Kalimantan & Sulawesi Trip

After the school year ended, we had two weeks for our semester vacation, so some of my Peace Corps friends and I decided to take a long vacation! The first week, we went to Kalimantan (also known as Borneo), the third largest island in the world. We took a houseboat through Tanjung Puting National Park in Pangkalan Bun, Kalimantan.

The Sekonyer River flows through the national park.

The inside of our boat! During the day we rode up and down the river, got out at different areas of the park to see and hang out with the orangutans, then we slept on the boat, under millions of beautiful stars!

Tanjung Puting National Park is an orangutan rehabilitation center that has the largest wild orangutan population in the world.

So there were a LOT of them always around.

Literally translated from Bahasa Indonesia, “orangutan” means “person of the forest.”

I got some quality time with the orangutans… high-fivin’…

Hanging out and relaxing in the sun…

Holding hands…this one was trying to take me back into the forest (hence, the face).

Shaking hands...

Then, for some reason, we thought it would be a good idea to take a 26 hour ship from Kalimantan back to Java (which would then be followed by a 10 hour bus ride from Central Java to East Java). For some reason there was a mad rush to get on this ship that wouldn’t leave the harbor for at least another 2 hours.

Then we got on the ship and were directed toward these plywood sleeping areas. We occupied numbers 103 to 106. The lights were never turned off, there were babies crying the whole time, a women was throwing up in a bag (then falling asleep again like nothing happened), there were men smoking all around us, and there was no circulation in the belly of this enormous, moving, metal, torture device...BUT we ended up getting there 4 hours earlier than we thought we would, 22 hours instead of 26, and saved a lot of money so I guess it was worth it.

After Kalimantan, and our interesting ship ride, we finally made it to Sulawesi. We went to Northern Sulawesi, to a small island called Bunaken. This is the view of Panorama Cottages, where we stayed for the week.

Bunaken Island, a part of Bunaken National Marine Park in Northern Sulawesi, is a very popular area for scuba diving and snorkeling.

Yes, I realize this is kinda cheesy-looking, but this is a picture of our first snorkeling adventure.

A view of the coral reef, the ocean, and the mountain in the background.

I wish I had an underwater camera so I could show you all the amazing things we saw while we were snorkeling, but this is a picture I took, of the coral reef, from the boat.

There were so many blue starfish!

Watching the sun rise over the mountains, the water, and the beach was so peaceful and beautiful.

After listening to the constant cry of chickens and roosters, the revving of motorcycles and huge trucks speeding past my window at, literally, all times of the day and night, the chanting on loud speakers from several mosques at 5 times each day for the calls to prayer, and the constant hum of people around me (one delight of living on the world’s most populous island) for the past 16 months, I had almost forgotten what it felt like to experience quiet. It was so nice—no, absolutely heavenly—to just sit in the sand listening to nothing other than the sound of the ocean hitting the beach in small waves, the wind calmly rustling the leaves of the coconut trees, and tiny birds chirping at daybreak. I love the strange, foreign, and sometimes obnoxious sounds that make up the soundtrack to my life in Java, but I will really miss the peace and silence and calm that I experienced on Bunaken.

Then, every evening we got to experience an even more gorgeous sunset.

And they just continued to be more breathtakingly beautiful every day.

Evening after evening, the sunset never failed to impress.

The sunsets were definitely one of my favorite things about being on this island.

How could a person ever get tired of views as naturally beautiful as this one?

I had never seen sand dollars before, so I was really excited to collect them. I got Yosiah, one of the kids who lived in a village on Bunaken and was always playing on the beach near us, to help me find a bunch on the beach one afternoon.

The group—Noel, me, Travis, and Sam—before we left Bunaken. It was tough to leave.