Days 3 & 4 – Kakaban Island and Sangatta River, Indonesian Borneo      

I’m sitting with my hair twisted into a bath towel, another wrapped around my body, an empty glass of Tiger beer on my desk, and I’m grinning ear-to-ear unable to do anything at the moment but write about the experience I just had.

Briefly, we took all the passengers in 9 zodiacs up a remote river in Eastern Kalimantan.  Nothing but a primitive fishing village built on stilts at the river’s mouth.  A monoculture of salt-tolerant Nypa palms surrounded us for the first fast miles of the river taken on a full plane like we were an armada descending on the moon.  The further upriver we went, the more wildlife we started to see.  A brilliant blue kingfisher, a pair of sea eagles, a monitor lizard high up in a tree that scurried down the trunk and disappeared into the murky brown water, long-tailed macque monkeys – just one or two near the shore – then a grey leaf monkey leaping from one tree to a precarious perch in another nearby.  And finally, the trifecta – proboscis monkeys.  Big males with giant honkers and fat bellies along with smaller females were leaping from branch to branch completely overwhelmed by the fleet of pointing cameras and gasping tourists.  The mirror-still waters of the river unfolded behind us as the boats went further and further into the maze of oxbows.  As the light grew darker the silhouettes of monkey troops in emergent trees, ready to nest for the night, started to pop out against the flat white sky and my boat, alone for a brief time was able to get an audience with a troop of proboscis monkeys too curious to be scared.  A large male leaned out of the tree, not 20 feet overhead and checked us out with his head bobbing repeatedly like an old man awoken in the middle of the night by some new fangled gizmo.  We were so close that the photos taken by guests in the boat will need red-eye reduction.  I was shaking; literally shaken by the moment. 

So that was today.  Yesterday, we were at Kakaban Island, a raised atoll with a semi-fresh water lake in the center.  I was astounded by the deep green of the island’s vegetation.  Tall stilt-legged Pandanus trees and massive buttress rooted trees were predominant and a solitary hardwood pier extended out from the beach.  

Climbing up 45 steep and widely spaced stairs, walking across a boardwalk spanning an ancient coral reef ridge and down another 40-odd stairs on the other side, brought us to the interior lake.  The lake is loaded with four species of jellyfish that have evolved largely without stinging cells.  The crystal clear water rests on a fine silt bottom and the slightest disturbance will bugger the visibility for days.  I never had a chance to swim in the jellyfish lake, but the coral reef on the outside was phenomenal.  Close to 100% live coral cover and more species and abundance of fish than I’ve ever seen.  

I had 45 minutes to snorkel by myself before the guests landed on the island and that was enough to keep me smiling all day.  Our expedition leader was lucky enough to swim for about 15 minutes with a broadclub cuttlefish.  He said he’s waited 25 years for that opportunity.  I wish I’d seen it, but the video of the cuttlefish using a mesmerizing patterning to put its prey into a trance was pretty intense. 

Not a bad two days.  I’m a lucky shit.