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Captain's Log:   

Up A Borneo River

We slowly moved up the river, watching our depth gauge closely. We slowly skirted the sand bars and shallows for twenty miles, from the shallow mouth of the Kumai River, into the heart of the Borneo jungle.

Rolling brown waves flowed past us as we wound up the river through thick bush and jungle. We watched logs, branches, canoes and local pinessi fishing and cargo boats move past us down the river toward the mouth and the open South China Sea. Birds screamed from luxuriant green foliage on the shores beside us. We felt the haze and the burning ash from the log and bush clearings. We watched the local fishermen and marvelled at their ancient belching motors, one or two cylinders choking in irregular "put-put, cough, put" sounds.

The entry into the bay at the mouth of the river had taken us several hours to negotiate. The entrance buoys shown on our Dutch charts had disappeared long ago. We watched for stakes marking shallow places. We watched for changes in water colour and in the water ripples. And we watched our depth guage intently. I wondered what I was doing here.

Although Indonesians had been very friendly to us in Timor, Bali and the other islands we had already visited, and although Indonesia is fascinating, its towns are hopelessly overcrowded and most of its people are desperately poor. Its fishing villages are grey and tired looking. I was anxious to get our boat back up into the Northern Hemisphere and into the relatively civilized waters of Malaysia and Thailand. But, Janet wanted to see an orangutang.

Janet and I had discussed the remoteness of the river and the potential difficulties for us in the event of a breakdown or grounding. We would be alone in a strange and unknown island in a wild and barely governed country. I had reminded Janet that she could wait and see an orangutang at the Toronto zoo, for the price of a senior ticket. But Janet's heart was set. She had read about "Camp Leaky" and wanted to see the real thing.

I envisaged that we would get to a mosquito invested camp with a cage containing a couple of over fed chimps attended by dozens of shouting merchants hawking T-shirts with pictures of monkeys on them.

We anchored in the river, across from the village of Kumai, built on stakes and poles on the west side of the river bank. We were about 40 feet from the jungle on the other side of the river. Although our boat pointed upstream on its anchor chain when we anchored on an ebb tide, it reversed direction for the twice daily flood and ebb tides. The current was strong, but our anchor held very securely and dug deep into the soft mud.

Our friends on the yacht Free Radical from Canada had preceded us, and they had actually arrived and anchored off Kumai village on the previous day. They met us and took us into the village on their dinghy.

Like all Indonesian towns and villages, Kumai is dirty, overcrowded and poor, and yet filled with smiling, friendly and curious people. We were the only white or Caucasian people in the village on that day. We were later
told that tourists used to come there, but no one had come since the Bali bombing the year before.

We had been dogmatically warned in Australia and in Bali by many "knowledgeable and experienced" sailing cruisers that Indonesia was dangerous, and that Borneo was one of the most notoriously dangerous parts of Indonesia. After all, the Dyak people from Borneo were known as fierce head hunters less than a century ago. Borneo has fifteen foot salt water crocodiles infesting all its rivers (and a careless young Englishman was grabbed and eaten by one of them last year at Camp Leaky) and it boast over 200 kinds of snakes, all but 20 of them fatally poisonous. But Janet wanted to see an oranutang!

So Janet and I and our friends made the journey up the Kumai River to find a young man in Kumai named Harry. We had heard reports from sailors who had been to Kumai the year before, and he worked as a guide and had taken them further up the river in a small river boat. According to reports Camp Leaky was in a recently established national park adjacent to the village of Kumai , although it smelled and sounded like a logging camp.

We met Harry and were immensely impressed by the young man. He had been crippled in a motorcycle accident a few months before but he spoke English well and arranged for his brother to act as a guide for us and take us to Camp Leaky to see orangutangs. The next morning the brother picked us up from our yachts in two small river boats and took us up a narrow winding branch of the river lined with green vines filled with chattering birds and monkeys.

And, did we see orangutangs? Dozens of them at one feeding in the morning at a first camp, and another dozen or so in the afternoon feeding at Camp Leaky itself. We stood beside the feeding platforms while the camp staff placed sweet potatoes and other vegetables and a porridge mixture on the platforms and called out a kind of meal call. Then we heard the bushes and trees rustling and snapping as the animals came through the tops of the jungle from all around us. They are extremely strong and we stayed clear of them as they approached the platforms, ignoring us. We could easily determine the pecking order as some of them took clear priority of position and choice on the platforms. We were close enough to see facial expressions and see how the mothers protected and helped their babies and how some of them feared or respected the stronger ones. Some of the staff members spoke English and could explain the relationship between the various orangutangs. I was dumb founded by their similarity to humans. They acted just like a family of humans would act at a jungle picnic feeding. Their actions, grunts and mannerisms were just the same as I would expect from an extended family group of human beings in similar circumstances.

The day ended too quickly. We wanted to get back to our boats before dark, but hated to leave these marvellous and enchanting creatures. The visit turned out to be the highlight of our visit to Indonesia. 
Thanks, Janet.