Day 4 - Transfer to Sugapa and start to trek into the jungle

Up early to get the morning flight further into the jungle. The flight could leave at any time from 6am so it is the usual case of 'hurry up and wait'. The determining factor is the weather - we are flying in a 12 seater with no radar etc so the pilots am only fly when they can see for both take-off and landing - given the jungle / rainforest is prone to mist and cloud such windows are small and don't last long. The airport is the usual ramshackle buildings full of arguing locals with us foreigners very obviously getting preferential treatment. Luckily today the weather is not that bad so we take off at 7am.

 
The flight is thankfully very smooth but we can't see a great deal to begin with given the amount of cloud but this is lifting towards the end.

 All of a sudden we start to dip towards the crest of a mountain - without a runway in sight there is a bit of concern in the plane but the pilots seem perfectly happy. Then as we approach the crest a runway appears just the other side of it. This is not that much less alarming as the runway appears to be really rather short with a large drop at the end of it. Thankfully the plane has pretty decent breaks and with only a bit of screeching and bumping we come to a safe stop - having successfully avoided the warthogs that seem to live there!

The airstrip is on the very edge of the town and you would never guess that 100,000 people live nearby. This seems to be the poor end and there is the usual group of people looking for portering work as well as a lot of kids just hanging around - even more so when people realise that foreigners are on the plane!

 

 

Our guides head off to organise the porters whilst we wait in the airport building. The chap running it is from the main island Java and so is pretty different in both appearance and outlook to the Polynesian locals. He is very unimpressed by their work ethic or, to be more accurate, absence of one. Although he seems pretty happy and smiley I don't get the impression he is too happy here - a bit of a worry (for him) since he is three years into a five year rotation. 

It is pretty tough to work out if anything is actually happening but each time we ask the guides, they seem to think that progress is being made although the locals still seem to be pottering about, chatting, smoking and chewing and spitting their betel.

After about 3 hours we head off on the back of motorcycles - something I am really not looking forward to. We are carrying our packs and presumably are quite a bit larger than most if not all passengers they have had before. In addition the road has steep ups and downs and is in very poor condition. I also end up with the boy racer who overtakes the others on blind corners and goes far too fast into every corner meaning that we usually end up on the slippery gravel on the outside of the bend. After about half an hour we get to the end of the road and my forearms and stomach muscles are exhausted from gripping so tightly.

Our couriers

Over the next 10 to 15 minutes, the rest our entourage turns up. In addition to 5 guides ( UK, Indonesian, local Indonesian and one from each of the two local tribes (Moni and Dani)) numerous porters, cooks and some kids who just seem to be following us, we also have one policeman, two soldiers with machine guns and another armed security man. There also happens to be a couple hanging around who have a warthog with them; perhaps they are with us and bringing along the celebration supper for summit day?

Our growing retinue

After a while and some more negotiating, we start to walk. Not further along the track but off the side down a steep and slippery slope. This is the first time I have walked in anger in my new wellies and unfortunately I don't seem to have gauged the grip well as I manage to slip and fall twice in the first couple of minutes. Nothing too serious I hope but I seem to have jarred my knees and have a couple of angry looking cuts that will need watching over the next few days as it is easy in jungles for them to get infected. Things smoothen out after that, both on terms of the terrain and my experience with the boots.

We are trekking at about 2,000m and even though we are only 4o from the equator it is not that warm out of the sun. The sun is very strong so sunburn remains a risk - I am trying the P20 all day sun tan lotion to get round my usual reluctance / omission to apply it; will be interesting to see how it works.

While the Indonesians seem to be very keen to help and get genuine pleasure from it (pretty much all the people we have met or come across so far have been wonderful which has really contributed to our enjoyment of the country) there is apparently a very different attitude on this island where the people just want money but don't really want to do anything for it. We start to see this in that there are some ongoing issues with the porters but also the locals have set up road blocks every now and then and we have to pay them to get past - only in a very few cases (and none that we have seen as yet) can it be claimed that they carry out any maintenance that would justify it.

After about an hour and a half we go past some school buildings that look relatively new and pretty unused. No one knows who built them and the contents have all been taken by the locals to use as firewood - it probably won't be long before the buildings themselves are taken apart.

This is a real shame as there is real poverty here with many living on a subsistence basis and there seems little understanding of the need to educate the children for them to have a 'better' life. One of the local guides tells me that people just don't really care about their children.
Whatever it is, the lifestyle for many can't have changed for thousands or years. They live in rags and some still were just a loin cloth (or the local version of one) live in wooden huts which they share with their dogs, pigs and chicken. Their diet is pretty much sweet potato as it is apparently very filling - it is not clear what happens to the pigs and chickens.
Having said all the above, most people who we have come across seem pretty happy which is not something that can be said of nations in the West.

We get to our camp for the night which is a village called Suanggana - in fact this is simply an area of land where there are about 8 huts, one of which we stay in for the night.

The rather smoke stained roof!

Despite saying and knowing that a nap won't be conducive to a good nights sleep, it is not long before we have all fallen asleep waking up at about 5 when a group of local children have come up to the entrance and are laughing at the strange white people. Shortly after that we have tea and then a remarkably good supper - very welcome as we skipped lunch.
The sun starts to go down at about 6 / 6:30 and so there is a bit of chat and then back to the hut for reading / blogging etc and then an early night in preparation for an early morning - as is usual on camping trips.
Unfortunately, the early night doesn't really translate into a good nights sleep. We all seem to wake up about six hours later and then struggle to get back to sleep. Part of the problem is that the hut has a significant rat problem and they are fighting with each other and some of the other animals living beneath the hut and in the thrashed roof. This culminates when one of the rats fall from the roof and manages to land on a pack of biscuits! This wakes us all fully at about 01:30 and from then on there is continual noise from them as well as the occasional foray onto the floor of the hut where we are sleeping

Food:

Spicy chicken with green beans and rice