Day 14 - Walkout 2

I saw the doctor first thing in the morning and he gave me the all clear. Just as we were packing to leave a lady from accounts came in with a bill almost 5 times more than I had been expecting - obviously all those I had been speaking to before had gone home by now and had obviously been wrong in the estimate that they provided. 

We went to a local ATM but unhelpfully the maximum that they would allow per card per day was about $150 so that was not going to work. The accounts people immediately called the rather aggressive mine security who said that we could not leave until we paid - I was about to start an argument on the legality of holding someone in such a way but he said he was busy right then but would be free a bit later and we could meet then to solve the problem as he had helped people in the past. I went back to Gus to break the news but he had power and a mobile phone signal for the first time in a while so was happy hanging around for a bit. 

Shortly after a security guard turned up saying he was here to give me a lift to go and meet his boss to sort out the payment so I headed off with him. Then in the parking area we met another security guard who asked where my friend was. I said that he did not need to come as it was my medical bill and I would sort it out. He then said no, where is your friend? He must come as well. This was when I realised that things were becoming more complicated again. So we went back to get Gus and then off to the Security office - we were rather concerned at leaving our bags behind but were still under the impression that his would be a shortish meeting and then we would come back for lunch before heading off for the midday bus. 

When we got to the security office it turned out that the boss was out somewhere and would be back in between 20mins to 1.5 hours. So we just sat, waited and carried on catching up with emails etc. 

Finally the chap arrived and we started chatting. We knew that we were not going to get (and to be honest should not expect) a warm reception but things really changed when he heard about our efforts to be honest and follow protocol as far as we could - well beyond what was reasonable given the delays and the conditions. Most people just head onto the haul road and try to bribe their way through the mine. Still he made it clear that we were not going to leave until the bill was paid and started telling us about the last group who had had to sleep on the floor of the security office for four days until the bill was paid in cash. He launched straight into his suggested method to resolve the problem which again headed off the discussion about the legality of the situation. We called the agent for our trip who agreed to transfer cash straight to the hospital and we could then pay him back later - once the hospital had the money they would call the security guard and he would arrange for us to get on the next bus back to Timika.

 

Once that was all in motion the security chap, who was naturally very concerned about what had happened whilst we were on the mine, asked us to write a report on what had happened so he could look into it - non-employees walking around unsupervised is one of the worst situations for a mine. He said that we would stay in the room until he took us to the bus and seem surprised to find out that our bags were still back at the hospital. He then started to lecture us on the risks involved in climbing Carstenz. The local tribes are in a constant state of on-off conflict with each other and the mine (with the last one turning into armed violence at times - the mine has spent $80m putting Kevlar on its vehicles to protect them from gunfire) and it would be very easy to get unintentionally mixed up in that. Additionally, there are no support or rescue services on the island and it would take a long time and a lot money for any foreign organisation to bring the equipment required for any form of rescue and lastly there were only a few helicopters on the island, these were all owned by the mine and in any case the weather was usually too poor for them to fly and even if they could fly there is no space in the jungle for them to land. Whilst there was a certain amount of bravado and enjoyment of telling us how poorly prepared he thought we were, there were some valid points and risks that I don't feel have been addressed by the tour operators providing trips here. Things can go wrong pretty quickly in the jungle and in the absence of any realistic chance of a quick extraction what is the plan? It may be the case that there isn't one, which is fine if people are made aware of it and accept the risk. Focussing on obtaining travel insurance is misleading as it indicates that emergency medical evacuation is possible and you just need to be able to pay for it! 

 

He went off to his meeting, Gus went back to the hospital to get our bags whilst I wrote the report. The police then turned up and spoke no English so everything was done via some random person in the office who walked past and happened to speak a bit of English - all rather worrying. There seemed to be an issue over paperwork so I showed them my permit to climb the mountain (perhaps it was more than that but I was never sure exactly what the piece of paper was, everything being in Indonesian) and that seemed to be satisfactory. The policeman then decided that he wanted to search our bags which Gus had just returned from the hospital with. These had been unsupervised for a while and I started to get really worried that either something had been or would be planted or the strong drugs that we were on for our respective conditions were covered by some greyness in the legislation on narcotics. I made sure that someone else from security was present to prevent a plant (or at least make it harder) and then got worried when the police patted a couple of the bags very softly and then went to a specific pocket of my rucksack and thought 'here we go and isn't it lucky that I have been dropping in the fact that the British Embassy know about us'. In fact there was nothing new in there and he barely looked at what I pulled out. The same happened with Gus' rucksack and then the policeman smiled happily at us, said thank you very politely and off he went. 

 

A bit later the security officer came back and asked us to sign a form releasing the mine from any liability to us. This did not seem an issue but I got a bit concerned when the first page I looked at covered the treatment of trespassers - we had made sure that we had got permission to proceed at every stage and therefore could not be considered trespassers. However this document turned out to be just the mine's policy towards all non-employees / contractors and the release statement did not have such concerning language.

 

All of a sudden the room went quiet as some lady walked in and the security officer as well as his apparent No 2 were extremely deferential. We had no idea what was going on or who she was but realised that something serious and unforeseen was happening. It turned out that she was the local chief of police - she looked nothing like that at all - and so we smiled at her very nicely and said hello. There was a bit of a conversation in Indonesian and then she got out a piece of paper and spent a while hand writing something which we were asked to sign - she even had her assistant produce her official stamp for each document for me and Gus. This was again a bit ominous but everyone seem pretty relaxed - we were keen to keep everything light and friendly as we appeared very close to extracting ourselves from this mess but at the same time it is never a good idea to sign a document that you do not understand. The document was about 10 lines long and all that people could explain was that the document stated that we had arrived at the security office at about midday and would be leaving at about 3pm. This was a) not true as we had arrived well before that, b) a lot less than the 10 line would indicate and c) an utterly bizarre document for a local chief of police to come down and handwrite. Anyhow, the security officer was telling her how we had complied with everything the mine had asked from us and we had had approval from the head of the mine to be released and the document did indeed contain our names and quite a bit of information from our passports along with what appeared to be the times discussed and so with a bit of trepidation we signed the documents. Everyone seemed happy with this and there were big smiles all round. Following this everyone sprang into action to get us onto the 4pm bus - its was still only about 3pm and again seemed a little strange. We were driven to an area with a number of the armoured off road buses and put onto one of them. The 4pm bus then pulled off at 3:30pm and with this bizarre piece of efficiency we were on our way back to freedom!!

It turns out that I had managed to develop patellar tendinopathy - basically the tendons holding my patellae in place were damaged and swollen which meant that they hurt when I moved my leg but also the ones in my right knee were so badly damaged that they were not holding my patella in place so it was floating around in my knee damaging the rest of the soft tissue there.
The main cause of all this seems to have been the muscle wastage that I have suffered whilst being on all these expeditions this year so I now need to get some leg exercises in before the next expedition.