January 2019 – SV Bob The Cat

City time

On our way to Sorong: kids kayak surfing at a stop near Sorong.

Time flies when you’re having fun, and this week it is two months since we arrived in Indonesia. It’s been a great two months full of oceanic wildlife and beautiful islands, but all good things must come to an end and now it’s time to renew our visa.

“They do not make it easy for you, that’s for sure,” sighs David as he gathers the documentation required, stuffing folders into his backpack and smoothing his crumpled shirt with his hands. “I mean, the whole thing is so backwards. No other country makes you get fingerprints for a visitor’s visa. And to make us come back again and again, and the whole agent thing. So time consuming!”

“I’m sure the US wants fingerprints…” I respond.

“Yes, probably, but unlike the US you would have thought they would want visitors here, what with tourism being a big earner and all.” He sighs again and sits down to put his shoes on, sweat pouring down his face. “I mean, the whole agent thing – that is just so ridiculous!”

Early morning sunrise in Sorong Harbour.

It’s 10 am and 30 degrees C in the shade. There’s an overwhelming stink of dried fish in the air, the sun is beating down mercilessly and we are getting ready to go ashore to the immigration office. In Indonesia it is important to dress formally for such occasions and David is wearing long pants, shoes and a shirt, which is a lot of clothes for the weather. For women, the dress code is less onerous – as long as I look tidy and my knees and shoulders are covered I won’t offend anyone. The kids are wearing clean t-shirts and shorts and have washed for the occasion.

David is right. Indonesian visa procedures are ridiculously complicated; the bureaucracy here is energy sapping and relentless. There are a couple of visa options for yachties wishing to cruise in Indonesia. On arrival in all but the bigger ports you can only get a non-renewable one-month visa, so most boats opt to get a visa prior to arrival which gives you an initial two months in the country, and which thereafter can be renewed every month until you’ve been here for six months. We organised our visas through the Indonesian Embassy in Port Moresby, which required multiple copies of many forms and two visits to the embassy. In the past the two-month visa required a letter of support from an Indonesian citizen. This rule was changed in 2017 and the changes posted on the Indonesian Immigration Department’s website. However, frustratingly, most embassy officials and Immigration officers haven’t caught up with the changes, which means that a letter is still required when obtaining the two-month visa in most locations. Of course, many visitors don’t know an Indonesian citizen, but fortunately there are a host of ‘agents’ whom you can engage for $75 to type a letter stating that you are of good character and that they vouch for you. It seems pretty crazy that you can pay for someone to vouch for your character, but the embassy in Port Moresby wanted a letter, and so we engaged Raymond the Agent, paid the money and got the required document.

Multiple copies of passport photos were also required; for some inexplicable reason these had to be against a red background, which added a fair amount of hassle as we stitched up red t-shirts as background and played with camera settings and facial expressions until we had the required deadpan look just right and looked like a family in dire need of antidepressants, yellow faces with sombre expressions against a blood red background.

Birds over the water on a stop on the way to Sorong.

Predictably, renewing the visa involves a whole new set of bureaucratic hoops we have to jump through. We have to visit an Immigration office, which in Raja Ampat means a trip to Sorong, the provincial capital located on the westernmost point of the island of New Guinea. Once again we need a letter from an agent for each family member and these letters each require a Rp 6000 (~60 cents) stamp placed on top of the agent’s signature, necessitating a visit to, and patient queueing within, the post office before the whole-day Immigration Department operation which involves filling in numerous new forms, the entire family getting fingerprinted and vetted and depositing our passports with the department for three days while they assess our case.

Three days in Sorong means that we might as well get on with some shopping and other city matters, and we have a long list of errands that we slowly work our way through. Thankfully Indonesians are some of the nicest and most helpful people we’ve met, and the frustrations of the bureaucracy are more than made up for by the loveliness of the general population.

The history of West Papua is conflict-ridden and bloody. Originally settled by Melanesians 40-50,000 years ago, the area was colonised by the Dutch in the 1600s and formally became part of the Dutch East Indies in 1824. Except for a period of two years during the Second World War when Japan occupied the northern part of New Guinea and surrounding islands, the region remained under Dutch control until the 1960s when Indonesian began muscling in on the territory in its bid to subvert western imperialism. At this stage the Dutch had been training Papuan independence forces for more than a decade, and following bloody conflicts the United Nations worked with the parties to plan a transition to Indonesian rule against assurances that the local population would be allowed to vote about independence at a later date. This date never materialised, and the subsequent heavy-handed thwarting of the Free Papua Movement by Indonesian military forces where an estimated 500,000 Papuans were killed and many more attacked, imprisoned and tortured, is officially known as the West Papuan genocide. To further Papuan ‘integration’, the 1970s and 80s’ Indonesian Government state transmigration programme saw tens of thousands of Javanese and Sumatran migrants settle in West Papua, and nowadays the population in the region is a mix between the native Papuans and Asian settlers.

White is beautiful: several supermarket shelves are devoted to whitening creams. What a place to grow up for a Papuan girl.

Sorong is a bustling town and the logistical centre of the region’s booming oil and gas industry. The population is about 200,000 and growing exponentially which leads to a city bursting at the seams. The streets are teeming with motorbikes and cars and dusty building sites line the roadside.

About half the population are Papuan (of whom the majority are Christians) and the other half Javanese / Sumatran (mainly Muslims). Mosques and churches grace the hillsides and veiled Asian women wearing facemasks walk alongside Papuans clad in shorts and t-shirts. Children, cats and small street-side vendors are everywhere, the smells of deep fried fish and chicken wafting from the numerous small shacks advertising nasi goreng (fried rice) or mie goreng (fried noodles) lining the road.

Not knowing any Bahasa makes every shopping mission an adventure and we are eternally grateful to Google Translate which works a treat. Everywhere we go we type our English questions and read them out in broken Bahasa to patiently waiting shopkeepers and passing pedestrians who go out of their way to help us locate anything from dive tank fills to boat parts to specialised medical services.

And so we spend hours sweatily walking up and down hot and dusty streets, stepping over skinny cats with sappy eyes listlessly lying on piles of decaying rubbish wedged into the dry soil, ducking in and out of tiny, dark shops, the kids reluctantly trailing behind us as they are mobbed by crowds of eager selfie-seekers. We tour the town in bemos (local shared taxis), leaning over drivers’ shoulders to display Google Maps of where we’re going, communicating via sign language and our limited Indonesian directional phrases (‘left’, ‘right’, ‘stop’), smiling and nodding and thanking profusely every time we reach the desired location.

We visit an optician to get glasses for Lukie whose eyesight has lately deteriorated and walk out half an hour later with a prescription (-1 in both eyes) and a snazzy pair of glasses. We see a dentist to discuss what to do with Matias’s baby molars who are not budging even as the permanent teeth are coming out beside them, and fifteen minutes later we leave the premises, five baby teeth lighter and carrying a bottle of paracetamol and a course of antibiotics. A friendly nurse at the dentists goes out of her way to take me to an ophthalmologist so I can have my eyes tested while David oversees the negotiations with the dentist (there were none – he didn’t speak English and looked determined, so out the baby teeth came). While I’m at a department store with the kids shopping for hats and flip flops, David scours the town by bemo to locate boat parts and plumbing bits. We eat in food courts and roadside eateries, trying ten delicious tofu and tempeh dishes and breathing fire from the hot side-dishes involving chopped up greens, garlic and copious amounts of chilli. We find oats, butter and cheese (not available anywhere else in Raja Ampat) and stock up on frozen chicken, fresh fruit and vegetables.

Local delicacies: snake fruit (left) and dragon fruit (right).

In a blur of heat and a soak of sweat three days whirl past and as I’m getting the last of the fresh provisions David collects our passports, after which, exhausted and smelly, we’re ready to leave the city behind. We have a month until we need to be back to renew the visa again, and armed with a tonne of provisions and having warded off the worst of the medical emergencies, we are ready to say ‘so long, Sorong’.

Priceless Raja Ampat

Wayag anchorage, Bob in the bay right of centre.

“So how much does it cost to be a guest on your boat?” I asked.

“Too much for me to pay,” said Saman. He sat down next to me. “I don’t know if is a lot of money for you, but is expensive for me.”

“I’m sure it would be expensive for me too.” I leaned back against a log of wood and looked out over the small sandy beach where his fellow crew members were busy setting up for a beach barbecue. “How many guests have you got?”

“At the moment we have six,” he said. “A family from France. He is the owner of the Juventus soccer team, and his wife and children.”

“Wow,” I said. “That does sound expensive. How many crew?”

“We are 17.”

“That’s a lot of crew for six guests.” I shaded my eyes against the sun, which was lowering in the sky. On the beach, the crew were setting up table and chairs, and a sun umbrella for shade. “What do they do, the guests? Do they dive?”

“No, these guys they surf. And some kayaking and some snorkelling.” He stretched his legs and we sat together watching one of his colleagues stick tall, wooden candle holders into the shallow water, carefully placing a tealight into each. Another uniformed crew member was busy hanging woven palm leaf art delicately from the surrounding trees. A third was raking the sand, artfully rippling it along the shoreline. “We spent three days near Sorong where there is a nice wave for surfing.”

“Oh, is there?”

“Yes, just a small wave. We have surf instructor on board. Some guests come for diving, some just to relax. Last year we had Tom Cruise come for ten days, and before that Tony Blair. They pay US$18,000 per day per guest.”

“Wow, that is expensive,” I said. “And this looks like pure luxury.” I indicated the beach which by now had been completely transformed, from a deserted strip of white sand bordered by wild vegetation into an elegantly manicured al fresco dining venue. A wooden table topped by a white tablecloth was set with silverware, porcelain plates, and glasses glinting in the fading sun. A tall flag swayed gently in the breeze. Driftwood sticks bundled together and fashioned into trees had been erected every few metres; from each branch hung a small rice paper lamp with a candle inside. A barbecue had been started, the smoke filling the air, the charcoal glowing, and cool-boxes containing meat and vegetables had been unpacked. Drinks were displayed in a large basin filled with ice, and over the gentle gurgle of small waves lapping gently against the limestone rock, three crew members were tuning their instruments, getting ready for the dinner performance.

“Are they nice, the guests?” I asked.

“Well, they don’t like to talk to us crew. They never shook our hands when they arrived, they only introduced to the cruise manager.” He looked sad. “Many of our guests are like that, they don’t introduce. But there was one, from Mexico, the producer of a tele-novella. He introduced and used to stay up and talk to us in the evening.” In the approaching dusk his face lit up at the memory of the one nice guest they’d had that year.

The beach, prior to the barbecue transformation.

We were in the Wayag island group in northern Raja Ampat, eastern Indonesia. We had been having a sunset bonfire with some yachts on a tiny sandy beach when the crew of a luxury phinisi came to the beach. Traditional Indonesian sailing boats, the phinisi are used for charters throughout the country, and this boat was beautiful: 30 m of shiningly polished wood, elegantly shaped bowsprit, festively adorned interior and exterior.

Cruising is interesting in the way that it joins the rich, the poor and everything in between. Boats symbolise escape, freedom and exploring, appealing to adventurous and anti-establishment sailors alike. They also cost lots of money and as a result are a preferred vehicle for showing off amongst the super-rich. The ocean belongs to us all, and in our search for calm anchorages of serene beauty, astonishing wildlife and the potential for water sports, throughout the Caribbean and Pacific we have shared anchorages with gleaming superyachts and berthed in marinas next door to 40-metre floating mansions which are seemingly constantly being cleaned by large crews of staff wearing matching caps, polo-shirts and docksiders. We have kite-surfed with the Google founders, and ridden Richard Branson’s waves on Necker Island. In other words, wherever you go on a sailing boat in the tropics, you tend to meet the other 1%.

On Wayag Island, I reflected that it is easy to understand why the rich and famous come to Raja Ampat. Named for its four main islands (raja = king, ampat = four), the region is an area of unparalleled beauty renowned for its wildlife. It covers an area of over 4 million hectares, mainly marine, of which just under 1.5 million hectares are protected. Tourism is a main source of income, and much of that is diving: at the heart of the coral triangle, Raja Ampat is home to about 1500 species of reef fish and more than 550 species of coral, and is an important area for turtles, whales, dolphins, dugongs, sharks and manta rays, as well as saltwater crocodiles.

Since our post-Christmas provisioning, we had been island-hopping, exploring Raja Ampat, and even having seen just a fraction it was obvious why people with unlimited wealth flock here: it is a special part of the world.

New year antics: jumping with friends in Airborek.

Airborek: kids wakeboarding on a still New Year’s day, decorative phinisi in the background.

We spent time in Airborek, a small, sandy island in the Dampier Strait famous mainly for the incredible diving in the surrounding waters where manta rays frolic in the fertile waters. Here, the mantas were everywhere, their wingtips breaking the still surface waters of the anchorage in the early hours of the morning, their airborne acrobatics grazing the skies in the afternoon (apparently they jump in the hope that the landing will slough off some of the external parasites thriving on their skin). Wherever we went snorkelling they would join us, skimming the surface waters with their huge mouths, slurpily ingesting the tiny plankton that fuel the incredible marine fertility of the area. For the first time we saw black mantas, which are black inside and out, the only light feature on their bodies the pale grey shark suckers that clung onto their jet-black underbellies for the ride.

Large manta led by yellow pilot fish who only narrowly miss being ingested with every mouthful.

Large manta in foreground, me in the background.

We met more mantas at Eagle Rock, a set of relatively remote rocks rising steeply from the deep sea where local upwelling and strong tidal currents make for excellent diving. Unprotected, the anchorage only works in extremely calm weather and we were lucky to be able to spend several days parked in the middle of a huge marine feeding frenzy. Here, insane amounts of fish gathered around the current-swept rocks, huge humphead parrotfish chewing away at the coral on the bottom, and large tunas, trevallies and sharks slowly patrolling mid-water amongst millions of smaller fish, the schools of which at times were so dense that you could see nothing else. The anchorage boasted an embarrassment of manta rays; no matter where or when we jumped in the water they were there, gliding by, mouth agape, ingesting plankton, hovering over cleaning stations whilst tiny wrasse were busy nibbling off parasites. Curious by nature, the mantas sometimes came so close that I worried they mistook me for a mate.

Eagle Rock: mantas on the surface, surrounding the boat on anchorage.

Eagle Rock: manta acrobatics – showing off their sinisterly skeletal underbellies.

We did more snorkelling in the pass off Yangelo island, along the sides of which lies a lovely coral garden where the visibility was astounding and turtles glided by silently, not scared at all.

We visited Sayang in the far north, a low-lying island fringed by endless white beach bordered by a huge turquoise expanse of shallow water, the perfect kite spot for which we were sadly lacking a convincing breeze, but where we nevertheless enjoyed sharing an enormous natural swimming pool with only one other boat. The island is a protected turtle breeding sanctuary, and when the kids were surfing the shallow reef break not far from the anchorage, scores of turtles fled their shadows.

Sayang: Matias kitesurfing in no wind, Bob in the background.

And we relaxed in Wayag, enjoying its deep, still lagoons of green-blue water surrounded by limestone rock, created five million years ago by industrious marine organisms and uplifted 1.8 million years ago to form sharp, vertical cliffs riddled with holes and undercut by waves. Topped by vegetation, the karst cliffs are remarkable and the area felt prehistoric, the rocks taking on shapes of faces, the tree trunks resembling dinosaurs, the frigate birds becoming pterodactyls soaring in the skies.

Wayag: blacktip reef sharks circled us in the shallows.

Wayag: ghost pipefish dressed as seagrass flourished in the shallows.

Whilst exploring, we crossed the equator from south to north and back again, sailing across the imaginary line the first time, swimming the next, the kids and I racing each other from one hemisphere to the other.

The kids and I: swim race across the equator.

Next time we’ll cross the equator on the surfboards…

The Raja Ampat we saw was idyllic and dramatic, breathtakingly beautiful, and a wonderworld for anyone who enjoys marine life. Despite the large fleets of phinisis introducing hundreds of tourists to the popular dive spots we never felt crowded and were often alone on the beach and in the water. There were only a handful of yachts, and the beautiful anchorages were seldom crowded.

Rubbish problem: plastic flotsam on a deserted beach.

The only downside to this priceless destination is the plastic pollution. Even in the middle of a marine sanctuary we found it everywhere – large items like bags, cups, empty oil containers, sandals floating on the surface, smaller un-identifiable pieces suspended in the water column. It was heart-breaking to snorkel with manta rays in the nutrient-rich waters only to see them ingest minute plastic particles along with the thick swarms of plankton that should rightfully be their only food source. It was disturbing to pick up a suspended plastic bag mid water to find that it was home to three species of fish and a crab, and terrible to discover a heap of plastic bottles and used disposable nappies next to a sign advertising a famous walk on a remote island. And it was horrendous to hear time and again the hollow clonk as the boat hit a rubbish slick composed of plastic containers whilst we were underway between islands.

For a region covered in marine protected areas in a country which is aggressively promoting marine tourism, the never-ending plastic problem is disappointing. It’s shameful. Every beach is littered with washed up water-bottles, straws, plastic bags and sandals. Even at the top of the Wayag karst cliff, after an arduous, near-vertical climb, we found crushed drink containers and shiny lolly wrappers. On the beach in Sayang where turtles come to lay their eggs we gathered and burned hundreds of bottles – water, soft drink, talcum powder, oil, deodorant, lubricants, and sauce – anything you could imagine bottling – which had been swept up here by relentless wave action. Every time I snorkelled I picked up as much suspended plastic as I could carry back to the boat, but it was clear that our efforts didn’t make much difference – there is simply too much plastic in the ocean in Indonesia, even in marine parks and sanctuaries, for anyone to clean up.

Sayang: Lukie and I ready to burn plastic bottles.

It’s a growing problem and as the Indonesian population increases and consumption rises it will likely get much, much worse before any improvements are made. Raja Ampat is a wonderful place to visit and people pay thousands of dollars a day to come here and enjoy the watery wonders on offer. Imagine how wonderful it would be if we could keep its marine environment clean and free of plastic?