West Java, Indonesia

Leaving Jakarta

A thousand ships lay at anchor in the Singapore straits. Ugly tankers ploughed low troughs through the floating steel city and tramp ships piled overhigh with containers barely rocked in their wake.  Viscous water ganged up with smoky air to banish the horizon and the setting sun from sight and we arrived in TG Panang, Indonesia as darkness settled on this small but busy town on the island of Bintan.

As we looked for breakfast the next morning we found ourselves surrounded by the Lycra clad local mountainbike club. They looked far more out of place than us in the dusty surroundings but were excited at the chance meeting and wanted to drag us off over tropical hill and dale on their Sunday ride. Anja goes nowhere without breakfast so they disappointedly rode off without without us.

20000kms from Devon

The government run ‘Pelni’ ship to Jakarta was built some time ago in Hamburg and I must say the engines still ran pretty smoothly. The rest of the ship though was a stinking rusty hulk where the stench got stronger the deeper one went. Cockroaches did not so much scatter from our path but sidle reluctantly out of the way, confident in their superior numbers. Breakfast lunch and dinner on board was cold rice and a fish-head served in a polystyrene box. Hundreds if not thousands of these were then jettisoned with other waste from the galley porthole into the path of the few following dolphins who I hoped found my largely uneaten fish-heads and profited in some fleeting way from the existence of us greedy and filthy humans. So much for trying to be eco-hippies and not taking the quicker, easier and cheaper option of flying.

Could be Devon

The only other pale-face onboard was Paulo, an interesting Austrian chap who lived on Java and took this horrible boat because he was afraid of flying. He said there was a new boat that left on Wednesdays that was actually quite nice and they didn’t throw the crap overboard. So if you ever go this way take the KM Kulud if possible and not the KM Umsini.  Ironically a whole deck of the ship was first-class, quarter-decent and empty, all of the passengers being crammed into steerage. We just had to escape the atom-splitting Karaoke machine strategically placed in the only place with seats (well there was one small bench on the miles of deck to be shared between about 400 passengers but you had to fight for it), so we sneaked down to the deserted first-class deck and got a good nights sleep in one of the ‘lounges’.

Java Morning

We arrived only 5 hours late to a darkened, busy Jakarta dock with no more desire to ride the 16kms into the city. Paulo negotiated a taxi-bus for us and we eventually found a cheap hotel in the backpacker district. We had until now avoided bed-bugs. I guess we had been lucky. No longer. We moved to a different hostel and set out confidently on our bikes to explore the city. An hour later we pulled breathlessly into the gateway of the national museum and remained for hours in this interesting haven of calm, reluctant to return to the fray.  Neither of us it seemed had much desire to find the hidden delights of Jakarta. The traffic is bad but the fumes and pollution is awful, somehow unproportional, the worst we have encountered. We left the next morning.

For the next 130kms we wore face-masks but still had sore throats. The cycling was unpleasant and I was, until then, totally uninspired by anything Indonesian. All we saw were millions of people riding round on smoky-foul mopeds throwing crap of all kinds into any possible ditch or river. The strange thing was, people didn’t look that poor. I found myself getting angry with the whole nation. Ignorance is no-longer either an excuse or a reason for this level of pollution, all kinds of media are everywhere and most of the kids seemed to go to school.

Fisherman

We turned left and headed for the south coast figuring the roads would be quieter. The road was on our map and turned out to be a small lane leading into the hills. I didn’t care if we got lost, we could go by compass, anything to escape the damn highway. After a few kms there was no traffic at all and we were back in the world we knew, small villages, kids, chickens and buffalos. Behind us rose a volcano out of the haze and we began to climb. The road forked and forked again but we kept asking for unpronounceable villages that we rarely ever reached. The asphalt  lost either its way or its courage and we were left alone, pushing our bikes up a rocky track sunken between two fields. I was reminded of a favourite stretch of Devon green lane and as we stopped for a picnic, sitting on the bank looking out over the remaining tufts of forest to a cloud topped, dry volcano in the fern, I finally felt a wave of happiness flood my spirit. I believe I had imagined the whole world was a city and all the roads were lined with concrete mobile-phone shops which trapped  thick purple smoke and bounced amplified, combustive noise repeatedly against strained eardrums. I had awoken from the nightmare.

The Slaughterhouse

Up and up we pushed and crawled until we reached the tea which draped itself like a green blanket over all but the tightest undulation of the hills. These plantations are always a magical topiary garden even when one knows they have replaced the forest. The tarmac had worked its way up from the south to meet us and we cruised down a mobeus’ ribbon in new black asphalt, the only sound the wind in our ears and the suck of our trusty tires on the cambered curves. Bicycles were made for roads such as these. At night we stayed in a remote Losemen, a guesthouse for tired travelers, where we met a man from Jakarta here to buy some land. Iman was his name and he took us next morning into the forest to check out the dwindling water- source which was going to supply his timber crop with sustenance. It had not rained here for five months and the farmers were in trouble. So many times on this trip had we heard the locals complaining of unusual weather be it too hot too wet too dry or cold.

Wild West Java

The road surface deteriorated again and I was left repeating my old maxim that a good track is far better than a bad road. We rode a bad road for the next 200kms along the south coast of Java. On our right side the ocean released its frustration by pounding the coast with huge breakers and the sound followed us way inland when we were, for some unknown , led away from the relatively flat coastal strip and up a mountain only to be brought hurtling down 20% gradients to a place not far from where we were before. We had to let our tires down to half pressure to avoid being rattled apart and against a strong headwind we were struggling to make 70kms a day, camping sometimes under coconut trees with the sound of surf permeating our dreams.

One afternoon we cycled back onto the pages of our out of date guidebook and decided to overnight in a little beach village called Batu Karas. From the town of Cijulang where we accidently met the local antique bicycle club showing of their Dutch and Indian prides of joy, we crossed a pretty bamboo bridge, were met by the local English teacher and taken to the home of a lady called Marti who would rent us a room for what stretched into more than a weeks stay.

We reach the coast

We had stumbled onto one of Indonesia’s famous surf breaks and after watching so many people have such fun pretty much for free, we thought we would have a go. Many people informed us that there was hardly a better place in the world to learn to surf, owing to the sandy bottom and the regular and long right hand break. One could also watch the reigning and former Indonesian long-board champions practicing all day long.

Surfer Chick

After four days of being pounded and tumbled from 6am to 5pm I was cut and bruised, my rashes turned to sores then open wounds and my arms hung so heavy at my sides I could hardly raise my evening beer to my lips. It was all worth it to experience the silence as finally the breaking foam is left behind, the only sound is the ripple of water on the edges of the board and one can trace a line in the steep, curved wall of the wave with a finger while one glides beneath this fickle face. All other concerns disappear while surfing and one can step across the time-curve direct from morning to evening noticing only the waxing and waning tide, while those on the shore take the long way round via afternoon. The first time travellers will be the surfers of light-waves.

Surfer Chic

In this friendly community we soon new most people by first name. There were a few of us foreigners learning to surf, encouraging each other’s achievements and laughing at our failures, the more experienced ones helping the less talented. Being a bit of a loner I felt for the first time in years part of a club, one of the boys. One night we had a fish fry, grilling a massive trevally and eating till we were overfull. Thanks to everyone for a wonderful week: Ian, Jordan and Naiomi, Jake and Jake, Walter and Ilsa joining us on a swim up the green canyon, Mike for so willingly lending your longboard, Marti for cooking so many meals and making us feel at home and all in the Batu Karas surf club for creating the atmosphere that makes it hard for all to leave.

The swell is picking up and Anja is, after so much determination finally getting on her feet. There is time for a couple of hours wave-riding before sundown so I will leave you dear readers, to go and open up once more my thinly scabbed sores and batter again my tender ribs.

Postscript:

 Anja has figured it out and is catching almost every wave.