A Search for Birds of Paradise in West Papua, Indonesia
Rain, Mud, Foggy Glasses and other Challenges
September 2017
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It's roughly 3,000 km (1,900 mi) from Perth to Jakarta. By bad prioritization and scheduling, we managed to fly 8,800 km (5,400 mi). Instead of a four hour flight, we spent a whole day and were exhausted by the time we got to Jakarta. Jakarta was only an interim stop for us — our next flight was in-country, from Jakarta to Sorong, in what is now the Indonesian state of West Papua (formerly known as Irian Jaya and Dutch New Guinea ) on the island of New Guinea.
Other good links for facts on Indonesia:
- U.S. Central Intelligence Agency (Interesting details)
- Wikipedia
Our convoluted route from Perth to Waigeo, West Papua
Our main reason for going to West Papua was to look for Birds of Paradise. These birds have very limited range, and have evolved crazy attributes via selection for sexual attraction. The males are "Pretty Boys" who have climbed to the top.
The Indonesian provinces of West Papua and Papua have aspired to independence since the end of the Second World War. The people have suffered from, and continue to suffer from, brutal colonialism from both European nations and multinational corporations. Their aspirations have been squashed repeatedly by the Indonesian government, with complicity and help from world powers including the Dutch, Australia and the United States, and by multi-national resource extraction giants. This effort was brought up as recently as September, 2017, in the United Nations, which refused to consider it. The United States did not argue on their behalf. In the end, we abandoned them, just as we abandoned the Czechs when the Russians invaded, and more recently the Kurds when the Iraqis invaded and again when Turkey beat them up, and numerous others. As a nation, we have no backbone when it is not in large corporate economic interests. For more information about this conflict, see the following:
- Banned West Papua independence petition handed to UN (The Guardian, Sep 2017)
- Why the U.N. disregarded West Papua's Latest Push for Independence From Indonesia (World Politics Review, Oct 2017)
- Free West Papua Campaign
- What Is Indonesia Trying to Hide in West Papua? (American Anthropological Assn, Huffington Post)
- Indonesia's 1969 Takeover of West Papua Not by "Free Choice" (The National Security Archive, Jul 2004)
- West Papua: A history of exploitation (NAJ Taylor, Al Jazeera, Oct 2011)
- The Blacklisting of Rio Tinto (NAJ Taylor, Al Jazeera, Oct 2011)
- West Papua: Five facts about Indonesia's dark, dirty secret (Asia Pacific Report, Sep 2017)
The Jakarta airport has three terminals. They are widely separated but there is a free shuttle bus. However, we didn't know from which terminal our domestic flight left. Depending on which source you use, you get differing information on where you should go. After some questioning of "people who looked like they should know," by which I mean travelers who may well have used the airlines, we learned we were in terminal 2, where we arrived, and Batik Air to Sorong left from 1C. We boarded a bus and headed that way. The terminals aren't all that well marked when you arrive and the bus driver wasn't particularly accomodating but other passengers kept telling us to sit tight and eventually we hopped off at the right place.
We were supposed to meet Dona's nephew Ram and our Indonesian guide, Mehd (short for Mohammed), at the airport. Our flight was scheduled to leave at some unholy hour like 01:00; we were quite a few hours early but it was still ... night. We found some seats where Dona could stretch out for a nap, and I occupied myself reading. Ram and Mehd showed up about midnight.
Mehd lives in Bali and operates a small guide service specializing in birds of Indonesia, Birding Indonesia. He speaks (at least) English, Arabic, Swedish, French and Bahasa Indonesia, the national language of Indonesia. He was born in Morocco, educated in England and Sweden, and now lives in Indonesia where "the weather is warm and there are lots of birds." We took to him immediately. Ram did all the arrangements for this part of our trip, and he had told us everything was taken care of from the time we hit the airport. As a result, we didn't know a whole lot about how we were getting to where we were going. We knew we were going to Waigeo, a group of islands off the west end New Guinea. We knew we were staying at a "homestay" somewhere near the village of Saporkren. But that was about all. We relaxed and left it up to Mehd, following him around like a bunch of newborn ducklings.
We divided our limited time in West Papua between two places, Waigeo, on the coast, and the Arfak mountains, in the north. In the Arfak mountains we spent one night at a low-elevation camp in the rainforest, then moved up to a mid elevation village. From the village, Ram and I spent one day at a camp higher up the mountain.
We found the Indonesian domestic airlines to be quite reasonable. Our outbound flight and return flights to/from Jakarta were on Batik Air; our flight from Sorong to Manokwari was on Garuda Indonesia. The service was better than on Delta or United flights we have taken in the past; the food was better than on our Delta or Quantas flights on this trip; and there was way more seat room than on any of the other carriers as well. None of our inter-island flights appeared to have an overbooking issue. For those of you who fly, you might be interested in reading an explanation of the overbooking regulations for the U.S.
Next: Waigeo