They rode back silently to Bandjarmasin in the Toyota, where Sucipto had told them that the Provincial Director of the forestry department, Rami Latif, had invited them to lunch.
Their visit to the Martarpura paper mill had a depressing effect on them and especially on Axelmann. The assembly of decayed buildings seemed like abstract surrealism, in the chaos of the tropical vegetation, which appeared to be winning the struggle against industrial mans first efforts to establish a colony in that remote backwater.
Rami Latif liked to laugh, for an Indonesian laughing and smiling were part of his country’s culture. Every smile had its meaning, and for the foreigner it was indispensable to correctly interpret each smile, if he was to avoid potentially embarrassing misunderstandings.
In Latif’s case, they discovered his laughs also expressed a natural exuberance. He was a man who enjoyed life, he was an extrovert. His pleasure in showing his visitors the sights of Bandjarmasin was demonstrated by the extravagance of his gesticulations.
The restaurant was called the Blue Diamond. It was simple, but with the necessary luxury of air-conditioning, heavy condensation obscured its windows and the tables were covered with plastic tablecloths. It was the best in town and quite naturally it was Chinese.
In Indonesia, Chinese had not quite the same connotation as in Europe, it meant of course the ethnic Chinese population, but they were not recent immigrants, many had been there for countless generations. However, they lived apart, retaining their separate identities. In total more than three million ethnic Chinese lived in the country.
Rami Latif ordered the speciality of the Blue Diamond, one-day-old chicks, crispy grilled and dipped into a mixture of salt and pepper, which they ate with their fingers. That was followed by a mass of boiled crabs and giant prawns, accompanied by fluffy boiled rice and washed down by with iced tea and Bintang beer.
Ennis talked about their plans and Rami Latif suggested that a closer look at the rivers and forest areas would be a good introduction to the region; he proposed that they commence by exploring the river the following morning.
The wide river that ran through Bandjarmasin, the Martarpura, was dark and deep, with a swift current that swirled and bounced the floating debris and vegetation on the waves. The river traffic was dense, craft of all types from the simplest pirogues that were buffeted in the wake of the fast river taxis, to river buses and cargo junks. They were all loaded with wares of almost every description, fruit, vegetables, wood and furniture, drums of petrol and bales of textiles.
The Martarpura twisted through Bandjarmasin, and then joined the Barito River, which emptied into the Java Sea. The Barito was one of the many huge rivers draining the Muller and Penambo mountain chains that straddled the equator. The mountains were covered by dense rainforests where the climate varied little throughout the seasons, with almost five to ten times the annual rainfall of that in Western Europe.
Borneo, over seven hundred and fifty thousand square kilometres in area, one-and-a-half times the size of France, was covered with vast primary forests, broadly classified, according to the specialists, into three types, dry and wet forests, and mangrove forests. The mangroves lay on the coast, submerged in brackish waters, a strange almost impenetrable forest separating land and sea.
The population density was very low, with most of the inhabitants living in the coastal towns and villages, or on the banks of the many rivers in the interior.
Villagers often travelled for many days from the interior in their small boats, to sell their wares and buy provisions in the coastal towns. The rivers were the lifelines of the region for the inhabitants and for the logging companies that exploited the rich primary forests of the interior.
Huge rafts, composed of hundreds of giant hardwood logs, the very pillars of the rainforest, bound together by rattan cords, navigated their way down the tributaries and rivers to the sea. In the estuary of the Barito, many kilometres wide, ships from Korea, Taiwan and Japan loaded and transported the logs to the plywood and sawmills in distant ports of the archipelago. They also illegally exported the logs to foreign destinations in Asia.
The rafts, almost at the end of their journey at Bandjarmasin, were completely waterlogged, often totally submerged, floating just below the surface of the water. The wiry Indonesian raftsmen, who spent most of their lives on the river, stood on the rafts watching the shore. It was as though they were performing a miracle, barely ankle deep on the submerged logs in mid-stream, gazing at the crowds and traffic in the town, where buses and trucks pumped black clouds of diesel fumes into the air as they laboured under loads that they were never designed to carry, along the banks of the river and over its bridges.
The visitors were driven to one of the many landing stages on the riverbank, where two motorboats were waiting to take them on their exploration trip. It resembled a chaotic bus station, where crowds of passengers disembarked, laden with their bags and bundles, from the river buses and ferries. The air was filled with the noise of the bustling crowd and from the boats motors churning the grey-green water, from which damp blue smoke rose and swirled above the waves.
They watched a Japanese traveller climb onto the quay from a boat that was fitted with two powerful outboard motors. He was probably the manager of a logging camp, who looked as though he was returning home on leave after a long stay in the jungle. His face was burnt almost black by the fierce tropical sun. He was equipped as though he had been on a long expedition deep into the forest. A motor was lashed to the deck of the boat amongst drums of fuel, a standby in the event that one of the two outboards broke down far from civilisation. His baggage was enough for a whole village, he was unshaven and dirty. Only the apparent quality and style of his dirty clothes indicated that he was a foreigner.
They descended with Rami Latif and his adjutants onto the jetty, like visiting dignitaries, pretending to ignore the stares and embarrassed laughs of the colourful crowd - embarrassed for them - so big, so white and so clumsy.
‘Christ it stinks!’ muttered Axelmann.
He looked nervously at the boats bobbing in the wash against the rotting timbers of the jetty, which Latif had pointed to with his thumb. Axelmann together with Ennis clambered into the first boat followed by Rami Latif, whilst Sucipto and the representative of the local port authority boarded the second.
Sucipto’s boat took the lead, making a wide turn, churning up a deep wake on the river, heading with a burst of noise from the motor in the direction of the new bridge and then downstream towards the Barito.
The boat accelerated rapidly, it sat low in the water, which increased the sensation of speed, they seemed to hurtle through the dense river traffic. Weaving around pirogues that were almost swamped, slipping around half submerged logs and overtaking the huge rafts, which were up to one hundred metres long slowly making their way down the last twenty kilometres to the coast.
The noise of the wind whistled in their ears, the slapping and buffeting of the water and the roar of the motor made conversation almost impossible. The river was lined with wooden houses on piles, linked together with fragile boardwalks. There were houseboats of every shape and size. Whenever they passed closed the shore, they were greeted by astonished smiles and waving hands.
Further down the river, they were met by the incredible sight of sailing ships, real sailing ships with full riggings of every size and form, their crews looking like modern day versions of Dayak pirates.
It was as though they had entered another age, the scene was straight from the pages of William Faulkner or Somerset Maugham. They passed wooden junks laden with sawn timber as they entered the Barito. Anchored in the stream, were ocean going ships from Korea and Taiwan taking on cargoes of wood. There were tankers from the state oil company Pertamina, bringing in oil and gasoline, coastal freighters with cargoes of rice and flour for the province.
They were at first astonished and then amazed by the sights of the centuries mixed together against a backcloth of tall coconut palms. The aluminium-covered domes of mosques reflected the sunlight above the wood tiled roofs of the riverside houses suspended precariously on their pilings. There were the slipways of the traditional boat builders, who with simple tools carved their hulls from the huge hardwood trunks, which had been rafted from the nearby forests, in the tradition of their ancestors.
They turned upstream on the Barito, where the wooden houses that lined the riverbanks slowly gave way to rice paddy and coconut plantations. These were then succeeded by dense patches of river palms that grew on the waters edge and thick undergrowth overshadowed by tall trees.
There was little movement, except for the water birds that rose as the outboards approached, or an occasional pirogue that advanced slowly hugging the riverbank. The scenery soon became monotonous, apart from a family of monkeys that watched them suspiciously, before returning to their foraging. The boat had slowed down; there was certain stillness, only the burbling noise of the motor in the water.
‘How far is it to the next town?’ Axelmann asked Rami Latif, who looked a little surprised at the question.
‘What town?’
‘I don’t know! The next one?’
‘Mr Axelmann! In that direction,’ he said pointing north, ‘the next village is probably Bandar Seri Bagawan!’
Axelmann looked blank.
‘You know where that is?’
He shook his head and shrugged his shoulders.
‘Its in Brunei, more than one thousand three hundred kilometres to the north, in a straight line, more than double that if you’re crazy enough to go by land. There are a couple of villages, Buntok and Muaratewe before the mountains, then jungle and nothing else.’
‘Nothing else?’
‘No nothing, except maybe some orang-utans,’ he said throwing back his head and laughing.
‘Do you want to see anything else?’ he asked questioningly
‘No, I don’t think there is any more we can see today,’ said Ennis.
They returned to the hotel. In the cool and quiet of coffee shop, which they had began to appreciate, over drinks of beer and juice, they questioned Latif and Sucipto on the nature of the forest and the existing logging operations.
These were the local experts; they had been with the department since leaving university, where they had graduated in forestry. They should know everything, backed up by their team of specialists.
Unfortunately, nothing was further from the truth. Their knowledge of Bandjarmasin, local government and business was excellent; after all they lived and worked in the region. Their theoretical knowledge was considerable, but simple questions, on the species of such and such a tree, or for example, the habitat where certain species could be found, caused long and confused discussion.
They slowly became aware, that in reality, Rami Latif and his team were desk experts. To them the forest was an area to be avoided if possible, left to the villagers and to the loggers; the forest was a hostile and even dangerous place.
That evening, left to their own means they went over their plans for the following day, after caring for their sunburn. They had been surprised by the intensity of the sun and had been fairly badly burned on their head and arms. Ennis soothed his with a lotion that he had had the foresight to have brought with him, the burns were compounded by an extraordinary number insect bites.
‘Listen, maybe we should call it a day and return to Jakarta?’ Axelmann said, hoping Ennis would agree.
‘Maybe we’re not really up to this, a couple of city types like us, but at least were seeing what conditions here are really like.’
‘Good! We’ve seen what it’s like let’s book our flight back.’
‘No, hang on a moment, the feasibility study is going to cover forestry resources. But for our own knowledge we should look a bit closer whilst we’re here.’
‘I’ve had enough!’
‘Listen another couple of days, we wont regret it, and I know its tough but it’s not that bad, let’s order a decent steak and have a few beers then we’ll feel better.’
They discussed using a light aircraft or a helicopter to get a better look from the air. Sucipto had said he would check out the possibility of contacting Elf, the French petroleum company, who were exploring for oil on the west coast near Tanjung, he seemed to remember that they had a couple of Puma helicopters.
After a restless night with little sleep, troubled by their sunburn and the stifling heat, they met early for breakfast. At eight Sucipto arrived, he walked into the dinning room looking very pleased with himself. He had been in contact with Elf, and had learnt that at midday the regional manager would arrive at Bandjarmasin airport. He was due to pickup a representative of Pertamina arriving on a visit from Jakarta.
They drove out to the airport at eleven and were in luck. Jean-Jacques Jaulmes was delighted to meet somebody from Paris; he quickly agreed to fly them up to one of their base camps where they were conducting seismic exploration.
They would over fly the forest, which would give them a good idea of the terrain. Elf’s base was not far from a Korean logging operation, to which Sucipto could organise a visit.
It was cramped and noisy in the helicopter, but the camp was only two hundred kilometres to the north, as the crow flies about one hours flying time.
There was an excellent view as they flew at a height of about three thousand feet. They saw the Barito, a great stream that sparkled in the sunshine, which flowed southwards from the horizon, to the east and west was vast carpet of green.
On the banks of the river could be seen an occasional cluster of wooden houses with small boats moored in the stream. They turned east and the river fell behind them, there was nothing more but the limitless forest and the hills that rose ahead of them in the distance.
Ennis could not help thinking, that if they came down in the forest, they would never be found. They would plunge through the canopy of the huge trees that rose almost sixty or seventy meters above the floor of the forest, and disappear into the twilight of the dense vegetation with its steaming heat, amongst the strange animals and insects that lived there.
After almost one hour’s flight, Ennis, realised that only field seasoned foresters could undertake a survey objectively. Rami Latif and his staff could only provide logistical support. They would require hardened specialists. They had seen nothing but endless forests, no roads, no towns, just a few clusters of huts on the banks of the streams and rivers, in other words a real and certainly hostile wilderness.
They then saw a clearing, which the helicopter circled and then landed. Nearby was Elf’s base camp. There were a few timber buildings, like army barracks, with a motley assortment of machines and vehicles parked nearby.
At least they would see what it was like on the ground and Axelmann, marvelling at the unlimited forest, finally admitted that a visit to the logging operation would be a useful experience. They were driven to the camp in a four-wheel drive Toyota, over a slippery undulating track, about ten kilometres distance from the Elf base.
Kim Chun Lee, the camp manager, welcomed them as his guests for the night. It was almost six thirty and darkness was falling as they were shown to their rooms in the camps guesthouse, which were of the greatest simplicity. The camp was a compound formed by three timber dormitories and a fourth barrack like building, the administrative centre.
They showered in Indonesian fashion, using a large plastic ladle, which they filled from a tub, poured and splashing themselves with the water, it was at air temperature, but it was wonderfully refreshing after the heat and transpiration of the day.
They ate a simple dinner in the guesthouse dinning room, where Kim joined them. His English conversation was rudimentary, but he made up for it with a steady supply of cold beer. Their meal was then followed by a friendly and impromptu table tennis tournament.
Kim told them he had organised a visit to a logging area for the next day and proposed a sortie into the jungle, where they could see dacrydium stands that were suitable for pulpwood, which Sucipto had said existed in the area. Axelmann was not at all enthusiastic at the prospect, but appeared to have accepted that there was no turning back for the moment and put on a brave face.
The night was hot; there was no air-conditioning in the guesthouse. Fortunately for them most of the mosquitoes were kept at bay by the netting over the windows and the double doors, the few mosquitoes that did get through reeked havoc on the soft white bodies of the two Europeans.
Throughout the night, they were awakened by the throb of the camps generator, and the clicking and whirring noises of large insects that were attracted by the camp lights that burnt continuously. At irregular intervals, the larger insects collided with thudding whirs and the cracking noise of their hard wings against the timber slats of the room’s walls. With the stifling heat, noise, insect bites and sunburn, sleep was almost impossible.
The next morning they took a Toyota down the logging trail, to a low lying area of wet forest, which appeared to be a staging post for the huge trunks of the huge hardwoods that had been felled at some distance in the interior of the forest.
In the clearing there was a narrow gauge railway track, supported on logs that lay on the swampy ground. A small train carried the heavy logs from the interior of the forest to the staging post.
Kim explained to them that from that point, the wood was transported by truck, to a river branch some ten kilometres further south, where the log rafts were assembled and then floated two hundred kilometres to Bandjarmasin, a journey of ten days.
The railway tracks were not exactly straight, or even flat. The tracks zigzagged into the distance, undulating as the train advanced, giving it the appearance of a living creature. A ramshackle wood fired steam locomotive, almost like a hobby train, pulled the convoy of logs, attached by heavy chains onto bogies, over the rails.
The Dayak foresters, that Kim had arranged to guide them through the jungle, were waiting at the railhead; the four small dark men were dressed in an attire that seemed out of place for the heat and humidity of the forest.
‘Look at the way they’re dressed!’ Axelmann exclaimed.
‘It must be the latest fashion here to wear French berets,’ said Ennis amused.
‘The plus-fours are great too,’ Axelmann sniggered.
The guides wore long socks with their trousers tied by string just below the knees, their long sleeved shirts were buttoned up to the collar and the berets pulled well down over their heads, around their necks they wore brightly coloured scarves.
‘Have a good day! See you later, about six o’clock,’ Kim said as they clambered onto a flat wagon coupled just behind the locomotive.
‘It’s about six kilometres to the logging area.’
The train rattled off at a speed of about eight kilometres an hour, swaying as the sleepers gave under its weight, over the waterlogged path that had been cut through the forest.
They observed in a detached manner how the new vegetation pushed its way upwards like a green wall on the jungle on both sides of the track. A maze of climbers seemed to hang like a curtain on the broken branches of the trees. The sun was hot and already high. The guides laughed pointing to the forest and an occasional bird rose in flight as the convoy approached.
After about forty-five minutes, the train reached the end of the line and they gingerly stepped down onto the soft waterlogged ground.
Huge logs, of up to one-and-a-half metres in diameter and fifteen meters long, lay ready to be loaded by the slightly built workers. Logs weighing many tons were manipulated almost entirely by muscle power, with the aid of chains and simple hand operated winches.
The guides after exchanging a few words with their friends collected their canvas rucksacks and pointed to a barely discernible pathway leading to a gap in the undergrowth making signs to the Europeans to follow. They followed with more than a little trepidation.
Once in the cover of the forest the fierce humidity hit them like a heavy punch, leaving them gasping for breath. The temperature in the twilight under the dense canopy, which towered almost sixty metres above them, was like an oven. The insects hovered in dense swarms, alighting on their arms and faces, even entering their mouths and nostrils.
The guides advanced at a brisk pace, as the pair struggled to keep up with them over the treacherous floor of the forest. One moment a foot was balanced on a root or a dead branch and the next they were knee deep in the stagnant black water that filled the irregularities of the ground. The mass of stranglers and creepers that hung from the trees in profusion frustrated their progress.
This is not like fuckin Tarzan, Ennis thought to himself, seizing a rotten vine, which immediately broke in his hand plunging him forward once again knee deep in the unknown murky pools of thick water. The living vines were covered with razor sharp thorns, more than an inch long that tore the skin from their fingers.
It was almost impossible to breath. They had been in the forest for about an hour and the guides were no longer visible, hidden by the vegetation. They thrust forward desperately following the noise ahead of them, as their lungs pumped for air and their hands cast about for support as the long fingers of panic groped at them.
They had quickly realised that it was to be no ordinary outing. The clothes that the guides wore protected them against the thorns and insects. An hour on the tennis court, or a couple of lengths of the hotel pool, had not prepared them physically for an endurance test of that intensity.
After two hours of extenuating effort, they hauled themselves onto a bamboo platform, about four metres by four and one metre off the ground, erected in a small clearing. The guides indicated to them that they could rest and take refreshments.
They looked at each other and were astonished at the transformation, in just a couple of hours in the jungle, the two well dressed tourists, in their Hugo Boss slacks and Lacoste polo shirts, had been transformed into the bedraggled exhausted wrecks of a Hollywood ‘Lost in the Jungle’ style B movie. Their shoes were waterlogged, their slacks sagged, saturated with slimy water from the floor of the rainforest, their shirts and arms were streaked with transpiration and dirt, their hair tousled and their glistening faces haggard with the strain.
‘I can’t go on!’ Axelmann moaned desperately, as if to confirm Ennis’ mental impression.
He painfully stood up on the bamboo platform, unfolding himself slowly, as if to emphasise his condition, he moved one of his feet and dropped! Like a hundred weight sack of rice, through the loosely bound poles, stopping brutally, suspended by his crotch across a stout bamboo truss.
There was a moment of suspense, and only when they saw he was more shaken than hurt, the tenseness of the atmosphere was broken, the guides together with Ennis broke out into screams of convulsive laughter.
They drank the warm colas that the guides produced from their rucksacks, fighting off the hoards of insects that were drawn by the transpiring bodies and the smell of the sweetened drinks.
The guides explained, in pidgin English, that they had made about two kilometres, which was one kilometre an hour, and they had about the same distance to go.
The two of them sat silently calculating, two more hours, if the guides were right, with the same distance to go back, they had at least six more hours march. They looked numbly at their watches, it would be seven in the evening and dark when they returned, if, they could maintain the same pace. They did not want to loose face in front of the guides and made signs to continue, in the desperate hope that maybe...the terrain would become a little less difficult.
After another hour, they questioned one of the Dayaks on how much progress they had made, about two kilometres from the starting point where they had entered the forest, was the reply. They realised it was impossible and halted, calling the other guides and explaining that they wished to return. The guides were not happy, they had been told to bring the Belandas to the dacrydium grove and they were afraid of a reproach from Kim.
After an animated and incomprehensible discussion between the guides, one of them agreed to return, whilst the others pressed on into the forest for a reason that they could not understand. Almost three hours later, they both flopped onto the platform of the one of the flat wagons, physically and mentally exhausted by their experience.
They sat in silence; Ennis inspecting the insect bites on his arms, which were already swelling, the filth of his Lacoste polo and cream trousers. His lightweight tropical shoes had proved to be no match for the sharp spikes the reached up from the floor of the jungle, he felt lucky that they had not completely penetrated the soles.
Axelmann had been more fortunate; the dense mat of hair on his arms had prevented the major part of the mosquitoes from getting to his skin. He was exhausted, being a little overweight compared to his friend and by his profession less prepared for rough and ready conditions. Ennis, an engineer, was a little more accustomed to the occasional surprises and difficulties that arrive from time to time to those engaged in construction projects in strange lands.
The train waited for another couple of hours until the other two guides appeared smiling from the forest, carrying on their shoulders freshly sawn logs. They were about fifteen centimetres diameter and one metre long. DACRYDIUM!
That evening, as they sat over a beer, after another dinner of boiled rice and fried chicken, they reflected soberly over their experience.
‘I wonder if it’s really possible to know what’s in that jungle?’ Axelmann thought aloud.
‘The local people such as the guides do, that’s for sure, but people like Rami Latif never go into the forest like us today,’ Ennis replied.
‘I’ll bet that even Kim here hasn’t been much further than us, for one thing it’s almost physically impossible.’
‘Yeah, that’s probably why they all live on the river banks that we saw from the helicopter.’
‘The only people who really know the interior are the forest people, the Dayaks.’