The Travelogue, Part XXIX - USA: Of Red Rocks and Red Men

You may wonder why I haven't written anything in such a long time. Maybe you haven't, but then you wouldn't be reading this anyway. It's not because there has been a shortage of interesting happenings to talk about. The answer is: I've just been plain lazy. So join me on my journey through Arizona.

The Grand Hole

Probably the US' most famous natural sight, the Grand Canyon is truly amazing and awe-inspiring. It's actually so grand and vast that it almost feels unreal. I wish I could say more profound things about it, but I guess you just really have to go there and see it for yourself.

Flagstaff and Sedona

When you hear Flagstaff, Arizona you probably think of a flagpole in the middle of the desert with a few desolate houses scattered around it. At least I did. I was surprised to find a pleasant, quite bohemian town surrounded by forests and mountains. It's actually a quite nice place to spend a couple of days and get drunk on surprisingly good local brew.

Oak Creek

A mere 30 minutes from Flagstaff lies Sedona, a town famous for its iconic scenery used in as many as one hundred Western movies, making it one of Hollywoods favourite filming locations to date. Film making started here as early as the 1920's and has seen stars such as John Wayne or Robert de Niro.

You can see the Sedona rocks in the background

After the Western genre became less popular, the town instead attracted droves of hippies and spiritualists, who believe that the area with its giant red rocks and meandering creeks is an energy nexus of global importance. Many of these people have settled there as healers and teachers, giving the town a distinctive alternative flair. Some of them seem to make a lot of money though, and Sedona's residential architecture shows that.

One of the more elaborate Sedona mansions

Whether you believe in invisible energies or not, Sedona's giant red rocks and pittoresque rivers are definitely worth a visit. I recommend coming with a posse of friends on horseback.

Modern Catholic church molded into the rocks

Hopi Reserve

The Hopi are a Native American tribe in the heart of the Arizona desert, and are in many ways the most untouched of all American tribes due to their enclosure in the much bigger Navajo reserve. Their alloted area is mostly wasteland, yet unlike with many other tribes, always has been, making the Hopi towns the oldest continously inhabited villages in the US.

I forgot our lovely stranger's name, but here is his picture.

No one could summarize the situation of the Hopi Indians better than their own legends, told expertly by an accidental encounter with one of their tribesmen:
The Great Spirit lay before the tribes many types of corn. The red one, the white one, the yellow one and the blue one, and each tribe was to take one. The Hopi waited until last and picked the small blue corn. The Great Spirit said: "You have picked the small blue corn. Your fate shall be dire, and you will have to work the hardest, but you shall be an honest people."

Can you spot the houses?

The Hopi reserve lies within the much greater Navajo reserve, and is one of the most arid and resourceless reserves in the US. The Hopi have decided against jumping on the casino-building bandwagon, and instead live a life of relative simplicity. Coal was recently discovered and is being mined to support a school, hospital and education for young students, but houses and infrastructure are basic and run down.

The old villages actually sit atop these rock mesas

Most of the inhabitants still live relatively close to the old ways, and ritual still has high importance in Hopi society. Important enough in fact that the towns were all closed off to visitors when I was there and there are strict no photography laws. Hopi rituals permeate every aspect of society and many of them are very time consuming. One of the requires everyone to craft a masterpiece to his best abilities and then throw it away in a communal ceremony to remind people of the unimportance of material belongings. To ensure the limited prosperity of the corn plantations, elder must walk the entire reservation on foot and bless every single rivulet, which takes several days. Eagles must be captured from the steep desert rocks in a dangerous trial to obtain adulthood. Marriage takes, believe it or not, eleven years to complete including the manufacture of all the necessary garments and jewelry. Before you wonder, I thought it was impolite to ask what happens when you decide it doesn't work out or your partner dies. But judging from the rest of the process, it probably has to start all over again.
Hopi society is matrilineal, and women own all the land except the fields in which the men work. Husbands join the clan of the wife.

There are hundreds of Kachinas, here's a few of them

The gods of the Hopi are known as Kachinas,and they have gained some renown because of the colourful and alien statues that are modeled after them. Visions of their appearance are usually obtained through use of the buds of the hallucigenic Peyote cactus. Unlike most other gods they are not available year-round, however, they must sleep for several months to recover from their work in the San Francisco peaks.
What happens to the Hopi once the coal is gone remains to be seen, but they seem to be strangely unfussed by it. Maybe because they know they have managed to live here for the last thousand years.

The Travelogue, Part XVIII - Sulawesi: Behind the Green Wall

 

Finally I made it: I ventured into the jungle, quite specifically the Lore Lindu National Park. Now what did I see there? The answer is: not much. But I learned a lot about local culture and why wildlife conservation does not work. Despite that, it was still good fun, and a very scenic trek.

Ascent to the mountain

We (meaning the guide, the porter and me) started off in the Christian town of Tentena, next to the quite remarkable Lake Poso. Not too long ago, Muslims and Christians fought each other heavily in this area, the product of a youth brawl that escalated into full-scale war that cost over 1000 people their lives.

The Bada valley in all its glory

From here we made our way into the Bada Valley, a lovely stretch of pristine farmland, cut off from the rest of the world until the late eighties. Even now, there´s not much road between the potholes and often the jeep would not be able to continue without ad-hoc road repairs and lots of pushing. On the other side of the mountains, though, lies the most peaceful and quaint bucolic village you can imagine: pastel-coloured houses with picket fences are surrounded by lush, green fields in which buffalo graze and peasants plant their rice. Life is easy here. There are no seasons and crops can be planted all year round: rice, cocoa, corn, vanilla, coffee, papaya, whatever your farmer heart might wish for.

The humble buffalo is still the main agricultural tool here

Apart from offering some amazing hikes into the surrounding countryside, the area is known for its ancient megaliths, large stones sculptured into human likeness that are littered across the whole valley. No one knows where they came from or who crafted them, but scholars assume they were made by a small paleontholithic civilization of which no other trace remains.

A female megalith statue of unknown origin

We spent the night there and made for the national park the following morning.

Early morning view of the national park

From the village we went on a freshly made ranger path into the mountain jungle. During the three day journey we were to cover 60 kilometers spread across 2000 meters altitude. The path was barely recognizable, but the my guides knew where to go...and so did every else, unfortunately.

I was expecting an unending barrage of mysterious animal noises, like I heard so many times in countless documentaries and movies before. Instead, the jungle stayed eerily silent. Apart from the occassional bird call once every hour or so, only the persistent scratching of the cicadas filled my ears. No monkeys, no hornbills, not even geckos or frogs. 

Overnight stay is in shelters like these.

For a while I thought, the place was generally wild, but then I saw more and more paths branching out from our own, as frequent as three or four every twenty minutes. That's when a whole lot of explaining started that showed me why, despite protection, rangers and NGO funding nature reserves don't last long in Indonesia and, assumedly, in the rest of the world. 

Self-made kerosene lamps are the only lights

Basically, when a ranger makes a new path, for reasons of tending to the forest or ecotourism, it's the signal for the whole village to use it to exploit the forest. Some of these forms of exploitation is relatively harmless, like the gathering of Agatis sap, others, hunting, trapping, logging are not. For the majority of my trek I was never far from the sound of an illegal chainsaw, the chopping of machetes and the barking of dogs. Obviously, faced with the constant assault of noise and activity, no animal, from the rare anoa to the common monkey would stay anywhere close the trail, and those unfortunate ones who make their presence known quickly fall victim to poachers. While anoa and babi rusa are trapped for their meat (which sells for about 50000 rupiah a piece), monkeys and birds are captured as pets. 

Captured Hornbill

For an example of how extreme this persecution can get, hear the fate of the humble Toke, also known as gecko. When Chinese traders in Sulawesi announced they would pay good money for any dead gecko the locals could find (for use in Chinese medicine), the inhabitants of Sulawesi managed within only a few years to all but eradicate the gecko from the Island, where before it was abundant. As my guide told me, if anyone would hear the sound of its voice (the characteristic "Eck-awww") nearby, they would make straight for the tree to take it down. Well, that explains at least why I didn't hear any geckos. And while jungle life is elusive, I reckon that the two spring traps we destroyed on the way and the many dogs brought by Agatis collectors ( who claim they need the dogs to "protect" them from wild animals) have not helped much.

The ranger sharing supplies with the poachers. They're buddies after all.

The route, however, was stunning, with very diverse vegetation and microlife across the trek, from fern forest to rainforest and almost alpine looking yellow meadows.

View from the mountains on Doda village

Bushland

Primary Forest

Fern Forests

Speaking of alpine vegetation: in an effort to fight errosion caused by logging and farmland creation, the government planted easily obtained european pine trees, which causes the affected areas to look exactly like Switzerland or Tyrol. Filled me with a sense of home. The government was unaware that the pine tree is a tough tree that would take over the local ecosystem, but the villagers love them, because the lower vegetation density makes shooting the remaining wildlife that ventures there easier. Mind you, please, that this is all information given freely by my guide.

The Alps? Canada? No, tropical Sulawesi...

At this time it dawned to me that nature reserve does not have to mean that an area is protected for it's great biodiversity, but simply because it is the only bloody forest left to protect. Within the national park are many small villages, grown to ten times their size due to higher life expectations and absence of family planning. Where before the forest could sustain the unrestrained reaping of its resources, now it won't, and I give this reserve another 20 years before it's gone the way of the Sulawesi gecko. It's not a often glorified way of living in harmony with nature that kept these communities sustainable for the forest, but rather their small size. The people themselves have no idea why protecting the environment or the extinction of a species would be of any importance. To quote a local hunter when asked: "Oh, when all animals are gone, I can live from logging. And if all the trees are gone, I can plant cocoa! No problem!"

Despite all this, I have learned a lot about jungle life; what plants to suck for water if no rivers are around, which herb cures rabies and how to always find some Agatis resin to get a fire started.

Agatis sap is harvested for candles and candy coating

I also learned that the most dangerous creature in the Sulawesi forest is the Anoa, or Pygmy Buffalo, which may only stand 80 centimeters tall, but is relentless and vicious in its attacks. For the more paranoid people among you: never be the second person in a trek line. Most wild animals never attack the first person passing, so the second usually gets pounced upon. I've braved river waters and swarms of wild bees, six different kinds of leeches and spiders the size of a dinner plate. Since I couldn't find any big things, I turned my attention to the smallest denizens of the rainforest, so there would be at least some pictures.

Moths the size of my hand...

...and spiders big enough to steal my soap.

This creature glues debris to its back to conceal itself.

Strange parasitic plants abound.

The locals call this bug "belanda" (holland) because of its nose

Even opening supplies can be potentially hurtful

A giant cicada

Nepentis plants attract insects that then fall into its digestive liquid

Looks like a forest, but is actually a microscopic moss

After the return is was amphetamine-fueled driving and cheesy Indonesian love songs all the way as usual. When remarked on his reckless driving on barely adequate roads through villages at night, the diver merely laughed and shouted: "Well, we're all good Christians, right?". The Muslims here have a similar sense of humor: when inquired to the safety of the airline I was supposed to fly with, the travel agent simply smiled at me and said "Inshallah". I just love travel in this country.

The next post will cover the Togean Islands, so if your work life can't bear pictures of tropical beaches, you might skip that one.