Bamboo Rafting in Borneo!

Unfortunately, I don't have as many pictures as I'd like. But here are the highlights from my camera and Deirdre's (stolen from her post!).

OK, as as some of you may have seen from various Facebook posts, about nine of the English Language Fellows took part in a self-organized, non-work-related bamboo rafting trip in Borneo (Southern Kalimantan, in the town of Loksado, to be precise) last weekend. It was a really great (dare I say epic?) weekend. Things went pretty much as smoothly as one could hope for on a trip like this.

First, on Thursday afternoon, Jen (the Fellow closest to me, who lives on the island of Madura about one hour away) and I took a taxi to the Surabaya airport. Where our flight was--of course--delayed. We killed time by drinking (gasp!) a beer! Our first beer since the orientation in Bandung. It was good. But I couldn't help feeling a little sinful. So few people drink alcohol in Indonesia due to their religion.

Bintang and Heineken!

 We reached Jon (the Fellow who suggested and organized most of the trip) by about 9pm that night, in his town of Banjarmassin. We also met up with about six other Fellows who'd already arrived. It was so great to see them again! We stayed up way late for us (midnight!) catching up. Then we crashed until 5am, which is when we got up to go to...

 The floating market! Only about 20 minutes drive from Jon's place, the market is actually kind of in decline. There aren't nearly as many sellers as there used to be. But it's still a really cool way to wake up and eat breakfast.

 We rented a motorboat for $15 and took us out through the river (where we saw lots of people bathing themselves and washing dishes; we were essentially sailing through their back yard) and out into a bay area, where we killed the motor and bought Soto Banjar (the local specialty soup; it's like really good chicken noodle soup) and delicious fried. things.

Soto Banjar and es teh manis (sweet iced tea).

Buying fruit.

Chowing down inside the boat.

Iris used this stick with a pin on it to spear donuts and other delights from the boat outside. We ate so many fried things!!

Glorious fried sweets captured in the morning sun. We tried all of them.

 After the floating market, we stopped at the local mosque, which is apparently the oldest mosque in the region. It was very pretty inside.

Shot of the mosque from outside.

The rest of that day was mostly spent driving in two vans out of Banjarmassin and into the mountains of Loksado, where we would stay for two nights for the rafting and other wilderness excitement. After about a 5-hour drive to Loksado (stopping for lunch along the way), we eventually arrived, after some confusion which I won't go into here, at a kind of lodge where we would sleep 2 or 3 to a room. We set down our stuff, and went to swim in a local pool/hot springs across from our cabin. We had assumed it wouldn't be very crowded, because we were in a fairly small, quiet town. But when we got there, it was packed with all the neighborhood kids! Suffice it to say, we were not able to wear our bathing suits in the water. That would have virtually been like swimming naked. So we all kept our clothes on and just jumped in the water. That night we also built a small fire outside the cabin and Jon and Esteban (the self-proclaimed "Borneo Brothers") brought out a drum and a guitar to play some songs that people had requested in the weeks beforehand, and have a sing-along. It was a lot of fun. Hits included songs by: Adele, Tom Petty, Paul Simon*, Elton John, the Dixie Chicks, and Sublime.

*I definitely typed that name as "Neil" Simon first and had to look it up. Shows you what a big fan I am. : /

The next day the real adventures began. We left the cabin at 7am, and were met by 15 "ojek" or motorcycle drivers from the area. Everyone jumped on the back of a bike. The drivers would be taking us up to a waterfall in the area.

The first leg of the ride was easy--paved roads!

 

We took a break here. Pretty, no?

One of many rickety bridges.

 The second leg of the journey (the long one, about one hour long) was much more death-defying. Or at least it felt that way to me. We essentially road motorcycles along a hiking path. And over really rickety bridges. And big rocks in the road. Needless to say, I held on to my seat for dear life, and my arms were pretty sore the next day from the strain. But I survived! We all survived! Although one girl's motorcycle did tip over. But she was OK. So now I can tell my mom about it.

Posing on a less-rickety bridge.

I guess now is also a good time to note that we had matching shirts made for this trip. Yes. We are that cool.

We are all on the backs of ojeks here, although you can't see them that well.

 

We finally reached the waterfall, and it was pretty great. Our guides told us that we had to wear our clothes in the water, so that the spirits of the waterfall wouldn't be angry. But apparently that rule didn't apply to the men. (Not fair, spirits!)  In any case, it was a lot of the fun. The water was cold but refreshing. And there was no one else there (except for us and the 15 ojek drivers that took us there, haha)! 

From left: Esteban, me, Deirdre, Autumn, Jackie, Iris, and Tabitha

Finally, after we took the motorcycles all the way back, we had lunch and then got to go bamboo rafting! The funny thing is, we almost didn't get to go bamboo rafting, because the water was so low in the river; there hadn't been rain for a quite a while. So we barely had enough water to do it. I could see the rafting being quite thrilling if there had been some more water. As it was, we had a very sedate, peaceful trip down the river. And we didn't have to do anything. Each raft held two people, and a guide stood at the front, using a stick to maneuver the raft around rocks. Deirdre and I shared a raft, and our guide's name was Satri. He didn't speak any English (and both of us still have really rough Bahasa Indonesia skills), but he was friendly and seemed to genuinely enjoy his job of getting us down the river, so we had a lot of fun joking around with him. Plus, he made sure we were (almost) always in first place the whole way down the river. #1!!

Beautiful views.

People behind us getting stuck on rocks. (A common occurrence due to the low water level.)

Our guide, Satri.

 So, that's most of the trip. After the rafting, we spent the evening back at the cabin, pretty exhausted. We sang campfire songs again. Sadly on Saturday night and most of Sunday, I was feeling pretty under the weather.  I think it was the Deet spray; everyone was using 100% Deet bug spray to keep off the copious mosqitoes. Unfortunately, I don't think my body can handle that many chemicals! Thankfully on Sunday night, after I'd stopped using the spray for a whole day, I felt much better. Just in time to start giving midterms on Monday morning!