Loksado - Kalimantan Selatan

Having lived in Indonesia for 3 years, the country has become a part of me. I realized that I have stopped noticing those small details that would give somebody an inspiration to get on an airplane and travel halfway around the world to visit. I pass the overloaded motorbikes with my overloaded motorbike, I shop at the crowded markets and buy the freshly cut chicken where the old vendor swats the flies with a bamboo fan, and I eat the smoking satay from street food stalls. But every once in a while there comes an unexpected thrill that reminds me, although this is my home, I am still a foreigner, and this is still a developing country.

I had heard horror stories from travelers who had experiences life threatening bus rides in far away, unknown, exotic places. But really, Indonesia, I have travelled so many times by public bus and always felt safe and secure.

We made it to Balikpapan bus terminal around 6pm to get a 10 hour overnight bus to Loksado. The plan was we would sleep the whole way so we could go trekking the next day. There were no seats left anywhere on the bus but the very last row. That was the first mistake. The second mistake was choosing the Samarinda Lestari Bus which apparently had no appreciation for the cargo with which they carry. For 10 hours we held on to the back of the seat in front of us with white knuckles, partly to keep us from flying and swaying with every bump and corner and partly because it felt like a safety belt, which they didn’t have on the bus. The driver even took us down a one lane mining road when he got lost. Finally after 8 hours of holding on for dear life, they switched the bus driver in Tanjung and we safely arrived in Kandangan at 6 am.

The Kandangan terminal at 6 am is dead quiet, but we manage to find two guys who would give us a ride to Loksado, about an hour away on a motorbike. They ask for 100,000rp per person but we know that seems crazy expensive so we finally manage to get them down to 80k which is still ridiculous but we are tired and don’t want to wait around. It was a beautiful ride through the mountains. There were a few people around the visitor’s center when we arrived but the center was still closed. We got a little information and planned for a little hiking in the forest and then to sleep at a dayak village and come back to Loksado the next day. There are two routes and the guides kept fighting over which was the best.

 We took a breakfast of powdered sugar donuts which were incredible and started the walk up a mountain where they say there is still virgin forest.

Well, they may be virgin rubber trees, I don’t know but half way up the guide begins to change direction without telling us and says we are going to the waterfall. It’s much nicer there. Although he was right, it was a little awkward that there was no communication but that’s Indonesia so we just kept following him.

The Haratai waterfall was brilliant although the water was so big you couldn’t swim.

 We cooked rice in Bamboo and boiled water for our noodles. It was simple but awesome. After lunch and relaxing we went to the cave. It was a nice walk, but I hated the leeches. There were big fat black leeches that lived in the ground and small skinny leeches that lived on the leaves. As much as I hated the leeches it was a good sign that the forest there was still untouched by man and had to have held some good wildlife although we didn’t spot any.

 The cave was beautiful but since it was the rainy season it was full of water and you weren’t able to enter it. We also found gigantic trees which had to have been hundreds and hundreds of years old. The pictures just don’t do it justice.

We got back to the Haratai dayak village around 4pm and took and shower, rested, and ate. We were so tired after not having slept the night before that we fell asleep in the main room on bamboo mats in front of the whole family at around 7pm. We aren’t sure for how long they stayed awake chatting after that.

The next day we walked through some beautiful forest, along some small streams to some dayak villages and other waterfalls.

Drying cinammon

We had Es Campur and mie ayam and planed for a bamboo rafting the next day. We rented a motorbike and drove to …. Hotsprings. We stayed in the hotsprings resort and went to …. Waterfall where we were able to take a shower and relax. It was so quiet and beautiful we stayed for over an hour sitting in the small pool with the water coming over our backs.

The hotsprings were pretty crowded and the water wasn’t that clean but we dipped our feet in the hot water which was nice after two days hiking.

Bamboo rafting was by far the highlight of the trip. We drove back to Loksado where we would start our trip of two and a half hours sitting on bamboo going down the rapids. The raft was incredibly stable and the rapids were not that small. They would have been very big had we caught the river after a big down pour. The guide did a great job navigating the boat with a bamboo stick. The river was clean and fresh. We arrived back near our hotel where we picked up our bags and showered and got an ojek back to Kandangan. This time only 60k which was the actual right price.

Desperate for some good food in Kandangan before our bus ride back to Balikpapan we had Ketupat Kandangan which was Ketupat with a coconut curry fish, Soto Banjar, and Es campur.

This time our bus ride was not life threatening and we made in back to Balikpapan just in time for Zuhud to go to work on Monday morning.