Gunung Tarak

Friday the 13^th. Because Friday is a holy day in the Muslim religion, we have chosen to make Friday the day off each week. Indonesians are such diligent workers, however, that they decided to use the day off to catch up on data entry – yet another reason I love my teammates! After lunch and praying (Indonesian men must go to the mosque to pray each Friday) Yadi and I packed our bags and hiked to Gunung Tarak, a protected area near Cali. Our purpose was to pick up some compasses at a field station there, and to get some GPS points of the border between Cali and its northern neighbor.

The field station at Gunung Tarak is also run by SIMPUR HUTAN. The area has about 5, 2 kilometer-long transects where they are mist-netting bats, doing transect bird and mammal surveys, video-trapping mammals, and doing vegetation studies. Most of the area is swamp forest, and has been heavily logged (illegal logging) over the past 10 years. We could hear chainsaws during the walk to the field station.

At the field station I (as a white woman) was received with what can only be described as wariness. All of the workers at the field station are male, but I was able to find a private place to bathe and change, thank goodness. I learned a bit about the project at Gunung Tarak, and saw some beautiful video footage of orangutans taken just a few days earlier. The area is connected to a much larger national park (Gunung Palung) and is very biodiverse due to its protected status and proximity to such a large protected area. After dinner (dried fish and rice and chili and cassava leaves, standard fare in the field) I went to bed early, protected by a mosquito net.