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Anne drove us to the airport on a beautiful afternoon. We had only our packs - no hand baggage, since we planned to take our packs on as carry on baggage. The Delta Airlines ticket agent decided that they were too big to carry on and had to be checked. In addition, our plane was going to be two hours late leaving, which meant a much tighter connection in Los Angeles. We eventually switched to another Delta plane which was going to be leaving a few minutes earlier; the agent in the departure lounge checked to ensure our baggage could be switched and was assured it had been.
We made our connection comfortably in LA, even having time for a drink in the lounge. We met some people there who were on an expensive Mountain Holidays package taking them to Irian Jaya and Sulawesi - a one week trek in each place.
The Garuda plane arrived at Biak early at 4:45 am, just as it was coming light. Bill Dalton, author of "The Indonesian Handbook" was there to meet the people on the expensive package - he was leading the trip. The baggage was very slow coming off, but eventually, there were only about 6 of us left - and no more baggage coming! Neither of our packs arrived; there were two other people whose baggage didn't come, but they had nothing in common with us - one started in LA, the other in Honolulu. The general belief seemed to be that the baggage had stayed on the plane and would end up in Jakarta. We filled in the missing baggage report form, and asked about missing baggage compensation. We eventually got $30 out of them; we should have got $30 each, but we had made the mistake of filling in only one form for the two bags. They claimed that it wouldn't have made any difference - only one claim when the name is the same.
While we were waiting for the baggage, we had met up with another BC traveller, a highways engineer with the provincial government called Bruce. He was also scheduled to be travelling on to Jayapura later in the day, so we stayed together. Actually, we didn't know what to do for the best - go on to Jayapura or stay in Biak until our baggage showed up. We decided to go on to Jayapura - at least we hadn't been there before and so would have something new to see while we waited.
Since we had about seven hours to wait for the flight, we walked into Biak (the town is only about 30 minutes walk from the airport). By the time we got there, we were ready for a cold drink - even at 7:00 am we were feeling the heat. We sat for a while with a cold pop, then went to the police station to see about getting our surat jalan, the travel permit required for travel to the Baliem Valley. We weren't sure that we would be able to get it in Biak, or even if they did issue them there, whether they would do it on a Sunday, but since we had time to kill, there seemed to be no harm in trying. The people on duty said that the man who issued the permits was at church - could we come back at 2:00 pm? When we explained that that was the time our plane left, they managed to produce him in a few minutes. The photos needed for the permits were in our missing baggage, but he issued them anyway - we wonder if they will be of any use. He was painfully slow typing the permits. After that, we wandered round the market, where Bruce tried to buy some thongs, but couldn't find any big enough, then walked back to the Hotel Irian, across the road from the airport. We had another drink, then sat in the garden until it was time for our plane to Jayapura at 2:10 pm.
We couldn't see a lot from the plane - there was a lot of cloud. When we arrived at Sentani, the airport for Jayapura, we reported our baggage missing again, then set off with Bruce to find a place to stay in Sentani village, an easy 10 minute walk from the airport. We looked at two places before settling on the Hotel Semaru, only open for one week and fairly expensive (it turned out to be the most expensive of our entire trip), but the price was comparable to the other places in town. After checking in and asking the owners if they could supply a towel (they said they would buy one later when the shops opened after the afternoon siesta), we went off to explore the "town" - one main street and a side street extending down to a small market. We found two restaurants which were worth eating in - Mickey's (named after Mickey Mouse who we saw repeatedly in various guises as we travelled), and Virgo, where they had satellite TV. We had early dinner and were ready for an early night.
We were wakened early by the animal noises - dogs and roosters. Breakfast was the standard boiled egg, tasteless bread, foul-tasting margarine, and pineapple jam. We took the bemo into Jayapura to have a look round there. It is an interesting two bemo trip, changing at Abepura, about halfway. The first part runs alongside Lake Sentani.
In Jayapura, Bruce went to the Garuda office to book his ticket to Wamena, which was accomplished without too much hassle. There is not a lot of interest in Jayapura, other than the market; this is a long ribbon-like covered complex along the bank of a fairly grungy river. Once you get inside, you start to wonder if you are ever going to emerge again.
From Jayapura, we took a bemo to the suburb of Hamadi, which was the site of American amphibious landings in World War II. There were supposed to be landing craft and tanks rusting away on the beach but we couldn't find any sign of them. We did find the monument saying "Allied Forces landed here April 22 1942. There was a big fish market, and a lot of "craft/curio" shops. This was the only place in Irian that we saw touristy shops. There was a lot of Asmat tribal crafts from the south of Irian as well as crafts from the hill tribes.
In the restaurant tonight there was a man who was obviously a missionary engrossed in a book "How to Overcome Missionary Stress".
Bruce left for Wamena today. We will keep waiting a bit longer for our baggage, and if it doesn't arrive, we will have to buy some replacement stuff. We checked each plane that came in to see if our baggage was on it. We also had a very difficult radio telephone conversation with Biak to try to find out what was going on. Reception was very poor, and even if the man at the other end had spoken reasonable English, I would still have had a hard time telling what he said.
In the afternoon, after we had complained once again about not having any clothing to change into, one of the Merpati agents said "I go buy you some clothes." Jill, wondering whatever they may buy, promptly replied "I come with you!" So, two agents and the two of us set off by car to go shopping. First we had to go to someone's house, probably to get some money. Then to the shops in Sentani. Obviously, these fellows didn't go shopping very often - they hadn't realised that the shops were closed in the afternoons. They bought us a coke each, then took us for a little drive out of town, but we hadn't gone far when they realised that they were low on gas and we had to go back. We each picked out one change of cheap clothing and a sarong; it came to about 50,000 rp ($25), which I think was just about the money they had.
By now we have just about given up on our baggage, so we headed into Jayapura again to try to buy enough stuff to at least allow us to continue to Wamena. We bought a medium sized pack (a large day pack I suppose), which had a label on which was a copy of JanSport (but it actually said ExSport), sandals, umbrellas, and some more clothing. We soul searched about buying a camera, but eventually decided not to; there really wasn't much choice, and it wasn't a very good place to buy one. Even so, we spent close to US $100 with not much to show for it. We finished off shopping in Sentani in the evening - towels, thongs and such. We were lucky we had our sweaters with us, but we have no sleeping bags, so we don't know how we will go on in the cooler climate of the Baliem Valley.
We were up early to catch the plane to Wamena. The hotel owner offered to drive us to the airport but we were quite happy to walk it - we had done it often enough to check on our baggage. The airport was very crowded - there were two DC9 flights going out as well as our flight. Our plane was an F27, with about 40 seats, almost all occupied by locals. The 50 minute flight was mainly over mountains covered with virgin forest but there were also some obviously swampy valleys with meandering rivers. It is easy to understand why they are having difficulty with the road they are constructing between Jayapura and Wamena. Coming into Baliem Valley, we could see the route of the road. The Valley is very intensively farmed - thousands of tiny plots.
Before we could leave the airport, we had to have our surat jalan checked by the police and all the details written in a big ledger. He wanted to have a photocopy of the surat, and we were supposed to take it back later, but by the time we had got copies and gone back, he wasn't there. Surprisingly, he looked most unlike a policeman - casual clothes and a windbreaker instead of the usual military style uniform.
Even before we left the airport terminal, and on the five minute walk to the Losmen Syahrial Jaya, we saw lots of tribespeople, men wearing just a penis gourd (well perhaps they also had a woolly hat and some form of necklace), and the women just wearing grass skirts. Although the missionaries, and later the Indonesian government, have had campaigns to try to make the people wear clothes (more civilised of course), they have now given up. Apart from anything else, the people can't afford clothes, and they were getting skin diseases because they didn't keep them clean.
Wamena was founded only when outsiders first came to settle in the valley in 1954. Prior to that, the people knew nothing about the outside world. Now Wamena is a fairly normal small town with a population of about 8000. It is at an altitude of 1700 metres, and has a very pleasant climate - generally warm and sunny during the day, and decidedly cool at night. Centrally located is a large and extremely colourful market to which the villagers come from out of town to sell their fruits and vegetables. A lot of others just sit around to chat - there is no employment for them; the few jobs there are (in banks, the post office, teachers, and so on are almost all filled by outsiders. The town has a very neat appearance with small houses surrounded by hedged gardens and lots of familiar flowers - roses, dahlias, marigolds, zinnias.
After we had settled in, we went a walk to the market accompanied by Celias, one of the locals who hangs around the losmen (there are a number of these, and it is hard to determine just who actually works there, since they all do little jobs like bringing you coffee). We bought a nice pineapple but it took two attempts; the first man we tried wouldn't accept coins in payment because they have nowhere to carry them - notes can be tucked away much easier. In fact, the Lani tribesmen who wear short fat penis gourds keep their tobacco and money tucked down the end of their gourd. The Dani, with their long gourds, can't do that. We also got the photocopies of our surat jalan for the policeman at the airport. At the airport, we also checked in with the local Merpati agent who radioed back to Biak, but he didn't come up with any information about our baggage.
When we got back to the losmen, I sat outside and played dominoes with some locals while Jill had a rest. Several exotic looking tribesmen came by and solemnly shook hands, then sometimes sitting down on the floor to play a sort of bamboo didgeridoo. They also sometimes try to cadge a cigarette, but always come out with an enormous smile whether you give them one or not.
We then went for a walk south of the town, across the airport runway along with everyone else. We had just passed a Dani village - circular thatched huts - when we heard someone shout "Denys"! It was Celias, and we had to go into the village and inspect the house he was building. Then we went into his old traditional house to sit on the dirt floor and talk. It is almost pitch dark - there are no openings other than the small door, there is a fire pit in the centre with no chimney opening, so the inside is smoke blackened. They even keep their pig in there with them. He loved to have the opportunity to show us off to everyone else in the compound. We carried on through the fields, eventually coming to the Baliem River, bridge by a long suspension foot bridge. Just by the bridge, there was a new museum compound, and the incongruous sight of a man cutting the grass with a gasoline powered weed eater. As we walked back to town, there were lots of people heading home from the market. We often had to stop to shake hands - the long, gentle two handed handshake of the Dani.
Back at the losmen, we had tea before going back to the airport to check on our baggage. Then had dinner at the nearby Restaurant Sinta Prima with other travellers from the Losmen Syahrial Jaya. We had an hilarious evening, much of it centred on penis gourds. Peter, a Dutchman, has bought a gourd and is planning having his picture taken with "The Chief" to use as his Christmas card. Later, he said "people came from miles around to see a white bum". It got windy and cold during the evening.
We were served the usual boiled egg and two slices of bread for breakfast; this time the bread had a few specks of peanut butter on it, but it was like eating dry bread. You also get a little heap of salt for the egg; the Thai woman, Rin, claimed this smelled of cockroaches and wouldn't touch it, but it seemed alright to us.
After breakfast, we went to the market to buy some food for lunch (carrots, peanuts and water), and then on to the airport to check on our baggage. Still no news of it, but we met a Merpati pilot who said that he would check for us when he got back to Biak. We rushed off to make copies of our "Missing Baggage Reports" and marked them optimistically "Rush to Wamena." His plane was just leaving when we got back (he said he would be back from Agats about noon, but we wouldn't be around then), so I just rushed out to the plane on the tarmac and managed to give the copies to him through the plane window.
We then set off to walk to Pugima in the next valley, crossing a small pass before dropping down into another large valley. There were several settlements in the valley, each consisting of a few family compounds, plus a few regular houses and sometimes a church. Just after we crossed the pass, we met a group of children walking along the trail singing in two part harmony - boys and girls each taking one part. Several times we saw people walking along with a dog or a piglet, both obviously considered as pets. It seemed funny to see someone walking along with a little piglet trotting along behind.
Everyone we met greeted us - and we soon could predict what the greeting would be from the appearance of the people - naked Dani tribespeople would use the Dani greetings ("nyak" for man to man, or "la'uk" when there was a woman involved), clothed Dani or the rare Indonesian would use a Bahasa Indonesia "selamat" greeting. These were also interspersed with "bye bye" (even when you were just meeting someone), and "good morning" (regardless of the time of day).
As we walked up the valley, we had to cross numerous streams and muddy patches, usually with a single thin log as a bridge; Jill wasn't keen on some of these!
When we reached the end of the valley, we started climbing again. We passed several perfectly formed circular craters - from 200 yards to half a mile in diameter. Our guide books gave no information on their origin. There was a parade of people going in the opposite direction carrying planks on their heads. They said they had been walking for four hours from where the wood had been cut in the jungle; it was for the construction of a protestant church. We managed to have quite a conversation with one of the women, in spite of having no language in common.
By the time we got back to Wamena, taking a short cut along the airstrip on the way, we had walked for five hours.
From Vancouver Sun, May 1993
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We set off early with Bruce and Peter to go to Jiwika to see one of the three mummies which are touted as "attractions" of the Baliem Valley. We got a bemo, along with a bare breasted woman, from the market for the 20 minute ride. From where we got off the bemo, it was a short walk along a track to the family compound just outside the village of Jiwika. We were accompanied by a horde of filthy, snotty nosed kids who insisted on holding our hands. Once we entered the fenced compound, we were invited to sit down, before we started on bargaining for a price to see the mummy. In fact there wasn't much bargaining - the price was essentially set at 3500 rupiah, exorbitant by Indonesian standards. The old man, probably the village chief, then carried out the mummy and set it down on a block of wood, squatting behind it to hold it up. It was totally black, supposedly smoked to preserve it, and somewhat motheaten (no teeth), but still wearing its penis gourd. They claim that it is 350 years old.
After the object was duly photographed, we set off along the trail to the salt pond, but we were accompanied by a retinue of hangers on, one of whom would obviously expect to be paid for his unneeded guide service. We backtracked and cut across some fields to Jiwika, losing the retinue on the way. The main path starts from Jiwika, newly built and very obvious. We had to pay 1500 rp each to go up the path, but for some reason they didn't charge for Jill. The new path, still being worked on, only went a few hundred yards, but there was no problem following it as it climbed very steeply through the forest. We still had a couple of small boys accompanying us, but we made it clear that we didn't need a guide, and didn't expect to pay for their "services". It took about an hour to get to the salt pond, a small depression in the rocks filled with grey water. There were half a dozen women standing in it, pounding banana trunk to a pulp. Apparently this is then used like a sponge to soak up the salty water, dried in the sun, and then burned to recover the salt. We couldn't figure why they go through all this hard work pounding the banana trunk with rocks - why not just make shallow ponds of the water and let the hot sun evaporate them? The humidity is low, so evaporation would be quick.
When we got back down again, we went in the La'uk Inn in Jiwika for some tea and found the Mountain Holidays group there. They had just finished their trek and were waiting for transportation to take them back to Wamena. We were able to tell the person who had also had missing baggage that we had seen his pack in Sentani. Only ten minutes later, Pinas, one of the guys who hangs around the losmen, came in and told us that our bags had arrived, and that he had taken them from the airport and put them in our rooms at the losmen. How he knew where we were, in this tiny shack in the middle of nowhere, we'll never know. What a coincidence that both we and the other person discovered that our baggage was safe while we were together in this isolated spot!
We took the bemo back to Wamena and found our bags back at the losmen as promised. Mine had had both compartments broken into (the locked zipper pulls had been broken off) and everything had been gone through, but I couldn't find anything missing. It will be a nuisance not to be able to lock my pack up any more though.
While we were sitting outside the losmen later, someone came by and tried to sell a cendriwasih (bird of paradise), which he had restrained with a piece of string tied around its leg. Quite cruel and illegal, since they are a protected species, but it wouldn't do much good to try to tell him that.
We went to the usual restaurant and treated everyone to crayfish in recognition of our bags having arrived.
We had decided to set off on a three day trek today to the northeast. The Dutchman Peter said he wanted to come with us. We reorganised our belongings so we could leave one big pack behind; we had trouble fitting everything we wanted to leave into one pack. We did some shopping at the market (carrots, crackers, corned beef and water) before getting the bemo in the direction of Pyramid. There were 16 people crammed into a space that would have taken 10 with a moderate squeeze. Jill was knee to knee with a young man wearing nothing but his penis gourd. We weren't sure how far the bemo would take us, because the road was supposedly not passable all the way, and we expected to have to walk at least a couple of hours. The road was very rough, with a number of very rickety bridges, but after about an hour, we arrived in Pyramid.
The village was very neat, with fenced houses and compounds and lots of flowers. There was an incredibly steep grass airstrip dropping away from the road into the valley. Many villages have airstrips like this - they were built by the missionaries to give access to villages otherwise only accessible with difficulty. The main "airline" in this region is MAF (Missionary Air Fellowship). With Pyramid now having a road, bad as it is, this airstrip probably isn't used much. We were expecting to stay at the Mission house, a nice looking house with a big garden filled with masses of amaryllis. There was a group of Indonesians in the garden who insisted on having us in their group photo. The person who came to the door at the Mission House was rather brusque, and said that they were no longer allowed to accept guests - the government had put a big tax on to prevent it. The only place now allowed to take guests was the kepala desa, the village headman, a political appointment almost certainly belonging to the ruling party. So, anticipating a much lower standard (the Pyramid mission is run by Canadians), we went off to find the office of the kepala desa. When we got there, the office was all closed up and deserted. We sat on the grass nearby to wait, and soon had a collection of local men sitting with us to give us a good inspection.
Eventually the kepala desa arrived, and agreed to put us up in his nearby cabin. Our room was almost a storeroom with an antique treadle sewing machine, a lot of old papers scattered around, and new spades and pickaxes under the bed. This was large (I think they expected Peter to sleep on it too, but he took a table), plain boards, with a thin reed mat on it. Everywhere was very dusty. We left our bags, and went off for a walk to explore the area. The layout of the land didn't seem anything like the impression that the map gave. We tried to find the way to the bridge across the Baliem River, and although we walked a long way in the direction it should have been, we never got to it. Occasionally young men appeared out of the bush carrying bows and arrows, although we didn't see anyone with anything they had shot.
By the time we got back to the cabin, it was almost dinner time. We had arranged to have dinner (we thought), but we had no idea what we would get. Soon after we got back, dinner appeared - a big pan of spicy cabbage and carrots and a plate of sweet potatoes, followed by bananas - much better than we expected. It went dark as we were eating (about 5:30 pm), and as usual, the temperature dropped sharply, so the cabin was closed up and the oil lamp lit. The cabin was very simple - two closed rooms (our room was one, the family all slept in one bed in the other one), and the other half was divided by a low partition into a kitchen and a living room. The cooking was done over an open fire in a separate little hut attached at the back. The walls were woven rattan, with rough plank doors and window shutters (no glass). We sat around as numerous people came and went, wearing all manner of dress from wellington boots and a parka to nothing but a penis gourd and a woolly hat. One of them brought a guitar and played that for a bit. We got our New Guinea guide book out and they loved looking at that, almost fighting over it. They made all sorts of exclamations, and even recognised some of the people in it. By 7 o'clock, it seemed really late and soon after that it was clear that we were expected to go to bed. There was no sign of anywhere to wash or go to the toilet, so we made a quick trip out into the darkness.
It rained heavily for much of the night, rattling on the corrugated iron roof. We expect it is going to be heavy walking today. Breakfast was plain sweet potatoes and hot water! Peter went to the little kiosk nearby to buy a small packet of coffee, but the water wasn't hot enough to brew it - it just floated and barely coloured or flavoured the water. Again, no washing or toilet facilities - that just had to wait until we set off and got outside the village. I don't know what the locals did - I never saw anyone doing their business, unlike India where you saw everybody doing it.
Our hosts estimated that it was a seven hour walk to Makki, but we weren't confident of the accuracy of that. The weather was beautiful for hiking - sunny and low humidity, but the road had turned to gumbo after the rain; big mud packs grew on the soles of your boots. The road was fairly good at first, except where it was washed out or covered with mudslides. We climbed steadily most of the day, contouring along the side of the valley with the Baliem River far below. At each side valley, the road made a long detour to avoid losing altitude. Because of our height, the views were spectacular. The road soon deteriorated and became a total quagmire in places. The road was being built with no apparent thought given to drainage, or to the fact that the roadbed was made of highly absorbent clay. Mudslides from above were common, and half the road had often disappeared into the abyss below. In some places, work was being done - digging being done with wooden sticks.
We frequently met locals on the road and had to go through the usual greeting ceremonies every time. We stopped periodically for rests and food. Jill washed her face in a puddle in the road soon after we set off, and later had a full shower under a waterfall at the side of the road. Whenever we met anyone who looked as if they may know, we asked how many hours to Makki, and got a different answer every time, although eventually they did get less. For a long time, the answer was always "dua jam" (two hours). After eight and a half hours, we were finally able to see Makki way down below in the valley, with another 30 minutes of knee pounding hiking down the steep hill.
Someone we met on the way down said he would show us a place to stay, but when we got there it was just a half completed building. We went off to the police station, figuring that they could tell us a place, and we were supposed to go there anyway to show our surat jalan. The police station (a beat up wooden hut) was filled with elderly men sitting on the floor, with some very orderly discussion taking place. We decided that it must be a court case. While we were sitting waiting, a teacher came and offered us accommodation. We had to wait for the policeman to go somewhere in the village and check with someone, then laboriously enter all our particulars in a book.
After those formalities were complete, we went off to the teacher's house near the school. The house consisted of a living room, doorless bedroom and an attached grass floored kitchen, with a fire burning in the middle, and a baby pig running around. There were lots of mouse droppings around! It wasn't clear how many people normally lived in the house - the bedroom had one double bed and one single bed. The teacher seemed to be expecting all three of us to sleep in the double bed, and seemed upset when we made it clear that we were having the mosquito netting screened double bed, and Peter would have the single bed. We couldn't understand why he was upset. Just after we arrived, someone came running from the police station - they had forgotten to stamp our surat jalan.
It took a couple of hours to get dinner ready - they had to go out and buy everything. Meanwhile, Jill wanted a cold drink and went out looking for a store. The little kiosk which served as a store actually did have a few cans of very warm pop at an outrageous price, and we shared one between the two of us. Someone had a shortwave radio which, presumably for our benefit since noone else spoke English, they tuned to "Monitor Radio" (Christian Science Monitor) from the Marianna Islands. The dinner was quite good - white rice, fried noodles, vegetables and pilchards. After dinner, we sat around and tried to make conversation and waiting for the crowd of people who had shown up to disappear so that we could go to bed. Eventually, we got up and went and sat on the beds in the bedroom thinking that may trigger a general movement. Instead, the teacher came into the bedroom and stood there watching us and looking very worried. Again, we couldn't figure out why. In the end, we just started getting ready for bed, and things finally quietened down not long after.
We had planned to set off very early to ensure that we would reach Pyramid in good time to catch a bemo back to Wamena, but when we got up at 5:45 am, there was activity going on and it seemed like they were probably getting our breakfast, so we decided to stay hoping that it wouldn't take the two hours it took to prepare dinner. The teacher got very upset again when he discovered that there was no sugar for the coffee (Indonesians always have massive amounts of sugar in tea or coffee). We assured him that this was not a problem, but I think that he could not contemplate the notion of coffee without sugar, so he didn't bother making any. We finally convinced him that we would like coffee without sugar. Breakfast (rice and stir-fried green beans finally appeared after an inordinate amount of time. We were offered and accepted the services of a porter for 5000 rp for the day, and finally got away at 7:25 am.
It made an enormous difference hiking with me carrying Jill's very light pack and Jill without any pack. Once we climbed the steep hill out of Makki, we made very good time, and completed the hike to Pyramid in only six and a quarter hours compared to the nine hours going up. The sky was clear and it got quite hot in the afternoon. The road had dried up quite a lot, which also made going easier. We fed the porter corned beef and crackers at lunchtime, neither of which he had probably eaten before, but hit obviously wasn't enough for him - he acquired a taro root to chew on. Peter, who was hiking in thongs, developed a big blister on the sole of one foot which he "operated" on at lunch time, which made it worse. He decided to stop and rest a while soon after that, and then proceed slowly, stopping another night on the way if necessary. We felt bad leaving him there, but we had to get the porter to Pyramid in time for him to return home again, and we had no more food. At one point, we were passed by a group of young men who were singing beautifully as they walked.
We had to wait forty minutes for a bemo at Pyramid, but we had a nice shady spot to sit in. When a bemo finally came, the diver tried to get us to charter it, but we naturally refused in no uncertain terms. It was then packed with onions, garlic and people before finally setting off. One of the problems was that a lot of the people only wanted to go to Kimbim, about 5 km away, and the driver was worried about not having a full load the rest of the way, but in the end, he managed to keep it grossly overloaded the entire way, even with people standing on the back bumper and hanging on.
When we got back to the losmen in Wamena, we drank two cups of tea, but stayed thirsty for the rest of the day. We got the worst room at the losmen - we had heard about it before - with two very hard beds. Most of the rooms were taken by Indonesians who sat in the lobby smoking each evening, making it so smoky it was impossible for us to sit there. By the time we had eaten dinner, Peter had appeared - he would have been even sooner but it took a long time in Pyramid for a bemo to fill in the late afternoon.
We stayed around Wamena today and had an easy day of it. We changed money at the bank, and reconfirmed our onward flights - sort of, but it doesn't seem to mean much here. We were told that the flight was at 8:00 am (our tickets said 8:30), and that we must be at the airport by 6:30 am, which seems excessively early given the nature of operations at the airport.
We tried to sit and read and write up our journal, but it was difficult because of the number of people who kept stopping and wanting to have a conversation. One of the people was a sixteen year old boy from Pyramid who spoke very good English, learned in a mission school. In the afternoon, I went and hung around the market to take some photographs. It rained on and off, but only lightly.
After I got back to the losmen, there was a blazing row between a Dutch couple and a taxi driver. The taxi driver had apparently asked for more than the agreed price, supposedly because he had done something extra. The Dutchman, an army captain, was large, a boor and a bully. Instead of just paying the agreed price and walking away, the standard technique for dealing with this sort of thing, he continued to argue, and finished up grabbing the driver and yelling "I'll kill you". It ended up with the police being called, two young policemen arriving on a motorbike, and a long discussion which required endless cups of tea and coffee. I'm not sure what the outcome was, but it provided an hour's good entertainment for the two dozen people who congregated to watch.
We packed up to go trekking again, and managed to cut the weight down quite a bit. While we were walking past the airport on the way to the bemo station near the market, a plane landed which obviously contained some VIPs. There was a line of new Kijangs waiting outside the airport, and a big crowd of feather-bedecked, painted warriors with spears and other accoutrements rushed out to meet it. There was a display of tribal dancing and chanting while the passengers disembarked and were greeted by local functionaries. After it was over, the dancers all jammed into the back of trucks for their journey home.
We picked up some basic supplies before catching the bemo to Uwosolimo (Wosi). We had to get some gas before leaving Wamena - it came from 45 gallon drums, hand pumped into plastic cans before being poured through big cloth-lined funnels into the bemo. Surprisingly for once, noone was smoking. One of the passengers on the bemo had a Christmas tree! The bemo took us up the valley, past Jiwika again. The bemo stopped at the market at Wosi, where a youth (Marcus) promptly attached himself to us. After a quick look around the market, where Jill bought a crochet hook and some twine with the intention of using them as a means of opening up conversations with local women who crochet all the time, we set off up the road. After about 4 kilometres and we had not come to the turnoff I expected, I asked someone if we were on the road to Wolo. We were told no, we should have taken a different road right from the market. Marcus, our self-appointed guide was aware of where we were going but had done nothing to put us right. We backtracked, and got on to the correct route, now a wide road under construction, still followed by Marcus. There were a lot of people on this road heading to and from the market with produce. After a few kilometres of very hot and dusty walking, we came to a side valley at Manda, which I was sure was the route to Wolo, but Marcus insisted that it wasn't - it only went to Bugi and Ilugwa; according to our not very good map, Wolo was between these two villages, but the map wasn't very reliable. We walked about another kilometre along the road bed (the road was under construction the entire way from Wosi), when we came on two old Dani tribesmen. We fed them some biscuits before quizzing them about the road to Wolo, which turned out to be exactly where I expected. After we had backtracked again,we told Marcus that we were most unhappy with him for leading us astray twice, and that he should go back home and leave us alone. He realized the situation and left without a murmur.
From then on, we were walking along a pleasant trail along the banks of the Wolo River, a small, slow-moving river. A couple of men attached themselves to us (as invariably happens - it just seems to be the sociable thing to do, even when you can't hold any form of conversation). One offered to let us stay in his hut, but it was only at Bugi, and we wanted to go on to Wolo; it was rather a dump anyway. There were a lot of limestone cliffs around, and some of the scenery was very reminiscent of Derbyshire. The afternoon was hot, and trail climbed steeply in several places. Just before we got to Wolo, we were met by the "guru", the local schoolteacher who puts people up. Does he go down every afternoon to see if any potential guests are coming up, or had the bush telegraph somehow told him that someone was coming (noone had passed us)? We never found out.
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He took us to his house next to the school and we agreed to stay. We asked about a place to wash - we were hot and dusty - and were given directions to the mandi kali - a stream at the other side of the soccer field. This was obviously the place where people washed themselves and their clothes. I then went looking for some pop to quench our raging thirst, but the one tiny kiosk was pathetically stocked, and certainly didn't have anything as extravagant as pop. Instead, we sat and waited for a while, and then finally asked if we could have some tea. "Soon" we were told. Eventually a jug of hot water and a jar of tea arrived. Once again "Tidak gula" (no sugar), but shortly after, a small child arrived with a new packet. We were told that the little package cost 3000 rp here, compared to 600 rp in Wamena, which is probably already twice what it would cost in less remote parts of Indonesia. We were able to drink our fill and rehydrate ourselves somewhat. Soon after that, dinner arrived - plain rice and a small amount of cooked cucumber (or similar vegetable). The only seasoning was a tiny bottle of ketchup - no salt, no soy, no sambal; tasteless and boring. We saw other people later eating sweet potatoes - we would have really liked some of them, but I am sure they thought that they had given us much superior food, even if it did lack nourishment.
After dinner, we sat by candlelight and made minimal conversation with the guru and two other teachers. We livened things up a bit by letting them look at our New Guinea book. We were finally pushed off to bed about 8 o'clock, although they continued talking for a while longer.
Ten hours on a hard bed seemed a long night. The valley looked beautiful as the sun came over the mountains - floating through the trees, there was a light morning mist which turned golden as the sun hit it. Breakfast was plain rice and plain packet noodles, with no seasoning again other than a small amount of ketchup. There was only lukewarm water to make our coffee from. We had planned staying here for two nights, but the food was enough to make us consider going back; we decided not to, and to continue with our plans to do a day hike further up the valley to Ilugwa.
The guru called some children to show us the way out of the village and on to the right path to Ilugwa. The path climbed steadily, sometimes through woods, sometimes through scrub. The vegetation was quite interesting - a big variety of plants, especially ferns; many of these looked like North American ones but felt much tougher. There were a lot of flowers, including orchids. Many of the trees were festooned with moss and epiphytes. We heard lots of birds, but actually saw very few, notably swallows and parakeets. The only animals you see are pigs (lots of them) and tiny lizards.
Soon after we left Wolo, we came on a fair sized stream and had a good wash - Jill had a complete bath. There were quite a few people on the trail; we are in "Waaaa" country here - no "Nyak" and La'uk". We took it easy on the trail with frequent stops. By the time we reached Ilugwa, the sun was high and it was hot.
Ilugwa was a small village, mainly traditional Dani huts, but with a few more "modern" houses. It was all very neat, with the paths lined with flowers (geraniums, coleus, bloodleaf, and others). When we were leaving Ilugwa, a woman and a small boy were walking along the trail behind us. The woman went into a house compound by the trail, but the little toddler kept straight on following us. We eventually had to stop and wait for his mother to come and take him back; there was no way in which we could communicate with him to tell him to go back to his mother.
We managed to find a small side trail mentioned in the guide book which took us to the edge of an enormous limestone canyon, the walls dropping absolutely sheer beneath us for hundreds (thousands?) of feet. There was a tiny village just visible in the bottom. A big storm came up, blackening the sky and making us hurry up. Although we could see it raining heavily across the valley, we escaped with only a few spots.
Today, when we got back to the teacher's house, coffee appeared very quickly, soon followed by dinner - at 4 o'clock. They were obviously better prepared for us today. Dinner was fried sweet potatoes (excellent), then noodles with vegetables and sardines. Definitely a big improvement over last night. We had finished dinner by 5 o'clock, read until it went dark at 5:30, then sat by candlelight until bedtime. One of the things we looked at was an Indonesian Bible ("Kabar Baik", literally "good news"). During the evening, a woman and child came in to show Jill how to crochet the way they do it. That wasn't very successful, but we had a lot of fun showing them the Irian Jaya book. There was a lot of "Eeeee" and "Aiiii". The whole evening seemed very domestic, sitting around in the candlelight with the women crocheting.
Wolo is almost non-smoking, in spite of the cigarettes on sale in the kiosk. No-one at the teacher's house smoked, and we never once got asked for cigarettes on the trail to Wolo or Ilugwa.
They obviously took our praise for the fried sweet potatoes to heart - a big dish of them came for breakfast, along with moderately hot water for coffee. We had just finished stuffing ourselves on the sweet potatoes (we couldn't even finish them) when a dish of noodles, reasonably flavoured and seasoned, arrived, so we had to make a reasonable impression on those, full as we were.
We were heading back to Wamena today, and the guru said he was going there too, so we thought that we were going to be stuck with him all day, but we were ready before he was, and he didn't catch us up. It was easy hiking - mainly downhill or on the flat. We stopped at a stream for a wash. There were lots of birds singing, but again we didn't see many. As we were passing one small village, an old man, when he saw us yelled to his daughter who quickly came running with a plastic bag of small cloth-wrapped packages. Unwrapped, they revealed shell necklaces. We didn't want any, but we had a pleasant little conversation and picture-taking session - perhaps one of the prize pictures of the trip with this almost naked man with his arm around Jill, and the end of his penis gourd almost touching her chin! Very friendly and congenial people.
As we were walking back along the road part, we bought three round golden cucumbers for 100 rp from some women sitting by the road - most refreshing, and far cheaper than any drink, if there had been anywhere to buy a drink. As we approached Wosi, an old woman came up to us, scrabbling in a plastic shopping bag. She eventually found what she was looking for - some fossils. Does she carry these around with her all the time on the remote chance that some traveller will come by? The locals certainly wouldn't be interested in spending any of their limited funds on fossils. There was a bemo waiting at Wosi, and was ready to leave as soon as we got on. Marcus was waiting there, and had the nerve to come up and ask us for 1000 rp.
The bemo, which would have accommodated perhaps 10 people with reasonable space (I was going to say comfort, but it was long past that), contained nineteen people, and two of the people on the back seat had pigs on their laps. Jill was sitting next to a woman with a small girl who was fascinated by us, constantly touching Jill. The woman quite unselfconsciously breast fed the little girl on the way. When we got to Wamena, we bough a nice pineapple from the market, which was so juicy, we had to eat it in the bathroom back at the losmen. We got the best room again - the same one we had had at the beginning before we went off to Makki. We went to the Hotel Nyak for dinner, but it was quite a bit more expensive, and not much better than our usual spot. The dining room was enormous, and there were just the four of us sitting at one table.
Celias was round at the losmen after dinner proudly showing off his all new outfit - shirt, trousers, socks, runners, even sunglasses. He rattled off what he had to pay for everything. He was complaining about people wanting to pay him in cigarettes for things he did for them when he didn't smoke.
First task today was to go to the airport to make sure we were on the flight to Jayapura tomorrow - we weren't, but they put us on (numbers 37 and 38 out of 40 spaces). We were again told we must be there for 6:30 am for the 8:00 am flight - lucky it is only five minutes walk from the losmen.
Today was Sunday and Wamena was very quiet this morning - the market almost deserted, but lots of dressed up people heading for church. Some of the little girls were in very fancy frilly dresses. We went to the bemo station to catch a bemo to Hetegima, from where we planned to walk to Kurima. Once we had got through all the drivers who wanted us to charter, it became clear that no bemos went on Sunday along our route; most routes seemed to have greatly reduced service. This surprised us, since we've never experienced this in Asia before - a real sign of the Christian influence. We went back to the losmen to report to Peter and Burke who were also planning to take a bemo south to Hetegima to start an overnight trip. They eventually decided to charter, and we went along with them and just paid the regular fare to them. The route was just a single lane cart track through pleasant farmland. The road went as far as Sugokmo, where the bridge had collapsed and been replaced by a pedestrian suspension bridge. It was a very pleasant one hour walk to Kurima along a grassy track carefully lined on both sides with rocks and decorative plants (geraniums, marigolds, coleus, bloodleaf and others). The valley was much narrower here than in Wamena and further North, with the sides rising steeply on both sides. There was an enormous dried up river bed to cross, with a bridge over the active stream in the middle. The bridge must get washed away every time the river gets in spate from heavy rain. It will be a long time before the road goes past this point.
The only activity in Kurima was around the church. We had a snack, then after a quick look around, we set off on the road back towards Wamena, wondering whether we would be able to get a ride, or whether we would have to walk all the way (according to Lonely Planet about six hours). Before we left Wamena, I was quite confident that it would not be a problem to get a ride, but after we had seen the road, I was less sanguine. Near Sugokmo, we picked up a teacher from Timor who was teaching Bahasa Indonesia in the school at Hetegima. We managed to have a fairly reasonable conversation (he had an Indonesian - English dictionary). He took us to a friend's house where we had some tea. This man was also a teacher who taught physics and biology in the SMA and came from Flores. We finished up walking all the way back to Wamena, but it only took four and a half hours including stops.
In the restaurant, we were talking to a man from Northumbria who was an animal husbandry expert who had lived in the Baliem valley for five years. He told us that there was a major tribal battle as recently as 1988 right in Wamena, with 19 people killed and a lot of houses burned down. He also said that he doubted that the road to Jayapura (under construction for several years already) would ever be finished - the tough part through the swampy lowlands hasn't even been surveyed yet.
We also heard something more immediate and disturbing. One of the other travellers there had a shortwave radio, and when we said we were leaving tomorrow for Timor, he told us that the Indonesian army had attacked a funeral in East Timor, and that up to 100 people had been shot dead, including a New Zealander. An American journalist, although wounded, had managed to get out with the news, otherwise it would probably never have been reported. It looks like we East Timor, which was only reopened to outsiders in 1989 and is one of our main objectives, will likely be closed to us.
We packed up ready to leave tomorrow, and had trouble getting everything into our packs with the extra stuff we had had to buy. We will be glad when we get to Kupang and can send a parcel home with our sleeping bags, which we won't need any more, our sweaters, as well as the extra things we had to get.
