38 passagemaker.com July/August 2018
don’t kill baleen whales since their legendary ancestors arrived
here on the back of a blue whale.
Whaling History
Today whaling in Indonesia is often viewed with horror by
outsiders. However, in Lamalera the annual take may be only
20 animals, sometimes none. In the 1970s the World Food and
Agriculture Organization sent in a Norwegian with a powered
boat to show the village how to catch more whales. His success
overwhelmed the rural economy, the barter value of the catch
declined, and the villagers suffered while carcasses rotted on
shore—a lesson not to upset the traditional sustainable economy
of remote places.
The terraced streets of Lamalera cut into a steep mountain
hill. Over fences made of whale bones I could see women weaving
ikats, fabrics celebrated among folk-art followers. From up the
road came the sound of banging: a new boat under construction.
A wiry shipwright with an adze was hewing slabs of timber into
precisely fitting notched planks; aside two elderly men chiseled
wooden pegs for plank fasteners. They would insert the ribs later,
each lashed to stubs carved by adze on the inside of the planking.
The visit to Lamalera took us back centuries.
Natural Wonders
Indonesia suffers from extreme population density. The country’s
260 million people span 6,000 islands, but the majority live on
just three: Java, Bali, and Sumatra. Bali was both a delight and
instructive nightmare. For yachts, Benoa, the main harbor, has
a marina—the first and the only one we saw. A short drive away
lies Ubud, an ancient town of tightly stitched villages, temples to
the Balenese Hindu gods, the sacred Monkey Forest, and ancient
burial grounds. The earth of the burial grounds is recycled when
cadavers are exhumed for bone cleaning, final cremation, and
disposal in the sea. Fanged moss-green monsters and statues
of female warriors with clubs, their bulging eyes furious, guard
family compounds. The drive to Ubud calls for nerves of steel.
Throngs on motorbikes join the free-for-all road madness, racing
left, right, and against the traffic stream, blissfully ignoring rules
and the likelihood of broken necks.
As Whale Song headed along the east coast of Bali, which
is dominated by volcanic Gunung Agung, tourists vanished as
black grit and gravel replaced sandy beaches. Hundreds, if not
thousands, of graceful outriggers straddled every flat piece of
the shore. At dawn they would launch into fish-rich seas where
the Indian Ocean, loaded with nutrients, pushes north into the
western Pacific.
Besides the riches underwater, the islands have some other
startling wildlife. If you fancy a brush with man-eaters, head for
Komodo National Park. After diving with grand manta rays, which
banked through blizzards of plankton, we anchored inside the
deep Rinca Island Channel with its five-knot currents. At dawn a
movement on the beach caught my eye—a lizard-shaped Komodo
dragon, about nine feet long, its head swinging, foraging. Faced
with such a photo op we rushed the dinghy in and grounded in the
shallows. The beast, alerted, flicked its forked tongue toward us,
tasting. Were we young, tender, edible? He then marched straight
into the sea. Komodo dragons may not dive but they easily swim—
the good old Yamaha hadn’t run so fast in a long time.
In recent years yachts have been flocking to Tanjung Puting
National Park abutting the Kumai River and port on the south
coast of Borneo/Kalimantan. In the park’s nature reserve, we
humans could hobnob with orangutans, our distant relatives.
Camp Leakey was established by Dr. Biruté Mary Galdikas, a
Canadian primate researcher, to take care of abused or abandoned
pet apes. But in a short time, totally wild orangutans from the
deep forest discovered the handouts of choice bananas. To reach
the place hidden in the bewildering maze of creeks, our yacht’s
owner chartered a klotok, a roofed wooden boat, with crew, a
cook, a guide, and mosquito nets to sleep under for two nights.
Off the main tributary we slipped into a tunnel of a flooded
forest. The scene turned wild; our captain swerved around two
proboscis monkeys doing the breaststroke across the stream.
Other monkeys were flying between trees. Loud grackling calls
above revealed a couple of startlingly shaped hornbills on the
wing. In the forest “orang” infants draped over their mothers as
they all rode down trees and indulged in upper-level acrobatics
to our delight.
The immense area of Indonesia includes some 17,500 islands.
Thanks to complex geography, this enormous wild territory
and its ocean remain open to those who seek a natural, less-
developed world. And visits to populated centers add thrills and
the surprises of different cultures. On the way westward down
river from the last stop in Indonesia in Pontianak, Borneo, the
bow plowed a muddy furrow for 10 miles to the blue sea as we
discussed coming back to see places we missed. QA massive Napoleon wrasse keeps us company on
a dive in Raja Ampat.