice botanical gardens and a nice little temple on a lake, but mostly it's the surroundings that people come there for. We thought we might as well do a tour and see a little bit of central Bali.

 

The tour started early as Amin woke us up before sunrise. We took the motorbikes up a mountain, where we spent a while watching the sunrise. Then on schedule was seeing the temple on the lake, which is also pictured on the 50,000 bank note. After that we went back to the guesthouse for western style breakfast, and after finishing that Amin came back with a local breakfast! A day that starts with two breakfasts can't be a bad one, can it? We spent the day with Amin and as the hours went by we realised we made a good decision with hiring this guy. He was funny, full of information of local plants and foods, we tasted many fruits, hiked past two waterfalls and rice fields, learned a lot about culture and we even saw a little chameleon! We finished the day with swimming in thermal pools, a good way to relax after a long day, if nothing special otherwise. After that it was a short ride to Lovina, where we checked into a hotel that Amin recommended.

 

We had planned to rest the next day, but we accidentally haggled ourselves into a doing a dive trip. As soon as we had sat down at the hotel restaurant, a guy approached us, wanting to sell us a dive trip. We said that we just got back from a long tour and wanted to sleep long the next day. However, we looked at the brochures just in case we wanted to go later and it sure looked nice. It was about Menjangan island, probably the most famous dive spot in Bali. We also knew it would be expensive. But this guy wanted us to go tomorrow, because they clearly needed a full boat. We could have considered it, but he asked 90 euros for two dives! That was way too much for us even if the diving was nice. We told him that. We told that we really weren't even planning to go and it was too much for us anyway, so we said that we don't have to dive, we are just happy to relax. But he kept asking, "well how much you want to pay?" again and again. So we said that 25 per dive was the maximum we pay for a dive and there was really no point having this conversation anyway because we wouldn't go up with the price, we didn't even want to dive in the first place. He tried with 75 for two dives, and we were already getting a little annoyed, we just wanted this dude to leave, but then he made a phone call to someone and went "okay", and we, a little bit surprised of what just happened, ended up booking the dives.

The diving was surprisingly good. We were looking for pygmy seahorses and managed to find some! We also saw massive schools of jackfish, huge scorpionfish, nudibranchs and lots of other interesting stuff. There was also a small cave that we got to swim into. The softcorals were beautiful and diving was in the end worth it. We were tired but happy it worked out in the end. In the evening Amin came to visit us and gave us a bottle or Arak, the famous local home made coconut booze. He assured that it was safe, because it was made by a family he knows. He said he is careful with arak and he even knows a guy who died on the cheap stuff. We had no reason to doubt him, so Ben tried a little bit. And he liked it.

Lovina itself wasn't that special, the beach was okay at most and the town itself was on the touristy side but pleasant enough, but what mattered to us was that the sea water wasn't clear so there was not much snorkelling at that moment. We stayed for a few days, since we had a nice place with a pool and wifi, so we did some planning, reading and relaxing. And soon we were off again, this time to Jemeluk.

When we travel in the tropics, we have mostly one thing in mind: the underwater world. Enthusiastic snorkellers and divers, we often choose our destinations based on how good the snorkelling or diving is. And that's why Jemeluk was next on the list. We had heard of Jemeluk Bay being a good snorkelling destination, so we hired a car for about 20 dollars to drive us the 2 hour journey to Amed. Jemeluk is actually a part of Amed, 500 metres away and often mentioned as the same place. And we weren't disappointed! The place kept us busy for a week! First we stayed on the Amed side, just snorkeling off the beach, which was already very nice with lots of fish and the occasional stingray hiding under the table corals. And then we decided to move on to the Jemeluk side and we were amazed! It is a very unusual place, the current sweeping through the protected bay, beautiful hard and soft corals on both sides of the bay and a steep sandy drop off in the middle. 15 metres off the beach the water gets so deep that you only see blue. And one of the best thing is that this brings in an unusual amount of big fishes, coming to clean and feed at the reefs. There is almost everything you might want to see while snorkeling. In fact snorkeling was so good that we decided to leave diving aside. Why pay, when you can just go off the beach with the basic gear and see about the same things? We saw stingrays, scorpionfish, stonefish, a mimic octopus, a bigger octopus of some kind, nemos, unicornfish, triggerfish, surgeonfish and so many things we can't even name them all here. Only thing missing was sharks. We were told they see them occasionally, but we were not lucky enough to see one. But we were extremely happy. This was what we had been hoping for.

But all good things come to an end. We had spent already over two weeks in Bali, and in a week we would have to to drop off our visa extension applications in an office in Lombok, the next island. So reluctantly we decided to move on to Padangbai, our last stop in Bali and the main port for ferries going on to Lombok.

Padangbai was a nice enough place, with a weird beach with the craziest sand we've ever seen. Every step you took you sank very deep, and looking closely we realised why: the sand wasn't actually sand, it was small, perfectly round pebbles of some sort. We never found out why is it like this, but it was funny. We also tried snorkeling in the nearby Blue Lagoon, but it was disapponting. We happened to be there at low tide, and the waves crashing hard on the coral and sharp rocks half a metre below the surface made it kind of dangerous to go out, so we abandoned the plan and just chilled watching lizards for a few minutes before walking back to the guesthouse.

Bali is a beautiful island and what makes it special is the Hindu culture that you can't really find elsewhere. Bali is full of life, culture, temples, music and flowers. But it is also full of touts, rip-off prices, dishonest people and party places. We wanted to give Bali a chance, but it just isn't our kind of place. Don't get me wrong - it's a nice island. But somehow it doesn't feel like real Indonesia, whatever that means. When we think of Indonesia, we think of different things: Muslims, smoking volcanos, deep jungle, orangutans, big lizards, curious locals, beautiful coral reefs and only a few other tourists. So we felt like changing scenery and we booked tickets to Lombok.

 

Pampas

Before we flew back to La Paz we were in the Pampas, the swamps, with the same company we did the jungle trip with. We didn't know what to expect from this area and the 3 days we wanted to stay there, could it be so different from the rainforest? It's only about 3 hours away by car, but we were told to show up in flip flops, as we won't need proper shoes, everything happens in or from the boats they said. Sounded good!

Ready in front of the office in Rurrenabaque, our packpack (we took the same stuff as for the jungle) on the roof and together with an english couple we set off in a taxi. We were told that the road will be pretty bad, so why the taxi? 'It'll work fine' i told myself, this is Bolivia, everything works out somehow. As we drove around the corner, not in sight of the office anymore, the driver stopped and started to work under the open hood of the car, all the tools already prepared. Did he plan to fix his car now, not the night before? It looked like it... He wasn't satisfied with the result and called a friend who showed up with a new battery. Good. We were off again. For 5 minutes, then he stopped again, saying he's sorry and "solo 15 minutes!" After he fixed the car 'properly' we kept going and broke down only two times on the way.

The road started okay, after an hour it got worse and worse and we were shaked, feeling those 3 hours in our bums. On the way we stopped two times for sloths, the driver knew exactly in which tree they live, our first sloths in the wild! Good animals to take pictures of, as they move slower than snails... The nature was absolutely different now, very flat, endless grasslands and pretty dry apart from some small streams and lagoons.

After another half an hour at the gas station (there were roadblocks further up the road and everyone wanted to get his car filled by the first truck who got through) we arrived at our lodge. The organisation here wasn't as good as in the rainforest and we almost missed lunch because no one told us. Afterwards we jumped on the back of a pick up truck with some camping chairs and a boat engine and we drove through some villages to a lake nearby to go piraña fishing and bird watching. At the place where our boat was were many local families doing laundry, standing in the lake and beating their clothes over the wooden tables they made inside the lake.

There wasn't a single boat on the lake apart from ours. The locals, we were told, are afraid of it as the legends tell that there's a huge anakonda in these waters, being responsible for several casualties in the past. Maybe that's why we were alone? After some time along the shore we found a narrow passage into the dense vegetation surrounding the lake. The water was really shallow now and we could see pirañas jumping, catching flies and mosquitoes propably. In the trees and bushes were countless different species of birds sitting, toucans, herons, hoatzins, kingfishers and the usual vultures making circles high up in the sky, we didn't know where to look! We also tried fishing again, i caught several branches, leaves and water lillies, no fish though. Anni managed to catch two, both two small (and i still think it was the same fish) and this saved their lifes. After the fish being fed we headed slowly back, enjoying the sunset, drifting along in the middle of the lake. Perfect finish for today!

The next days we went up- and downstream the river next to the lodge, the water level was absolutely low and therefor all the animals gathered together in less water, the river less wide therefore the animals closer to the boat. Perfect! The excitement of caiman sightings grew smaller after the first 30, we were only looking for especially large animals from now on, as there were so many in the water and on the shore on the sunny side of the river bank. One highlight were the pink river dolphins! First we only saw their clouds of water they produced when taking a breath on the surface, later we saw them playing around and jumping a bit, never more than a head out of water or the fins though. A small lake where 3 rivers meet is their favorite hang out place and if it wasn't too chilly we would've gone in to have a swim with them, despite the pirañas and the caimans (another group went for a swim and they told us they were pretty scared, especially when they saw caimans disappearing in the muddy water, not knowing where it might swim around now). On one occasion we were so lucky to come across a group of squirrel monkeys on a tree overhanging the river. We got so close to them, they could've jumped into the boat if they've wanted to, a real change to their behaving for us as we only saw them high up in the trees before, trying to get out of our sight. Capybaras were also around, drying on the shore after a swim. They're very calm and we could go pretty close without them running away.

Two times we went to look for anacondas by foot. The first try started behind the lodge on a farm's fields. To cut the story short, the biggest animals we saw were pigs, a furious farmer made us take another way back where we had to build (kind of) a bridge out of wood to cross a pond and, sure, we didn't find any snakes. The second go was more successful. First by boat and then by foot in the heat of noon we found a small anaconda (well, the guide did) about one meter long. Before we could get our cameras ready it disappeared in the water. Anakondas are crazy fast! On the boatride before we also had a little accident. We drove quite fast downstream around a tree lying in the river. Just as we turned around we saw another boat heading towards us, full speed. None of drivers made any attempt to avoid a crash, so we crashed. The other boat hit the tip of our boat and we almost fell overboard. Just as i looked up again i saw the tip of the other boat, half across ours, sliding towards me an before i could react it hit me full in my side and my right arm. I flew onto Anni, she got hit by my chair which was absolutely shredded after that. It hurt pretty bad but i could still move everything, so nothing was broken. The tourists on the other boat seemed to be pretty sorry for us by their looks. The only guy that should've been sorry, the other driver, wasn't, and after a few harsh words from our driver he took off. This was a Bala Tours boat. Don't book there, apparently they have quite a lot of accidents and the average age on their boats is around 90 years...

We saw so much more wildlife than in the jungle but if we had to decide, we'd still go to the jungle. All day in a boat, either up- or downstream is a bit boring after 3 days, and after 100 caimans no one's really excited anymore. But don't get us wrong, we were happy that we did see the pampas, too.

 

Welcome to the jungle!

After a short flight to the capital of Bolivia, we landed in over 4000m on La Paz's El Alto airport. It is so high that it needs special requirements for the planes to land in such altitude! The flight itself is pretty impressive, high mountains surround the city and we were able to see lake Titicaca in distance.

We spent 4 days in La Paz, a noisy, busy crowded city. Also the most touristic place we've seen so far in Bolivia. Again we couldn't resist to buy more souvenirs... One day we went to nearby Tiwanaku, the biggest Inca-ruins in Bolivia but with Machu Picchu already in our minds, it wasn't that impressive.

Then, finally we made our way to the airport to catch the flight down to the rainforest and Madidi national park. The cheap airport bus brought us to the terminal where, after trying to check-in at the TAM (Transporte Aéreo Militar) office, we were told that the actual TAM terminal lies next to this. There went our good timing and we rushed over to the right terminal with an overprized taxi...

Our plane was a beautiful old Canadair, and the flight took us down from the altitude of La Paz over high mountains, cloudforest and then finally along the Bení river to a town called Rurrenabaque. The air was thick and humid, a relief for us as we spent the last 2 months in dry, cold mountain air, always gasping for more oxygen...

In Rurrenabaque we started looking for good companies to do our jungle trip with. We read a lot about bad tour operaters that bring tourists illegal into the Madidi national park to avoid the entry fee (wich is a mere 12€) and even companies that bring tourists into a nearby forest and claim it to be the national park. We also heard from a company, it doesn't exist anymore, that took people on hunts on caimans and monkeys and grilled them over a fire!

The second agency we visited was Mashaquipe and we both knew instantly that this will be our operator as it is professional organised with only indigenious people working and those with a huge knowledge about the rainforest with all its animals as they all grew up in villages along the rivers. So we booked a 5 day, 4 nights trip with the mentioned company, starting the next day!

The next morning we left Rurrenabaque by boat and bought our tickets to the Madidi national park in the office across the river. Then we headed upstream the Bení river for about an hour and got our tickets stamped in the check point. Further up the Bení we turned right into the smaller Tuichi river, where, after half an hour we landed at the lodge, the overnight stop for the first night. The lodge is spread out over several terraces into several buildings, a really nice setup, and all the noises from birds, crickets, grasshoppers, we were happy!

Later the same day we drove a little bit further upstream where we took off for our first hike in the forest. Our guide for the 5 days was a guy about our age called 'Ever' and he was just incredible! There's no plant he didn't know anything to tell about, he listened carefully at every noise and smelled different types of monkeys, deer and wild pigs! Those pigs were the first we came across on this hike. He asked if we're up for some action, sure we were, so we ran through the forest to get closer to the pigs. We read that they attack people when they're scared, Ever said that in this case we would have to run like crazy. That's exactly what happened a few minutes later! First we heard just a few pigs cracking the small coconuts, later they almost surrounded us and started running in our direction - we were faster. After the attack we went back and saw them running past us, a scary but beautiful thing to see! Almost back at the boat there were two baby caimans in a small river. Our guide imitated noises of young caimans and, we couldn't believe it, mother caiman left her hideout under the branches and started swimming towards her kids. At the same place, high up in a tree, we saw the biggest toucan in the area. After dinner, on the nightwalk we saw mostly small creatures, the biggest probably tarantulas.

The next morning we took off for a small hike (after 3 hrs we were back in the lodge for lunch...) and we ran a lot again, this time mostly for monkeys, just once after some more wild pigs. The first monkeys we saw were capuchin monkeys, high up in the trees. As soon as they saw us the jumped from tree to tree and we finally gave up running after them as they are just too fast. Later on we listened to a concert of two families of brown howler monkeys, crazy noises we've never heard before. Apart from the monkeys and wild pigs there were wild turkeys, macaws, loros, woodpeckers and many other birds.

After lunch we started our big 3 day trip with the big backpack. On this walk we saw capuchin monkeys again, beautiful macaws and other birds. In the late afternoon we arrived at the campsite where the company has semi permanent roofs out of tarpaul for cooking, eating an sleeping. We washed ourselves inthe nearby river and watched our guide preparing the dinner (which was really amazing, there are just two pans and one fire). After dinner we sat on the table and talked about everything that we might see later in the jungle. Anni, just pointing the flashlight under the table, found a small snake sneaking around our feet and when we started to prepare our sleeping bags for the night we saw a huge spider on the tarpaul that covered the floor (we found out later that this was a banana spider or Brazilian wandering spider which is considered the most venomous in the world!! Our guide didn't know at this time...). Despite this and the hard floor and thanks to the mosquito net we slept wonderful and Ever, our guide woke us up after he prepared breakfast. What a service!

With a little bit of rain we left the campsite, anxious of all the creatures we might see today. Again we found capuchin-, squirrel- and howler monkeys and the usual collection of birds. The second campsite was full of people! What a change after 2 days of just us and the jungle. After lunch we headed to the river, 20 mins away for some swimming. On the path were fresh footprints from jaguars and an ocelot, making us confident that we might actually see some big cats later!

Refreshed and clean we got dirty and sweaty again by climbing up a hill to a Mirador, a lookout with a breathtaking view over the rainforest and the river and different kinds of birds, parrots, loros and macaws gathering for their resting place over night.

This night, after dinner, we got introduced in the art of chewing coca. Ever gave us a handful of dried coca leaves and a short piece of liana. We had to chew the liana first for a while, then put it on the pile of coca leaves. Then he poured a bit of bicarbonate (baking soda) over it and covered everything with another load of leaves. The whole bunch we then had to put in our mouths behind the cheek, not so easy when you try this the first time. After 10 or 15 minutes the bitter taste of the coca disappears and it gets sweet, thanks to the liana which is only for this purpose.

Now prepared for the night we left the campsite on the same path that leads to the beach we visited earlier. The group was bigger than usual but the other guys brought their sleeping bags as they wanted to spend the night on the beach. As always at night we saw plenty of insects and spiders, one of them a huge tarantula. Arriving at the beach, we followed the river upstream to some lagoons or pools where we expected to see caimans. And we did! Just eyes... Every time when we approached them they just disappeared in the water, except one that hid itself under a pile of wood. We then took off our shoes and waded through the black water towards the pile where Ever tried to get the caiman out into the lagoon. Finally it came out and swam into the middle of the lake, a small spectacled caiman about 1m long. We went closer and watched the beautiful animal through the water, just until one moment when Ever looked away and the caiman went for his feet! Luckily he was faster and we went ashore to upload on coca. After a rest we kept walking and saw many footprints of caimans, turtles, capybaras and tapirs but saw none of them, the biggest was a big owl on a bush...

We got up in rain and it didn't stop on our morning walk. So we thought our plan with building a raft and floating down Tuichi river won't come true, but it stopped raining and we started to get the raft together on the shore, just with logs and some cords. The ride was calm, apart from some rapids (the following boat overturned) and we arrived back in the lodge for lunch. In the afternoon we shipped over the river to a lagoon for some piraña fishing and got absolutely wet in a downpour (actually just me, too lazy to get dressed in rainclothes...). We both aren't great fishermen and so we just fed the fishes for a couple of hours, Ever meanwhile catched 4 pirañas which i ate for dinner, absolutely tasty but not much to eat on those bony fishes.

After a last morning walk with howler and spider monkeys it was time to board the boat back to Rurrenabaque and to leave this truly amazing place. We had flights booked back to La Paz but if not, we'd probably still be there, waiting for jaguars...