TARANTULA VS BUS (ENG)

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  Balikpapan, East Kalimantan, Indonesia
Thursday, November 18, 2010

 

When do you think you risk your life more: when you go during the night into the dark dark rainforest in Borneo, searching for turatula spiders or when you take a bus ride from one city to another? Well, we can tell you, the second. It was worse for my heart at least.

The driver drives like crazy! After i survived the public transport in Ghana, i tought i will survive everything now, because there they drove faster, in a more broken car, on a road who is worse, with more people in the bus, with a motor who was always overheated. But now we were in the mountains and the hills were quit steep, besides that it was raining very hard. But the bus driver does'nt seem to care if we survive the travel or not. He just wanted to be there very quick.
Well, if we would have made and accident i would have fallen very softly one a thousand cockroaches! too bad that a few of them escaped during the travel..

They have such another level of responsability here. They dont seem to care about this kind of risks in traffic. Neither about the mess in their country. Broken bridges, broken machines next to the road, garbage on the street everywhere. Its nobodies responsibility it seems.

Arrived at the end of the bus trip, we took a boat for one hour, to arrive in Kutai National Park, an old rainforest. During the way we saw that lots of rainforest is already chopped. Thats too bad, its all replaced by banana plantages.

The boat took us to our nex house for 2 nights. It was a house in the jungle from wood.We were scared for what we are going to find there, because we took a very low budgettrip, and lots of touroperators told us that is was not possible for that amount of money. But it was quit ok. The beds were 2 'matrasses' on the floor and a musquitonet. We had a guide for in the jungle and a cooker, so that was nice.

Borneo seems to be increadibly expensive, because there is a lot of oil, especialy on the east were we are. So people who work for the oil companies are rich and dont care to spent 2 million rhupias (which is about 200 euro) for 1 night in a simple hotel, and backpackers have them as concurence.... Daytrips costs easily 100 euro per day, and tours on the river or into the jungle cost about 500 euro for a fex days. So out of our budget! Thats why we went to Kutai NP, its not a very touristic place, its a little bit too much back to basic for lots of tourists i think. But affordable for us.

We left for the first trek before dinner. That was beautiful, but we didnt see any orangutans yet unfortunately. Than our trip to find turantula spiders! Because they are actif in the night we left in a black night. That was already scary in itself, bcause in this park there are also python snakes and sun bears. And that were the anymals we were not looking for, especialy in the dark. Our tuff guide went just on his flipflops, so naked feed, that give me some confidence :)

We saw the turantula nest (a whole in the ground) and waited for the spider to come out. But i was afraid, because how did we know for sure that he was IN?? What if he already went out and he was just walking between our feet and we were all shining our lights on the nest??

But anytime soon, he showed his first feet and his eyes. Those were big! One feet was about 5 milimeter big and longer than a finger, wow! Just to be sure i asked what we had to do if he bite us, and than it was just to make sure that you get to the hospital as soon as possible and get the anti serum. mmm.

Than he came out all! And he was even bigger than his first feet made us think. Finally he didnt like the paparazi in front of his house and he went back in again, and we continued our walk. watching every step...

We survived and came back to the house. There were 2 other toerists from Hong Kong and they did see orangutans, making their nest for the nights. They make a nest everyday on another place. If we would leave early the next morning we could see them. So we did, after a great sleep on a wooden floor... At 6 we were back on treck again. And we found the orangutans very fast. Because they are real wild orangutans, they dont feed them, i thought they would hide or run away if they see us, but they stayed in the tree next to us. It seems that they know that humans are not a threat for them in this park and that we cant climb trees :)

There were 2 mamas, each with a baby of a few months old. Well the pictures will show that this was very impressive i think.

We stayed 2 nights in the wooden house, and did 4 trecks. We saw the orangutans only once, but it was worth it. We left again by boat and by dangerous bus. In the evening of 19 nov we were back in Balikpapan, eastcoast of Borneo.

　

Next question about the traffic: how many children do you think you can have, if you still want to transport your whole family on 1 motorcycle (without the thing you can put on the side of a motor) ?

Well, 1 is no problem at all, you dont have to do anything, you dont even have to buy it a helmed. The second one is also not difficult. One in front, than the dad who drives the motor and 1 kid between mom and dad. For a third one you need to practise you balance a little bit, because this one has to go on the mothers knees. And most of the time the mother is also sitting with 2 legs on 1 side, because she wears a long skirt. A fourth one is impossible we think, thats wat we think at least, but we are still looking around on the street to find 1 family with 4 kids on 1 motor.


Marloes
　

　

　

　

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