Adventure: Indonesia : Lost in Sulawesi : Midget buffalo, disco drums and a guide who can’t use a compass--somehow it all equates

PALU, Indonesia —  Darkness had fallen in the jungle, and from beneath my worn blanket I heard the rhythmic beat of drums.

The drums were in the taped Indonesian dance mixes emanating from a minibus curbed in front of my host’s house. The minibus, which held a dozen high school biology students from Palu, had overshot the trail head to remote Lindu Lake. Now the chaperones were asking for directions and weighing the virtues of a 10-mile hike on a damp, uneven, steep-sided trail in the pitch black of a cloudy equatorial night. And who was I to question their wisdom?

After all, here I was 7,500 miles from home, tramping along on a trek that fell somewhere between Kurtz’s expedition into the Heart of Darkness and Hope and Crosby’s Road to Bali.

I was in the midst of coming to terms with getting exactly what I wanted. After four months of cautious steps through bewildering lands, fretful about overtaxing my travel companion--my pregnant wife, who had just flown home--I had desperately hoped for a final adventure before following her back to Los Angeles. I envisioned hacking through jungle vines with machetes and sampling mysterious stews. I had not envisioned pulsating disco versions of the Flintstones’ theme.

But that’s Sulawesi, outpost of the weird. Formerly known as the Celebes, Sulawesi ranks 11th among the world’s islands in surface area. In terms of oddities, it might be unmatched. If starfish could fly, and if you flattened one while doing 65 mph in your Jeep Cherokee, the resulting splatter on your windshield might approximate the shape of Sulawesi. It is a series of bent and tortured peninsulas separated by deep gulfs. The fauna of the island are utterly unique, as represented by the babirusa, which translates to “pig-deer” and looks the part.

Outside the tourist-friendly region of Tana Toraja (a beautiful region also known as “Torajaland”), exploring Sulawesi is guaranteed to be arduous, complicated and exhilarating. I chose Palu, the provincial capital of Central Sulawesi, as my base of operations. Palu is a pleasant enough town, dominated by the Muslim Bugis people. It occupies a scenic spot on Palu Bay, though the soaring tropical clouds usually back up against the surrounding horseshoe of mountains, making the streets brutally hot in the midday sun.

I had planned to hire guides to lead me into the jungle, but I soon realized I had little idea of where to find them. Fortunately, they found me.

Of the five registered guides in Palu in mid-January of last year, I met three. Average height for the three ran about 5 feet 2 inches; average pulse rate was about equal to a hummingbird’s. The guides of Palu were compact bundles of energy and enthusiasm, proud of their ties to the outside world and fearless in their bravado. For $20-$25 a day, they fed me, transported me, sheltered me and kept me thoroughly amused and constantly agitated.

Darwin Sumang, a long-limbed chain-smoker with nerdy glasses, took me across the equator on a 2 1/2-day trek along the coast to a stretch of villages that even my Lonely Planet guidebook didn’t acknowledge. Fahrul Fahl, the tiniest and the most fluent English speaker of the three, provided valuable advice and translation in exchange for fruit juice. And Excel, my primary guide, a daffy former soccer star with a son named Stalin, led me into Lore Lindu National Park, a 600,000-acre wonderland of dense rain forest and butterflies the size of kites.

It was Excel who had brought me to the village of Sidaunta, where I listened to the wayward students in the darkness. Before our early departure into the jungle the next morning, I remembered the one necessity I had neglected to stuff into my small bag: the big one, toilet paper.

Luckily, there was something of a market across the road from our homestay. But how to express my need? I thought I remembered the appropriate Indonesian phrase, but was greeted with blank stares. Spying a small box of something called Softex, I became convinced it was a foreign cousin of Kleenex. When I demanded to see the box, the proprietor sheepishly handed it to me. Inside were red women’s panties. I think they’re still talking about that one in Sidaunta. (And, yes, I did find my paper.)

The treacherous trail through the forest is, amazingly, the primary access route for the thousands of people living around Lindu Lake. Along the path we made room for teams of ponies heading to Sidaunta, laden with huge bags of coffee and rice. In the afternoon, the beasts would make the return trip, equally weighed down with vital supplies from Palu. Two Dutch travelers I met had heard that the ponies occasionally topple into the steep ravines.

The jungle itself was mildly warm, misty and completely overgrown with an inconceivable variety of vegetation, all interlocking and overlapping.

I had expected a similarly diverse display of animals, but we saw only a few birds, a chameleon, a foot-long worm, and a small snake, gray-black with red splotches on its face and belly. A passing farmer told us the snake flies through the air at night. Even Excel was skeptical.

The nature of my trekking agreement had me bunked down in village homes each night. The Palu guides can tailor excursions to your specific budget and taste. They arrange door-to-door charters and comfortable accommodations for tour groups. At the other end of the spectrum was I, crowding into the public minivans (always shotgun!), sleeping on rattan mats, and eating rice and fish with the villagers. I considered myself blessed.

*

Our stopover on Lindu Lake was Tomado (as in “I say tomato, you say Tomado”), one of the green, picturesque villages nestled on the lake. We slept at the home of the local Salvation Army minister, the uncle of Excel’s wife, who is a Salvation Army nurse. Excel and I got to talking (as best we could) over tea and cookies. He agreed that Lindu Lake was beautiful, but added, “In one week here, maybe you would get boring.”

He told me that the government police sometimes shake down guides for a payoff. If they ask for a cigarette, Excel said, he knows he’d better fork up 10,000 rupiah (about $5). Even worse, there are old-fashioned highway robbers in the mountains. He asked me whether he should carry a gun.

The next morning we set off across the lake in a noisy motorboat. When we reached Bamba on the other side, Excel was surprised to find the small village deserted. He had forgotten it was Sunday. Bamba is Christian, and the entire settlement was at church. All of which would be fine, except that one key member of the parish was the local guide Excel usually hires to decipher the buffalo trails.

The anoa, found only on Sulawesi, is the shortest wild member of the Bovidae family, which includes buffalo, cattle, goats, sheep, gazelles and the like. The anoa stands only about three feet at the shoulder, and apparently is pretty resentful of the whole thing. Everyone we talked to, including Excel himself, harbored a fear of encountering one of the mean-spirited creatures with its 15-inch horns.

The many anoa that wander down to drink at Lindu Lake have, over time, trampled a criss-crossing maze of trails. One of the tangled arteries leads to the main path eastward from Lindu, through the jungle to Palolo Valley. Our mission now was to find that artery. We had four hours; any later and we wouldn’t be reserving enough time to make the long hike through the forest.

So for four hours we trudged along in widening circles of mud, hopping over the mucky spots, fording streams (or the same stream repeatedly), and bumping into one dead end after another. Excel, I was learning, was no Eagle Scout. After a couple of hours he began to ask me, “Where you think is the lake? There?! Are you sure?”

I wasn’t, but I was sure I had a better idea than he. Excel admitted he had no idea how to work a compass; I hadn’t brought mine. He would squint analytically at the sun, directly overhead, and attempt to determine east and west.

Excel was becoming agitated. I could tell because, like the other guides, he understood progressively less English as his heart rate increased. A few times he lost his vocabulary completely. And, really, card-carrying guides are not supposed to get clients lost following midget buffalo tracks. But I didn’t mind. We were treated to a parade of great banyans, bamboo stands and Technicolor butterflies.

Finally, we surrendered and marched through swampy mud to tiny Paku village, which looked like a postcard, under dark clouds, its rice fields lighted by a peeking sun. Excel and I sat in a raised hut, sipping mild, pinkish palm wine with about eight supremely curious locals as it began to drizzle outside. The villagers told us that the pythons of the jungle are tasty, but you’d better get to them first--they can grow to be longer than 25 feet.

That night I became the first Westerner ever to spend the night in Paku. I suppose it’s cheating a bit, since Paku is a work village and all the residents have homes elsewhere on the lake. Still, just beating the Germans somewhere was enough to pique my spirit of exploration.

*

Even Lewis and Clark had their moments of doubt, though, and mine was soon to come. For sleeping quarters, Excel and I were moved, splashing through the paddies, to a larger hut of the same design: wood frame sitting on five-foot-high stilts, palm fronds for a roof, lashed with vines, woven rattan on the floor. The night was chilly and the floor hard, but the real problem was grandma.

In the next room was a 99-year-old woman, deaf as a coconut. “She is the oldest!” Excel reported, though it wasn’t clear how wide of an area she championed. The woman had sat silent for tea, but she came alive during the night, yelling curses in Uma, or perhaps some archaic language that nobody understood, and repeatedly hacking up great volumes of phlegm, which she spat on the mats beside her.

We were in a canoe at 6:45 the next morning, definitely the right time to be on the lake. Mist drifted around the higher hills and silent squadrons of eagles, hawks, and herons hunted for fish. (Later we spotted a hornbill.) The local guide made a mockery of the anoa trails, leading us to the main path in a neat, straight line.

That day we walked about 15 miles. (My socks were wet for only 14 of them.) The quagmire of the Lindu Lake lowlands gave way to a more solid trail in the mountains, but we sidestepped puddles the entire distance. Concentration was at a premium.

With large animals nowhere to be seen, I began to take stock of the insects, the true specialty of the rain forest. I saw an impressive variety of creepies, including big beetles, a wildly colorful cricket and strange creatures that flew vertically like men with rocket packs. We also encountered leeches, which was more of a problem for Excel, who snapped his flip-flop around mile 5 and went the rest of the jungle portion barefoot.

Our final descent from the forest was the most enjoyable stretch we logged. The trail dried up, so I wasn’t looking at my feet the whole time. And the views were superb, first of the big jungle trees, then of the widening mouth of verdant Palolo Valley.

Three days later I would say goodbye to Excel and fly to Jakarta, which felt like Century City after 12 days in Sulawesi. I promised to send my guide duplicates of the photos I had taken, news from America and a working compass.

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GUIDEBOOK: Sulawesi Sling

Getting there: Fly Garuda Airlines direct from L.A. to Jakarta with stops in Denpasar, Bali, and Honolulu; lowest round-trip fares begin about $1,070, including taxes and fees. In Jakarta, connect with another Garuda flight to Ujungpandang, Sulawesi; about $210 each way. Two airlines, Bouraq and Merpati Nusantara, make daily nonstop flights from Ujungpandang to Palu, about $90 one way.

Where to Stay: In Palu, the Palu Golden Hotel (Jalan Raden Saleh; tel. 011-62-451-21126), with views of the beach and the bay, the classiest in the area; rates $50-$100 per room (breakfast included).

If you have a few days in the area, flee to Donggala, perhaps 20 miles away, and stay at the Prince John Dive Resort (Jalan Sis Aldjufri; fax 011-62-451-23456), a wonderful mixture of the luxurious and the spartan; rates of $10 for a single, $15 for a private bungalow include two huge, communal meals.

Guides: To deal directly with one of the local guides (make sure they are licensed by the Indonesian government), leave a message stating your needs at Milano Restaurant, the hub of Palu social life, located in the busy market area on Jalan Hasanuddin II . The guides can tailor a tour to your interests and economic situation. I paid $20-$25 a day for the basic level, which featured public transport, lodging with villagers and mounds of rice. I could have paid $100 a day for chartered Jeeps and private pitched tents.

For more information: Indonesia Tourist Promotion Office, 3457 Wilshire Blvd., Suite 104, Los Angeles 90010; tel. (213) 387-2078, fax (213) 380-6111.

Or call the Indonesian Consulate in Los Angeles; tel. (213) 383-5126, or the Indonesian Embassy in Washington; tel. (202) 775-5200.

--P.B.