Namaste Travelling!: Indonesia - Sulawesi

The lush jungles of Sulawesi

After Sipadan it was time to leave Borneo L and head back into Indonesia and to the island of Sulawesi! Our first stop after a horrendous connection in Jakarta was Manado and we arrived having had no sleep and struggling to stay awake. We were heading to Tangoko National Park and our guide Iwan came to meet us from the airport at 6am and drive us to the National Park about 2 hours away. The first day we literally slept all day, waking only for lunch and then again for dinner. So we were fresh and ready for our early morning trek the next day! We set off at 6 armed with binoculars and cameras in search of birds and animals and once again we weren’t disappointed…

The butterfly's were often huge

Before long we had tracked down the family of Black Macaques (49 in total if I remember correctly). Black macaques are endemic to Sulawesi so quite special to see and very entertaining to watch! They came very close and didn’t seem to be phased by human presence in the slightest. We followed them down to the beach and then watched a rather brave dog decide to take the whole group on!!It was a game of nerve and they took it in turns to chase each other…first the dog chased one of the monkeys – biting him on the bum!! And then the monkey chased the dog – scratching him on the face. Then they just stood opposite each other, the dog against the group waiting to see who was going to make the first move. At one point the dog retreated and we thought he’d given up but before long he was back to fight some more. We moved on, this time in search of another endemic species to Sulawesi – the unusually named red-knobbed Hornbill. We were lucky to be there whilst the young were still in their nest and relying on the food brought by the male hornbills. We lay on the forest floor waiting by the nest for the hornbill to return…after about half an hour he arrived and he was amazing!! So big and so beautiful! You can hear the hornbills coming a long way off because the wings are so noisy but it’s rare to get such a good viewing unless it’s nesting season.

After 6 hours of walking we stopped for lunch on the beach, exhausted and ravenous! Then we spent a couple of hours swimming in the sea and sunbathing before continuing our trek. We headed on through the forest and came to a huge strangler fig that had completely killed the tree it was strangling leaving behind a huge natural climbing frame! It was amazing! We both started climbing but after weighing up the consequences that falling from the top would have on travelling decided not to go right to the top!

On the way back we also saw some western Tarsias in a tree…apparently they are always there and come out at dusk. They were really cute and quite funny looking with big wide eyes and a permanently startled look. We also managed to see the illusive Cous Cous – a marsupial that lives right up in the tops of the trees.

We did two days trekking and managed to see almost everything we were hoping for plus lots more! Our guide was brilliant, organizing everything for us from transport to accommodation and was also very knowledgeable about the wildlife. We would definitely recommend him to anyone planning a visit to Tangoko! - check out his website - http://tangkokowildlife.wordpress.com/contact-as/

Red-knobbed Hornbill

Western Tarsier

We decided to travel back to Manado the local way and got a shared car to the nearest town. Unfortunately we were sitting on the back row of the people carrier behind an Indonesian family who were obviously not used to travelling by car. Within 5 minutes of getting in the car both the mother and child were being sick out of the window…at least some of the vomit went out of the window the rest came flying into the back seat and all over me and Mike!!We were on our way to meet Mike’s brother and friends and so had put on the only clean clothes we had left (and been saving specially). Laughing at the horrendousness of the situation as we wiped vomit off our faces with loo roll, we frantically looked for some plastic bags. Luckily we had two and we quickly thrust them into the hands of the family in front just as they were preparing themselves for round 3! Fortunately the journey wasn’t too long and within about 10 minutes we were back in the fresh air looking for our onward bus. Two busses and a short walk later we were in Manado again and heading to meet Adam (Mike’s brother), Paz(Adam’s partner) and Laura(their friend).