Thirty Pounds and a Passport * Part VII

Tying the Knot

Schneider's Pitta

August 6 Qantas Airways #41 Sydney to Jakarta, Indonesia

We’re off on one of our favorite airlines, Qantas. Yes, there is no “u” in Qantas. The name originates from Queensland and Northern Territory Aero Service. One of the advantages of travel is the frequent exposure to new ideas and new concepts. On a recent flight the ranger learned something new about innovative marketing of products while he was looking through the airplane seat pocket in front of him. He was searching for an airline magazine or maybe even a novel that a previous passenger had left behind—hopefully in English. However, all he found was a little bag.

Anyone who flies in an airplane knows about that paper bag in the seat pocket. Its use is obvious; there is no need for instructions. This airline had an ingenious idea. They took that ignoble bag and turned it into a profit center. They now sell advertising on the barf bag.

In grocery stores everyone has seen the mail-in or drop-in bags that are used to send film off for developing. Now this airline and a film company have now come up with the idea of having a dual-purpose bag that can be used for airsickness or for mailing off film for developing. They put this bag in the airplane seat pocket. The bag even comes with a postage-free mailing label for mailing the bag off. But the ranger supposes that one should only mail the bag to the film company if one puts film in it!

The seven-hour flight across three time zones from Sydney to Jakarta, on the island of Java, has the makings of another big sit. If the ranger is already checking out the seat pockets, how exciting can the trip be? However, it turns out to be a most interesting flight. This trip is in the daytime and there is more to see than just ocean.

Geology is a wonderful thing to see from the air. This is the way to get the big picture. Flying over Java, the best part of the experience is seeing the many volcanoes. Almost all the islands of Indonesia are volcanic in origin. Sometimes a single volcano occupies an entire island and in other places a number of volcanoes have erupted over time and created a whole series of cones that make up the mountain ranges at the center of the larger islands. Through millennia these cones erode into rounded hills and mountains that do not appear to be volcanoes at first glance but any look at the rocks on the slopes tells of their volcanic origin. Often a volcano stands alone and towers above the surrounding territory. In Sumatra Ms. Shirley and the ranger will hike on Mt. Kirinci, a recently dormant volcano that is 12,400 feet high and juts a mile and a half into the air above its base.

Indonesia is an archipelago of 17,000 islands (6,000 inhabited) and thousands of old volcanoes. From the air the ranger can see a number of these volcanic cones. A few have a large crater in the middle. Some even have a lake at the center. Not all these volcanoes are extinct; many are just dormant. Hundreds have erupted in the last thousand years and many dozens just in the 20th century. Ms. Shirley spots one volcano on Java that has a plume of steam rising from its crater. Another small island with an active volcano has an ash plume rising 20,000 feet into the sky.

Volcanoes made Indonesia what it is today. They not only shaped the mountainous terrain, they determined the life style of the people. Volcanic soils, particularly in areas of frequent eruptions, are some of the richest soils in the world for growing crops. The land of the Indonesian archipelago can support a huge number of people. This country has a population fully half the size of the United States but in a land area only the size of Alaska. Because the land is so mountainous, only 25% of the land can be used for growing food. Therefore, enormous numbers of people are crowded into flat coastal areas and yet the rich land can feed them. The Indonesian islands of Java and Bali have some of the highest population densities in the world.

Although volcanoes are often benign and enrich farmlands, they can at times be destructive. Flying over the western end of Java just before landing at Jakarta the ranger sees the small island of Krakatoa, 25 miles off the coast. It doesn’t look like much, maybe a mile in diameter and only sticking 500 feet out of the ocean. Yet this little island was the source of one of the largest natural disasters in recorded history.

In the late 1800s the island was a little larger, five miles long and three wide with a 2,500-foot high volcanic cone. Like many volcanoes, Krakatoa had erupted several times in its past. Early Javanese texts referred to an eruption around 400 A.D. and there was a recorded eruption in 1680. In 1883, after being dormant for two hundred years, Krakatoa began to awaken. A number of earthquakes rocked the little island increasing in frequency until the volcano suddenly erupted on May 20, 1883. The first explosions could be heard 100 miles away and steam and ash rose seven miles into the atmosphere. By early August, three vents were erupting and a dozen more were releasing steam and ash. By August 26th, explosions were coming every ten minutes and sailors fifty miles away reported black smoke rising ten miles in the air. The sounds of the frequent explosions were easily heard in Batavia (Jakarta) eighty miles away.

The crater of Krakatoa Volcano was over a half mile in diameter and 200 feet deep. A large plug of solid lava from previous eruptions covered the bottom of the crater. This blocked the main vent and rising volcanic material and gasses created tremendous pressure underneath the plug. On the afternoon of August 26, 1883, the first of four tremendous explosions rocked the island. The ash plume now rose seventeen miles high. Two more violent explosions the following morning cracked open the sides of the volcano and permitted ocean water to enter the super-hot center. The water instantly turned to super-heated steam creating enormous pressures that led to the final explosion. At 10:02 a.m. the entire mountain exploded, completely destroying it and leaving only an underwater caldera.

The explosions were heard in Australia 2,000 miles distant and were even detected on the Indian Ocean island of Rodriguez 3,000 miles away where local residents noted “canon roars” in the distance. The blast cracked walls and windows 100 miles away. Eleven cubic miles of volcanic material were thrown into the air. Seventy-pound boulders landed on islands fifty miles away. A dust cloud blocked out all sunlight for more than 24 hours in places 130 miles away and for more than two days in places fifty miles distant. Volcanic ash fell on Singapore 500 miles from Krakatoa and ash was even reported falling on ships 1,600 miles away.

At least a cubic mile of fine dust and ash was blown into the upper atmosphere fifty miles above the earth. This completely circled the planet in thirteen days in the tropical regions. Later the dust spread to higher latitudes creating spectacular sunsets for three years. All this dust in the global atmosphere reduced the amount of solar rays reaching the earth. In the following year global temperatures were reduced over two degrees creating climatic changes that affected the entire planet. Temperatures did not return to normal for five years.

These effects were minor compared to what happened locally. The collapse of Krakatoa created huge tsunamis, giant sea waves that raced to nearby Java and Sumatra and destroyed 165 coastal villages. At least 36,000 people were killed when 120-foot high tsunamis roared in at 400 m.p.h. That’s a wave the height of a twelve-story building moving faster than the take-off speed of an airliner. Measurable tsunami waves reached Aden (3,800 nautical miles) in twelve hours and were recorded as far away as the English Channel.

The explosion of Krakatoa was the equivalent of 150,000 kilotons of TNT. By comparison the atomic bomb at Hiroshima was 20 kt. After the blast, two-thirds of the island was gone leaving only a small piece above the water. But volcanoes come from deep within the earth so Krakatoa was not totally destroyed, only its visible top. In 1925 a small volcanic cone rose out the water at the site of Krakatoa. More eruptions occurred in the 1950s and 1960s until today the volcano is the mile diameter island that the ranger sees below him on the flight into Jakarta. Who knows how large Krakatoa will become in the future? The story is certainly not finished.

When Qantas lands in Jakarta after our flying geology lesson, Ben, our guide for the next three weeks, is waiting at the airport. Ben looks to be in his early 60s but he also looks like he can handle any trail the rainforest has to offer. Although he lives in New York City, he is the acknowledged expert on Asian birds. I’ve heard about Ben for years and am pleased to catch up with him at last. With Ben at the airport is a tall, slender man in his late twenties.

“Hi, I’m Adam from California. I’m going to be joining you and Ben to look for birds.” Adam turns out to be a self-described “computer geek” from Silicon Valley. “Before we go too far, I should point out that what you see is what you’re going to get for the next three weeks.” I look and see a tall young man in a dark green long-sleeved shirt, forest green trousers and even a dark green hat.

“I brought three sets of clothing with me and they’re all identical to these. I don’t want you to think that I never change or never do laundry just because I always look like I’m wearing the same thing.”

“Well,” says Shirley, “that certainly makes it easy to decide what to wear in the morning.”

Adam seems like a young man we can have fun with.

August 7 Garuda Indonesia #160 Jakarta to Padang, Indonesia

Our time on Java was brief. After landing at Jakarta International Airport, we stopped at a marsh on the way into town. Birding for an hour before sunset produced five new birds for the list including a life bird: Sunda Teal, a type of duck.

Now this morning we fly on to Padang on the west coast of the island of Sumatra. From there we will drive into the interior to hike and bird.

The Hotel Aroma? Yes, the sign proclaims the name of this small hotel to be the Hotel Aroma. It is not an auspicious name but after a sweaty day in the jungle chasing birds and dodging leeches we just hope that it has good water for a bath.

The typical bathroom in Indonesia and much of southern Asia consists of three things: a “toilet”, a basin for bathing and a tile or concrete floor with a floor drain. The basin is usually about two feet square and about two feet high but it can vary. It is made out of concrete and sits on the floor. No, the ranger doesn’t get in it! It is a water reservoir for all bathroom needs. There may be a faucet for filling the basin if the building has running water. Otherwise, hauling water in a bucket from a well or stream fills the basin. The basin has a dipper the size of a saucepan that is used for taking water out of the basin.

To bathe, the ranger stands on the floor and pours water over himself by means of the dipper. The water then runs across the floor and out the floor drain. Obviously the bath is the same temperature as the water in the basin. Hot water is unheard of except for making tea. There is no sink. Washing hands is accomplished by means of the dipper.

The toilet is a porcelain fixture that is flush on the floor. It consists of a small basin about the size of a small sink and five inches deep. A six-inch diameter hole near one end has water in it. Porcelain footprints on each side of the small basin show where the feet go. To use the toilet, a person puts his feet in the proper position and then squats. Magically everything lines up and one hits the little hole every time. Then one takes a dipper of water from the large basin and pours it into the small basin and everything flushes.

Here at the Hotel Aroma we are blessed with a sink, a bathtub and a western style toilet. Because some of the hotel patrons are only familiar with Asian toilets, this western style toilet has a label with drawings of stick figures to show how to use it. We have to use a lot of imagination to interpret the drawings. This is a modest Muslim nation and it would be improper to be very graphic.

Our bathroom here still has a drain hole in the floor. When I pull the plug on the bathtub, the water goes down the tub drain just as I would expect. But then it comes out a hole at the end of the bathtub enclosure and runs across the floor and down the floor drain. Our bathroom also has a ten gallon plastic bucket and dipper for those who prefer to bathe in the Indonesian way. Again the drain hole in the floor comes in handy.

The country of Indonesia consists of thousands of islands that stretch from Sumatra, just off the coast of Malaysia, all the way east to include half the island of New Guinea, which the Indonesians call Irian Jaya. The best known islands in Indonesia are Sumatra, Java, Bali and Borneo, but there are many others. Indonesia is the fourth most populous country in the world and the largest Muslim country. Indonesia is not really a unified country. There are dozens of cultures and almost as many religions. The majority of people are Muslim, particularly in Java and Sumatra, but there are many Christians, mostly in the more eastern islands. Bali is primarily Hindu. Many tribes in Irian Jaya are animists. There are also large numbers of Buddhists and followers of various Chinese religions scattered throughout the country.

The people of the individual islands and island clusters that we now refer to as Indonesians never thought of themselves as being a part of anything larger than their own particular island group. Each area has its own identity and culture. There was not even a name for all the islands collectively until the Dutch claimed this part of the world as their colony and named it the Netherlands East Indies. The lure to Europeans early on was spices, then tea and then oil.

Japan conquered the Dutch East Indies during World War II. After the war, the Netherlands was not able to reassert control as colonialism went out of style and indigenous peoples in both Asia and Africa agitated for independence. The island of Java and particularly the city of Jakarta was the center of the Indonesian independence movement. With the coming of independence in 1949, Java politicians got control of the old colony and new “nation.” But these politicians did not represent all the people of Indonesia, just the Muslim population and particularly the people of Java. Even today, Indonesia is really a Javan empire and many of the other islands groups and cultures resent it deeply.

To ease overpopulation in Java and to put some “friendly supporters” in every island group, the government launched a policy of transmigration that sent thousands of Javanese to other islands. The locals often resented these transplanted Javanese and many problems broke out. Parts of Indonesia are now among the most troubled and dangerous places on the planet. The civil war on the island of Timor a few years ago cost the lives of hundreds of people, killed by Muslims (many originally from Java) who were trying to prevent the East Timorese from establishing their own country on half of the island of Timor. The civil war had religious overtones as well as political because the East Timorese are Christians. East Timor was formerly a colony of Catholic Portugal.

East Timor made big headlines but there are many other battles and atrocities going on that do not receive much notice in the Western news media. Dozens of people are being killed in the Moluccas and other Indonesian island groups, often in massacres carried out by Muslims, again many originally from Java. The picture is even more gruesome when one realizes that the government permits no guns in this country, so the killings are done with machetes, knives and sharpened bamboo sticks.

What does this history lesson have to do with Ms. Shirley and the ranger and their travels? Read on.

Traveling by van in central Sumatra, six hours south of the coastal city of Padang, we are nearing a village (#1) where we are to stay at a family’s home that has rooms to rent to hikers and visitors to Kirinci National Park. Five miles before we get to village #1, we come to village #2. There are barricades in the middle of the road and many men milling around. Several busses are blocked and not permitted to travel on. Things look tense! Our Indonesian driver gets out and talks to the men at the roadblock. There is a feud between the two villages. Village #2 is trying to cut off village #1 by shutting down the road.

There were skirmishes between the two villages yesterday and some men were hurt but no one was killed. Village #2 is made up of Sumatran locals. Village #1 is home to transplanted Javanese who were brought over by the Dutch years ago to work on the tea plantations. As in much of Indonesia, there is bad blood between the locals and the Javanese. Here, where we are, there is real blood spilled. The villagers in #2 tell our driver that their feud is not with us and we can proceed around the barricade and go on to #1 if we really want to. Our Indonesian driver and guide confer and decide that that is probably not a wise course of action. Why drive into the middle of a feud?

So we turn off the road at the barricade and drive to another section of Kirinci National Park where we find a park guesthouse. Somehow, “guesthouse” is too grand a word for what awaits us. It doesn’t look like it has been occupied for a while. It is a wooden building with six bedrooms, a central hallway and a bathroom. The good things are easy to list: The mattresses are comfortable and the roof does not leak, which is good because it is now raining.

The bad things take up more space to list: There is no electricity and no running water. The windows do not all close and there are mosquitoes. The bathroom is disgustingly dirty. The floor toilet uses the dipper method from a basin, which we fill from a stream. Lysol would make a big improvement but we have none.

After a few hours in the dark, some candles are found and we increase our blanket supply from one to three but there is still only one sheet on the bed in the Indonesian fashion. Nights are cold here in the mountains. The extra blankets will come in handy since the windows don’t all close. We eat rice and chicken on an old table in the central hallway and watch a mouse run across the floor. After dinner I hang mosquito netting over the bed for protection from disease-carrying insects.

In short, this place will never receive Ms. Shirley’s housekeeping seal of approval, even if we wash it out with a fire hose. Reluctantly, we think that we can make do for one night since it is already dark. Ms. Shirley never takes her clothes off, even to sleep.

The next morning we get up at 4:30 a.m. and drive quickly through villages #2 and #1 before the locals begin moving around much. At both villages we have to get out of our van and move barricades, in one case a whole tree. Then we carefully put the barricades back after we pass through. There is no point in getting either village mad at us. We must pass this way again in the afternoon.

We hike and bird all day on trails on Mt. Kirinci, the highest mountain in Sumatra, and find good birds in spite of the rain showers. Shirley enjoys the Pygmy-blue Flycatcher because it is colorful even in the rain. I’m still on a pheasant hunt so I take pleasure in finding a pair of Red-billed Partridges foraging on the forest floor not far from the trail.

The Bronze-tailed Peacock-Pheasant is more of a challenge. This is a medium-sized brown bird with a long pheasant tail. With its cryptic coloration it blends in everywhere. Because men have hunted pheasants for food in this forest for 100,000 years, the birds survive only by staying in the densest part of the forest.

We can hear a pair calling to each other, one on each side of our trail, somewhere in the undergrowth not far away. Our only chance to see them in this thicket is if one of them crosses the trail in front of us. We know that there is little hope of enticing the female to come out but perhaps we can trick the male into coming out to fight if he thinks that there is another male encroaching on his territory. Ben goes off the trail about fifty feet and sits on the ground under a bush. He plays a tape-recording of the pheasant’s call. We crouch down in the vegetation at the side of the trail and watch down the path. We try to blend in as much as possible so a bird crossing the trail won’t see us silhouetted against the clearing.

To our left the tape recorder cackles a pheasant call. To our right comes an answering call. Cackle left … pause … cackle right. Cackle left … pause … pause … cackle right. The recorded call comes again from a stationary location. The call to our right comes from a new spot. The bird is moving! Will he come out to drive off the intruder? Cackle left. To the right … nothing. A long pause, then cackle left. To our right … nothing. What’s happening?

We almost miss it! Not thirty feet away, right in front of us, a brown shadow is hunkered down and creeping across the dimly lit trail in the light rain. It’s moving across a three-foot clearing, the width of the trail. This is as “plain-sight” as it gets in the forest and yet we almost don’t see it. The cryptic coloration is that good! Within five seconds the pheasant is across the trail and into the forest even at creeping speed. That’s how hard it is to find a bird that has been hunted for 100,000 years.

It turns out that finding the peacock-pheasant was easy compared to our next challenge an hour later. The challenge (and joy) of birding in the Asian rainforest is finding one of the pittas, the family of ghost birds that exist in my bird book but almost never wherever I’m looking. If you can imagine a robin without a tail, that’s a large pitta. Visualize a sparrow without a tail and that’s a small one.

Pittas live in the dense areas of the forest, often on the forest floor. They move slowly and carefully so it hard to even pick up their movement when they are around. Most species of pittas are hard to find, even the ones that are fairly common. Other species are quite rare and found only in obscure locations. These can be extremely difficult to find. One of the more rare ones is Schneider’s Pitta—and we just heard one! Mount Kirinchi is almost the only place in the world that still has this rare bird. Mount Kirinchi has only one trail and we’re on it. This is the only chance we will ever have to see this bird.

The pitta is calling, perhaps a hundred feet or more off to our right. There is no answering call so it’s probably just a single bird, not a pair like the peacock-pheasants. It calls three times and stops. Ben fumbles for a tape to play. Schneider’s Pitta is so rare that he didn’t expect to hear one and didn’t have a tape of its call handy. Ben digs in his knapsack while we listen carefully, hoping the pitta will call again. There is only silence. It has stopped raining; the trees have stopped dripping. The whole forest is damp and nothing is making a sound. Please, Mr. Pitta, please call again!

There is not a sound—except Ben trying to put the tape into the recorder. He finds the right spot and turns the volume up a little. When we hear the tape, our heads nod up and down. Yes, that’s the call we heard. There is a Schneider’s Pitta out there. Ben plays the tape again. He can’t turn the volume up too high. If he makes it sound like there is huge, noisy super-pitta here, the one in the forest will give up his territory in defeat and run away. We want just enough volume to provide a challenge, not enough to intimidate.

Ben plays the tape a third time. Still no response. “Let’s stand quietly and wait. Maybe like the peacock-pheasant he’s sneaking up on us.” We stand; we wait. For perhaps ten minutes no one moves. We see nothing; we hear nothing. We try the tape again…nothing. We have lost our bird. We have been this close to one of the most rare birds in the forest—but no closer.

“Let’s go on. We have only two days on Mount Kirinchi. We can’t spend half a day on a bird that may never call again. Let’s see what else we can find. There are other good birds yet ahead.” Ben is a good tour guide. As the song says, he knows when to hold them and when to fold them. This time we should fold.

And Ben is right. There are good birds down the trail. Eye-browed Wren-Babbler, Shiny Whistling-Thrush and White-browed Shortwing are all new species for us and all are exciting. But in the back of our mind is still that haunting call that we heard back down the trail. We were so close!

We stop for a mid-morning sandwich. We’ve been up since 4:30 and I’m hungry. It feels good to sit down on a log. We have been on the go for hours and it’s all uphill on this mountain. It is not bad when the trail is dirt and steadily uphill but some stretches are big rocks and Shirley, with the shortest legs, has to work even harder than the rest of us. Yes, it’s good to sit down.

As we eat and talk, our conversation keeps going back to the same topic. Adam says over and over, “We were so close!”

“OK,” Ben says, “we’ll go back. I know you won’t rest tonight unless we try one more time. It’s only about a half-mile back down the mountain.”

We do go back and Shirley is jumping down rocks instead of climbing up but she doesn’t complain and I love her for it. Soon we are back in the same area. We’re in forest but can see in a ways at eye level. But at ground level I can’t see more than a foot off the trail because of the undergrowth that blocks all sight up to about three feet high. Somewhere under all that is where the pita lives.

“Well,” says Ben, “here we are,” looking at us with that what-do-you-want-to-do-now expression. Suddenly, there’s that call! We freeze. It calls again!

“Quick,” whispers Ben. “Get off the trail. Squeeze into the undergrowth on the sides of the trail like you did for the peacock-pheasant and try not to make a silhouette. I’ll go off the back side of the trail and use the tape recorder and see if I can call him in.”

We get off the trail, just barely, and hunker down where we can see a section of the trail perhaps thirty feet long before it disappears around a bend. I can’t sit down or even kneel. If I am on my knees, I can’t twist my torso very far in case I need to look sideways. If I stand straight up, I am silhouetted against the open forest. So I half-bend at the waist and try to make myself shorter and yet still stand. It is not a comfortable position if I have to hold it long.

We quickly get settled into our hiding spots and try to freeze. The pitta calls again. We haven’t spooked him, probably because he’s still a hundred feet or more away from us. Will he come closer this time?

A pitta call fifty feet behind us and to our right tells us that Ben has found a place to hide and is playing the tape recorder. He cannot operate the recorder right next to us. The pitta won’t come all the way up to the sound. But if Ben is some distance from us, he hopes he can draw the pitta right past us and we will see it cross the trail—just like the peacock-pheasant. Ben plays the tape again. There is no answer! Ben tries again, no response. Ben waits three minutes and tries once more, again no answer. My spirits are sinking and my back hurts from the half-crouch. Another three minutes, Ben tries again, nothing.

Then loud and clear, there it is. But the call is behind us and on Ben’s side of the trail! All this time the pitta has been sneaking up on us. Now he has crossed the trail behind us and he’s close to Ben. This won’t help us. Ben waits several minutes in silence and then he slowly creeps across the trail in front of us and goes off fifty feet to our left. He has to be on the opposite side of the trail from the pitta for this scheme to work.

Ben settles down and then waits several more minutes for everything to be all quiet. We have not heard anything more from Mr. Pitta other than the one call, so we don’t know where he is. The tape recorder calls from our left. We hold our breath. Mr. Pitta calls from our right. Call from the left … call from the right! Call from the left … nothing from the right. Call from the left … silence on the right. The tape recorder stops; time stops. We wait. We stare at “the spot” about 25 feet down the trail where we hope we can see the pitta if he crosses over. We watch and we stare.

If anything moved, I am not conscious of seeing it. I just can’t stare at one spot forever. My eyes scan along the trail’s edge. There is something blue not ten feet from my boots, right at the edge of the trail. My mind races, “A male Schneider’s Pitta has a blue back. Focus, boy! Focus on the half-light under the bush almost at your feet.” There is a blue back! There’s a brown head, the same color as the dark leaves. There’s the black bill and the black eye, a little bit of extra dark in a dark forest. I see a line of black dots on a brown breast. And it’s only ten feet away, too close for binoculars.

I glance at Adam without moving my head. He hasn’t seen the pitta. Adam and Shirley are still staring at the spot down the trail where Ben though the bird would cross. I don’t dare say anything, not with the bird so close. I can only hope their eyes wander to the trail edge like mine did. I look back; the pitta is gone. I didn’t see it come. I didn’t see it go. And it was only ten feet in front of me.

Suddenly there is a blur at the spot on the trail as something races across the opening. Was it a bird? Was it a mouse? We all think that it was the pitta but we will never know. So Ben was probably right about where the pitta would cross the trail but who would have guessed Mr. Pitta would come check us out first?

After a couple minutes Ben plays the recording again. There is no response. He tries off and on for another thirty minutes but only silence comes back. Our ghost bird will not reappear and has probably left the area. There is nothing to do but go on back up the trail. My feelings are bittersweet. I have just seen one of the truly rare birds in the world. I am thrilled inside but I can’t share it with anyone. That wouldn’t be fair since others missed the bird.

So it’s back up the trail we go. Sorry, Shirley, here come those big rocks again. We get up to 5,000-feet elevation and more good birds appear: Short-tailed Frogmouth, Barred Cuckoo-Dove and Blue-tailed Trogon. I’ve seen a partridge, a pheasant and a rare pitta. This is a good day and it is just now lunchtime. I’m hungry again. Adam has had time to wear his disappointment for a while, so now he can take it off and put it away in his daypack. He comes out of his funk and congratulates me on seeing the Schneider’s Pitta. It is a generous gesture on his part and now I can enjoy my thrill with a clear conscience.

After lunch it begins to rain again. Yes, this is the rainforest! It is not a heavy rain but a light, steady, get-everything-wet kind of rain. Again we go upwards and there are more big rocks; just ask Shirley. At 7,000 feet we are in moss-covered forest. It looks like it rains all the time here. Everywhere, epiphytes hang from the trees, looking like a green type of Spanish moss. A light fog has settled on us and the whole forest feels eerie. It looks like the cover of a gothic novel.

It is still raining lightly, almost a mist now, and the sparse fog is chilly. I don’t hear or see any birds, or anything else moving. We are here because Ben wants to try a recording. There once was a bird here that Ben has never seen (and he has seen more kinds of birds in Asia than anyone.) There once was a bird here that almost no one has ever seen. Once upon a time it lived on this mountain. But no one knows if it still exists.

In the 1940s a bird new to science, the Sumatran Cochoa, was found on here Mount Kirinchi. Four males of the blue robin-sized species were collected and put into a museum but no female birds were ever found. This cochoa lived nowhere else in the world and after the 1940s was never seen again. At least not until the 1980s, when a scientist who hiked Mount Kirinchi to this location, had a glimpse of something that looked like a cochoa. He managed to make a tape-recording of an unfamiliar call that he hoped came from this mystery bird. Ben now has a copy of that recording.

Ben has carried that tape all the way up the mountain just to play it to see what happens—in the rain. Ben says there isn’t much hope of a response but he has to try. When will he ever be up here again? He plays the recording and tries to shield his machine from the damp. At the end of the tape there is only silence. There is no sound of any kind. Even the mist dripping off the trees makes no sound falling on moss-covered ground. Even if there had been a sound in the forest, the fog would have muffled them.

Ben plays the song again, waits a couple minutes and then plays it a third time. There is only silence at the end. Then, there is a birdcall up high in a nearby tree. No, it doesn’t sound like the song on the tape. It’s more like a short call than a longer song. Ben plays the tape again and the birdcall sounds again.

Ben sees some movement in the tree and puts his binoculars up. “There it is,” he cries. Adam has found it too. I see nothing but trees.

“Where is it? Give me directions!”

“Twenty-some feet up. It’s half hidden by the leaves. You just have to find the right window between the leaves to find it. Keep looking.”

I do keep looking. Ben and Adam are discussing field marks on the bird and I can’t find anything but leaves. Here is one of the rarest birds in the whole world and I can’t find it. I look over Ben’s shoulder; I look over Adam’s but I can’t find the window. I’m beginning to despair. The bird probably won’t stay long. Where is it? Have the tables turned? Is this Adam’s turn to get the rare one and not me? Shirley has now spotted the bird. Why can’t I find it?

I never do find the right window but suddenly I don’t have to. The bird flies out to another branch—and there it is!!! It’s a Sumatran Cochoa in juvenile plumage. To Ben’s knowledge, no one has ever seen the juvenile plumage before. But Ben knows the Javan Cochoa, a closely related species, so he is convinced of the identification of the bird in front of us. Since the bird is a juvenile, that explains why it didn’t use the full song like on the tape.

The look is not long; the bird soon flies away into the fog and we all stand there drained. The stress of looking high, trying to look between the leaves, trying to make an identification, and trying to be sure that we are really seeing what fewer than a dozen people have ever seen has drained some of the life force out of us. We need to sit down. We actually feel weak. We should be excited! We should be jumping up and down! In reality we are just stunned.

After five minutes of silence, Ben, who never before has been speechless, recovers his voice, “It’s only midafternoon. What would you like to do now? Do you want to hike higher? I don’t know if the mist and fog will clear or not?”

Adam and I are still mute. We stare at each other trying to answer Ben’s question. However, the practical one among us has found her voice. “I don’t know about you guys but I know that it is raining. It is cold; and I know that the fog is getting thicker. I also know that there are a lot of big rocks between here and the bottom of the mountain. I vote we get off this mountain before dark.”

I’ve always admired Shirley’s ability to analyze a situation and get to the heart of the matter. “Of course she’s right. Let’s head down.”

Near the bottom of the mountain we stop again at the Schneider’s Pitta location. But the tape recorder elitists no response. Adam has missed this bird for certain; there will not be another chance. But after finding the Sumatran Cochoa, a bird a hundred times more rare than the pitta, there is no way that Adam can feel bad. He has just seen the best bird of his entire life.

It is late afternoon by the time we hike back down to our vehicle. At the base of the mountain we drive to village #1 to talk to the owner of the house where we had originally intended to stay. He says that the chiefs of the two villages met this morning halfway between the two towns and agreed on a truce. However, he recommends that we not stay at his house tonight because he is not sure the truce will hold and maybe there will be men coming in the night to make trouble. We take his advice and drive back to our dark, dirty “guesthouse” for another dismal evening in the rain. It’s a necessary decision but not one to gladden our hearts.

After two miserable nights in the guesthouse, it is deemed safe enough for us to move. It is amazing how nice electricity and running water feels even if the bed is a thin mattress over hard slats and the cold bath is by the dipper method. After three days of mountain hiking, we can finally wash up and get out of clothes that were slept in as well as hiked in.

“Welcome to Kansas!” I grew up in Wichita, Kansas, so it caught my eye when we were going through a small village and saw metal signs on the houses that read, “Welcome to Kansas.” Whatever could that mean? I found out later that Kansas is a brand of cigarettes that is sold here and these were advertising signs. Smoking is very prevalent in Indonesia among men. I don’t know if women smoke. I never saw a woman smoking but virtually all the men smoke and almost constantly. The Marlboro Man is alive and well and is seen frequently on advertising signs. In fact, there was a Marlboro advertising poster glued to my hotel room door. There are many cigarette brands here that I have never heard of. One of the more ironic brand names for cigarettes is “Sorry.”

Honk, honk! Beep, beep!! Indonesian cities and towns are noisy. Every town has a mosque, usually many mosques, and each broadcasts the Muslim call to prayer five times a day starting at 4:00 a.m. It seems every mosque uses loudspeakers turned up loud. In our hotel we hear five mosques all broadcasting at the same time.

In the towns people spend a lot of time outdoors in the streets. There are always adults shouting and children screaming in play. The noise of vehicles is everywhere. Fully half of all the vehicles are small motorcycles and motor scooters and none has an effective muffler. All the trucks and busses are diesel and all the engines are running continually and noisily.

Everyone honks all the time—motorcycles, trucks, buses, vans and even the few cars. We time our driver and he sounds the horn more than once per minute while driving through town and almost that often while driving in the rural areas. There seem to be few driving rules, so everyone honks all the time to let everyone else know that they are here.

In town our driver honks at the motorcycles at every intersection. He honks at every stopped bus. He honks every time he cuts someone off which is almost every block. He honks at pedestrians. He honks at friends. He just honks! In rural areas he honks at ducks in the road and chickens and goats. He honks at cows beside the road and children who might dart out. He honks at people walking along the road facing us as a way of saying hello. He honks at pedestrians facing away from us as a way of saying, “Here I come.” He honks at every vehicle we overtake and half of all the vehicles we meet. He honks at every mountain curve. Sometimes I can’t even figure out why he is honking.

There are also quieter sounds. The town of Sungai Penuh has horse-drawn taxis, which are two wheel carts pulled by a small horse with a tassel at his forehead. The hooves go clop, clop, clop on the street and small sleigh bells ring as the horse trots through town. In small villages, huge Zebu bulls (a type of cow from India with a big hump) pull two-wheel carts with cabbages or corn stalks. The carts have a small bell that rings as the bull walks along. Everywhere there is man-made sound. Quiet does not exist except deep in the forest.

August 17 Garuda Indonesia #163 Padang to Jakarta, Indonesia
August 18 Merpati Nusantra # 194 Jakarta to Bandar Lampung, Indonesia

Sumatra is so long, that to go from the middle of the island to the south end, it is easier to fly back to Jakarta and then take another plane back to southern Sumatra. Driving from Padang to Bandar Lampung on the southern tip would take several days.

Funky toilets, irate villagers and crazy, noisy drivers aside, the real reason we’ve come to Sumatra is to see the rainforest and its inhabitants. Sumatra is a large island, over 1,000 miles long. All along the coast the land is relatively flat and good for rice growing. There are no forests left in the lowlands except in a few parks and forest reserves. The whole interior of the island is mountainous. Remember those volcanoes?

Any place there are valleys between the mountains there is agriculture. Cabbages, chili peppers, tea and cinnamon are big crops here. Tea comes from the leaves of the tea bush; all the leaves are picked by hand. Cinnamon is the ground-up bark of the cinnamon tree, which is grown in small plantations. Frequently in the countryside we find half of the roadway blocked by a large rectangle of rocks on the road, so that a local resident can dry his cinnamon bark on the pavement. The rocks keep the traffic off his drying crop and everyone just drives around.

The mountain slopes are forested. At first glance the forest seems intact but a close look reveals that certain species of trees that should be here are missing. Loggers have cut all the large tropical hardwood trees in any area that is at all accessible. The trees that are left are those that are not commercially valuable or secondary growth. We must go high in the mountains to find primary forest where the loggers have not been. Just because an area is a national park does not mean that trees are safe from being cut. This is, after all, Indonesia and corruption of officials, including forestry officials, is common.

Off we go climbing high in the mountains on the national park trails. The first thing that we notice is that the forest is not as dense as the tropical rainforest in South America. There is less undergrowth and we can see into the forest for more than fifty feet on either side of the trail. The second thing that we notice is that there is less insect activity here than in South American forests. I just don’t see or hear many insects. That is not to say that there are no insects; Shirley has bites to prove otherwise.

One theory on the paucity of insects is that because the Asian rainforests are the oldest in the world, the trees have had a longer period of time to develop chemical defenses that prevent insects from eating them. There’s a type of chemical warfare going on right in front of our eyes. There are more fruiting trees here than in South America, particularly many types of figs. The result is that there are more types of fruit-eating birds and bats and fewer insect-eating ones.

Although we are looking for birds, we keep a sharp lookout for anything that moves in the forest. I have lost track of how many different kinds of squirrels and tree shrews that we have seen but the giant squirrel always attracts my attention. It is four feet long, half body and half tail. I am amazed to watch it make giant leaps from one tree to another. Another squirrel, about three feet long is smaller than the giant squirrel but is still huge by North American standards. This one is black with a bright red throat and breast. Its hind legs are pure white and there is a white stripe up the side.

The giant flying squirrel is the real showstopper. It is four feet long and bright red. We watch it climb up a tree trunk and then launch itself and glide for forty yards to another tree. It does this several times while we stare. Ben has seen these squirrels glide for almost a quarter-mile as they “flew” from a tree on one mountain slope, crossed a valley, and landed on a tree trunk on the next mountain slope. Flying squirrels do not really fly; they glide. They have extra loose skin between their front and back legs, so when then stick all four legs straight out, the bottom view of the squirrel shows a large flat skin that acts like a wing and the squirrels can glide long distances.

Several times each day we find monkeys—long tailed macaques and banded leaf-monkeys. In addition to monkeys there are apes in the forest, the long-armed gibbons. These are more difficult to see than monkeys but we hear them almost every day. Gibbons don’t call or scream like the monkeys; they hoot. They really give a hoot, a whole series of loud hoots. Once I heard two troops facing each other across a river. Each troop tried to out-hoot the other as they hurled insults across the river, “Your father looks like a monkey! Your mother wears combat boots!” Or something like that.

Today we find the siamong, the largest species of gibbon. Gibbons move quickly through the forest by swinging through the trees hand over hand with their extremely long arms. They do not jump from tree to tree like monkeys; they swing.

Down in one of the few remaining lowland forests are barking deer. These are the size of a medium dog and, yes, they do make a barking sound, unlike our white-tailed deer that are basically silent. We also find a mouse deer, which is the size of a small dog. It is not really a deer but it looks like one. Deep in the forest are fresh tracks of Asian elephants in the mud. The tracks are so new I can still see the marks of the blood veins in the mud. These footprints are the size of a pizza pan.

My biggest treat is finding fresh tracks of Sumatran rhinoceros. This is a critically endangered species of which there are fewer than two hundred left in the wild. There are only eighteen in this park. I wish that I could see one in the forest but the local naturalist tells me that I am probably lucky that I don’t. These rhinos are notoriously short tempered and often charge without provocation. Local people have been killed here in the past. These rhinos are a smaller cousin of the black rhino of Africa but are just as dangerous.

I had heard of the endangered Sumatran tiger but never thought I would have a chance of ever encountering one. But maybe I shouldn’t be so sure. A scientist that we met at dinner was studying them, by using remote cameras to photograph tigers and other animals when they passed by and hit the trip wire. He had pictures of eight different tigers that he could identify by their unique stripe patterns. He also told us about a man killed by a tiger the previous year while walking along the road—the same road we had been hiking all day.

Previously when we walked this road to look for birds in the nearby trees, we told our van driver catch up with us every half hour or so to see if we needed water or anything. Now because of the tigers, we will keep the van within sight of us at all times in case we need a quick escape. I have never seen a tigre. Will I now get a chance to see a tiger? Shirley and Adam say they sure hope not!

From time to time Shirley takes a morning off from hiking or birding. She uses the time to read a good book, soak up some sun, or just relax. (I knew I married a smart woman.) There is no set schedule for her mornings off. It is just when the mood hits her, although proximity to leeches may have some bearing on the sudden need for a good book. Generally however, she seems to just pick a morning at random because often we don’t know what a trail will encounter until we get to it. But somehow, Shirley seems to know about the worse trails before we come to them. Invariably she is right in choosing which hikes to skip. Whenever she stays behind, I know that I am in for a hike that is a real “adventure.”

Our last full day in Sumatra is such a day. After another breakfast of fried chicken and rice (one of many lately) Shirley sweetly says, “I think I will take the morning off. You boys go enjoy yourselves.” We figure we’re in for it again but we press forward, Ben, Adam and I, plus a Sumatran park ranger. The trail is wonderful, wide, dry, flat and smooth—no beating through the underbrush today. Shirley must have read the tea leaves wrong this time.

After thirty minutes the trail just ends. There is no destination here, no reason for stopping. The trail just stops. We are still a couple kilometers from where we want to be along the stream to look for the rare White-winged Duck so the Sumatran ranger whips out his trusty machete and begins to whack away. (Every park ranger should have a machete under his belt. He never knows when he is going to need to blaze a trail or help with crowd control.)

There is some sort of path that only the guide can see so he widens it a bit for us but we are still pushing branches out of the way left and right. Did I mention that many of the Asian rainforest trees have thorns—including some of the palm trees? Then we begin to dodge mud holes. And then we come to some that can’t be dodged. Slog on! “Shirley how do you know these things in advance?”

The plot and the swamp deepen. There are watercourses that must be crossed or waded. “Can you say knee-deep mud?” Crossing is better than wading, trust me. So it’s up on an eight-inch log, twenty feet long, over the mud bog. One misstep and I will look like a candidate for the Mudwrestling Federation finals. Did I mention the log is old and flexible? There is a definite spring in our log as we inch our way across. There is Adam sitting down on his butt to slide across the log. There is no pride or ego here. This is survival. We don’t need to watch a survivor TV show; we’re living it!

Since this is a lowland damp forest, the ground is covered with dead leaves, at least when it’s not a bog. Guess who lives in the leaf litter? Dracula and all his friends and relations! I can look down at the ground at almost any time and find five or six leeches within three feet of me. And they are coming for me!

We take reasonable precautions. Every day I tuck my pant legs into my boot socks. I spray the exposed part of my boot socks with insect repellent that is 95% deet. This high a concentration of deet is so toxic to humans I don’t want to get it on my skin. I have to wash my hands every time I put on these boot socks.

Leeches continually get on my boots but they usually give up when they get to my toxic socks. Most leeches are on the ground leaf litter but a few must be on the low bushes that brush my clothing and body as I push through the forest. In the previous three days I pulled off a dozen leeches from my arms and clothes but missed three which made a meal of me before going their way, much fatter for the experience.

That makes a total of eight leech bites for six weeks in Southeast Asia; that’s not bad. (Of course, half of that time we were in the mountains where leeches were not a problem.) Shirley managed to make the entire journey leech-bite free. She picked them off her hands and clothes but none have bitten her. Mosquitoes may think that Shirley is a regular buffet but for leeches Ranger Rick is the real Kibbles N’ Bits.

But I digress. We’ve hacked and whacked our way through the forest. We have slogged through the bogs and made the log traverses over the watercourses. We have even watched the guide get lost several times. He says, “Sorry” and then we backtrack a little and try another approach. Several times fallen trees block the route and we just find a way around. And we try to keep Dracula at bay. After a while we escape the mud and the forest thins out a little. There is less leaf litter and thus a significant drop in the leech population. We could even dare to sit down on a log now.

By one waterhole we find fresh tracks of Asian elephants and fresh tracks of rhino. The Sumatran ranger thinks that both sets of tracks were made early this morning so the animals may not be far away. We probably will not see them but they will be aware of us. It is best to be alert. The guide says an elephant will step on you like a bug and a rhino will run over you like a bug. Obviously being a bug is not always a great thing.

We finally reach the stream and sit down to wait to see if we get lucky today. We searched for the rare ducks yesterday on foot and by boat without success. Today is different. After only thirty minutes, a beautiful drake floats down the stream towards us. We hold our breath and hope that he doesn’t see us. He stops on a mud bar not a hundred feet away and climbs out to preen. Ten minutes later he flies away. We have just seen a White-winged Duck, one of the rarest ducks in the world. Only a few dozen are known to exist in Sumatra and only a few hundred in all of Asia. We have been amazingly lucky in our bird findings in Sumatra.

Of course we find a few other birds while making our bush trek through the forest but not many. This boggy forest supports only a low amount of bird life. Now having found the duck, we must return to our cabin. Fried chicken and rice await us! But first we must retrace our steps. Back through the forest, back through the bogs, back across the logs (watch Adam do the butt scoot), back through the leaf litter and wave to our blood-sucking friends on the ground who are waving at us. After four hours we are back at the cabin where Shirley looks up from her book and sweetly asks, “Did you have a good time?” The answer of course is yes.

Postscript: At the end of the hike we take our boots off. I have only tired, slightly damp feet. Adam, who did not spray his socks, has eighteen leeches in his left boot and eight in his right. Almost half of them have drawn blood. Thus ends our last day in Sumatra.

August 24 Merpati Nusantra #402 Bandar Lampung to Jakarta, Indonesia

We have exactly 24 hours in Jakarta. The only plane each day from Bandar Lampung, Sumatra, to Jakarta lands at 3:20 p.m. The only plane each day from Jakarta to Perth, Australia, takes off at 4:00 from another terminal three miles away and Qantas closes the gate thirty minutes before each flight. There is no way to make the connection so we have exactly 24 hours in Jakarta. Here are some random observations:

After three weeks of FRIED CHICKEN and RICE three meals a day, we check into a four-star hotel for our first hot shower in two weeks and hopefully a change in our diet. So what breakfast cereal is on the buffet in the morning? RICE Krispies!

In Jakarta, as in any large third world city, as in any small town in America, as in almost any town anywhere, which are the newest, fanciest buildings? Government buildings and banks.

If you want a guaranteed clean restroom or a clean place to eat anywhere in the world, where do you go? The golden arches of MacDonald’s of course. They seem to maintain their same standards all over the world. It is also the only place in Indonesia we’ve found that is non-smoking.

Jakarta has a large fleet of taxis that are regular cars but they also have an even larger number of three-wheeled motorcycle taxis with an enclosure for driver and passengers. The sign on the side lists a capacity of three passengers not to exceed three hundred pounds total. This would probably not work in the U.S. because it is hard to find three passengers who would not exceed the weight limit.

We visit a bookshop and find familiar English-language books translated into the local language but there are some differences. This is a conservative country. They sell The Joy of Sex but the book has no pictures.

Then there is the story an Australian told me at the Jakarta hotel. The story should be noted by those of us at or near retirement age before we go for our next eye exam:

Seventy-year old Henry went for his annual physical. All of
his tests came back with normal results. Dr. Smith said, “Henry, everything
looks great physically. How are you doing mentally and emotionally? Are you at
peace with yourself and do you have a good relationship with God?”

Henry replied, “God and me are tight. He knows I have poor
eyesight, so he’s fixed it so that when I get up in the middle of the night to
go to the bathroom, *poof* the light goes on. When I’m done *poof* the light
goes off.”

“Wow!” commented Dr. Smith, “That’s incredible!”

A little later in the day Dr. Smith called Henry’s wife.
“Mary,” he said, “Henry is doing fine. Physically he’s great. But I had to call
because I’m in awe of his relationship with God. Is it true that when he gets up
during the night, *poof* the light goes on in the bathroom and then when he is
through, *poof* the light goes off?”

Mary exclaimed, “Oh my God! He’s peeing in the refrigerator
again!”

August 25 Qantas Airways #41 Jakarta to Singapore

From Jakarta the flight to Singapore is just over an hour long with a one-hour change in time zones. After a fifty-minute layover in Singapore we will fly on to Australia.

Our short stop in Singapore is symbolically important. Earlier in the year we left St. Louis and headed east through Atlanta, Johannesburg and on to Singapore (from which we traveled to Malaysia and Borneo and back to Singapore.) Then we returned from Singapore back through South Africa and Atlanta to St. Louis.

Five days later we left St. Louis again and headed west through Los Angeles and Sydney to Jakarta and now to our fifty-minute layover in Singapore. We have come halfway around the world from the east to get to Singapore and we have come halfway around the world from the west to reach Singapore. We have stretched our hiking-boot laces around the planet. One lace went east and one went west. We have tied the knot in Singapore and have now been officially around the world.

Long flights are always a good time for adding up the numbers. The ranger is closing in on his millennial goal.

Tally for 2000

Eastern & Central United States 162
Cayman Islands 49
Ecuador 669
Africa 490
Singapore 61
Malaysia 260
Java 5
Sumatra 55
New South Wales 87

Total 1838