The REALLY good stuff.

The REALLY good stuff:

The kids. The children on this island were in imminent danger of being snatched and stolen by me at any given moment. A group of little boys entertained me daily as they hung out on, around, or under my porch always having a lovely chat even though none of us could understand each other. As I did endless laps around the island, walking in the rain or the afternoon sun after the day of rain, so many sweet faces with shy smiles and brave babes with eager grins ran up to greet me or peeked and waved from the shadows of their homes. And they played. Played, played, played. A game of marbles was happening every few meters, coconut husks were kicked around, bikes were being raced, random bits of this and that were providing endless entertainment. The kids were happy, healthy souls. Oh how I wanted to take them all home.

Turtles. Big ones. Massive. When we tied banana leaves to a rope and let them float in the water off the boardwalks, enormous beauties would arrive and munch until there was nothing left but the rope. Clambering up and over each other to get to their happy snack. Saw a pile up of 5 at one time. Gorgeous.

These aged beauty queens were the mamas who were coming up to the beaches at night and laying their precious eggs. WWF has invested here and it is paying off. Sort of. Every 12 days for 3 months, a mama turtle lays around 100 eggs. That’s A LOT of eggs. A lot of eggs in danger. The locals ON THIS SAME ISLAND, still eat turtle eggs and kill smaller turtles so that they can stuff them and sell them to other Indonesian tourists. So.Much.Rage. Thankfully, each night, 3 rangers patrol the beach, wait for the mamas to lay their eggs, snatch the eggs, count and label them, then bury them in secret locations where they will hatch two months later. The same rangers who rescue them as eggs release them as brand new babies into the sea.

I was lucky enough to be part of both the egg snatching and the baby releasing. And yes, there were tears. Steaming warm turtle eggs in my hand one night, squirming, squishy soft new hatchlings in my hands the next. Oh heaven, heaven, heaven. These rangers are doing incredible work and are scoffed and ignored by the very people they grew up with, live with, on the same island, fighting their work every single day. The thought process, or lack thereof, in this country makes me enormously sad. Only one in 100 baby turtles will survive the rough seas and here, they also have to contend with the locals eating them before they are out of their shells, or catching them in nets if they do survive and slaughtering them for sale.

Example: as four of us sat for a drink after coming back from rescuing turtle eggs, one of the girls showed the shop lady a photo of the pile of turtle eggs. The lady got so excited. She wanted us to take her to where the eggs were buried because turtle eggs taste so good! Noooooooo! The completely horrified reaction she got from all of us caused her to retreat but you can be sure her opinion is shared by many.

I am not getting any better at dealing with this.

Case in point… as I emerged from my shack one afternoon, I looked down to the sand under the next door boardwalk and saw two boys who had pinned down a turtle and were tying it up. A young turtle, maybe a half a meter long and still fairly strong. They were tying up its neck and flippers as it was trying to escape. Cue crazy woman Janice. At full screech and sadly without thinking, I jumped down off my boardwalk and launched into a ranting tirade, shouting and shaking my fist at all the people who were standing around watching, until the boys flipped the turtle on its back and moved away. With wild grey hair flying and English profanities spewing forth, I ripped the ropes from this poor turtle, heaved her upright and carried her back into the sea where she thankfully swam quickly away. As I cursed them all to the depths of hell, trudging huffing and puffing back up the sand, I saw another turtle, tied and upside down in a small boat beside a hut. Again, the rage. When I picked her up, she barely moved. Sputtering with hatred at this point I got her to the water where she needed coaxing to move, to swim, to fight. She eventually swam away but my heart was heavy … she may not have made it. I could have killed someone.

As I retold this story to the rangers, they were thankfully concerned but somewhat disappointed in me. Why hadn’t I taken any pictures of the culprits and the turtles? What could they do if they didn’t have pictures? *sigh* Defeat. Note to self…. Think! Think! Think! I’m so sorry turtles. Lesson learned.

Jellyfish. Google Kakaban Island. Seriously. Do it. It is one of only two places in the world where jellyfish have evolved in a freshwater lake to have no sting for lack of prey or predators. Bizarre. Creepy cool. Alien. Want to go back. Speedboat out and ended up at this uninhabited, white sand, paradise island. Walk a well worn boardwalk ten minutes into the jungle and stumble out to this enormous opaque green lake. I had seen some pictures of what to expect, so snorkels on, head under water, let’s go! *GASP!* Sputter! Squeal! Oh my GOSH! LOOOOOOOOK!!!!! By the pier, there are a few brownish, transparent bobbling jellyfish that you tentatively touch; do they REALLY not sting?! They really, really don’t! You keep swimming and the further you get, the more there are. Big ones, small ones, upside down ones attached to the sea grass at the bottom, their fuzzy bottoms outstretched to the sun above, and slimy transparent dinner plate ones. Not one single sting. You push through them, like swimming through a ball pit, definitely not of this world. Mangroves surround the lake and there is brightly coloured CORAL growing under, around, and on the roots of the trees! It was absolutely unlike anything I have ever experienced in my life. Unbelievable. There were a few incidents of jellyfish tossing, making them into wigs, and general childishness but there were SO MANY! True underwater highlight, for sure.

Mantas. On the way back from visiting this alien homeland, we stopped for a casual snorkel with my favourite love, those magnificent mantas. Let’s just hop off the boat here and snorkel around with a few beauties, shall we? Yes, we shall. A small, curious picture of perfection kept circling back for closer looks and a little company. Please take me with you. Please. Oh so fabulous. Yes, life is good.

I did manage to convince a different guide to take three of us out to the island that I really wanted to dive but it took an enormous amount of effort. When we did get out there, he wouldn’t take us to the site where I wanted to dive, telling an assortment of lies each time I pushed him, from not enough time, to not enough fuel, to currents too strong, etc. I was furious. We had spent $100USD on this boat and he wanted us to dive the same site twice and refused to take us to where I wanted to go once we arrived. Complete jackass. Did two dives, he knew we were really upset with him, but again, he didn’t care. He didn’t want to work anyway. Jerk. (The dives were VERY nice, by the way).

Sad side note of sea life in and around Derawan. The water is FULL of fishing huts and boats, full. What I noticed on my dives wasn’t so much what was there, but what wasn’t. We were in the middle of nowhere, channels running though far off islands. We should have been swarmed by fish. There was very, very little in the water. The site, the coral, the landscape was beautiful and wild but empty. Dynamite fishing and mass overfishing has emptied these waters and there is no turning back. Indonesia is a critical contributor to marine life destruction and it is escalating. No logical thought processes. Now is all that matters here. Mass swaths of the rainforest have fallen to logging and mining; I had no idea how gigantic the scale was until I flew over it. Life, on land and in the water, is being eliminated at an alarming rate in this part of the world. Complete devastation.

Sorry. Soapbox.

The majority of people who live on the island were lovely. I was away from the noise and the hassle of Surabaya where people stare and harass and insist on trying to take your picture when you’re not looking so the quiet, small island life was much needed. The locals who were in the business of the travelers weren’t interested in working, they dismissed you before they said hello, and lied as easily as they took a breath but the day to day interactions of those who simply lived on Derawan were just perfect. All good.

My return to the mainland was relatively hassle-free as I had become wise to the ways of the deceptive demons and simply told them how it was going to go. No questions asked.

Despite the shit show that was my week in Kalimantan, this is a place NOT to be missed. To avoid the anguish of wanting to stab your own eyes out on a trip to Derawan, simply do the exact OPPOSITE of what I did and you will be fine. Absolutely fine. I wanted a trip on my own, at the end of rainy season, to a place not many people visit, and figured I could sort it out once I got there. Should you go in the future, go in the dry season, with many friends, and book ahead. It’s worth it. I promise!

So yes friends, I survived thoughts of suicide as a way to escape the alternate universe I was temporarily trapped in and managed to wrap another bunch of unique experiences firmly around my full, full heart. Time is ticking away here in Indonesia and although there are countless things I still want to do, I think I’ll leave with a pretty good checklist of a year well spent. Don’t you?