by Marit Wechsler

Before I dish the details on my recent trip to Batbitim, there are a few exciting developments to tell you about.
Thanks to the combined efforts of Conservation International, CORAL, and local government agencies, the Raja Ampat Regency Government has initiated a tourism entrance fee, effective 12 August 2007. The Rp 500,000 fee (about 55 USD) will be split 30/70 between the Raja Ampat tourism department programs and conservation and community development. A team with representatives from the fisheries department, tourism department, conservation organizations, tourism stakeholders and community representatives will manage the fund. Long-term funding and protection is the most certain way to conserve Raja Ampat. This program will assure its long term conservation while directly benefiting the local communities who own the reefs. To find out more, you can visit CORAL here.

Also, be sure to visit the good folks at Dive Photo Guide. They've posted a great write-up about Misool Eco Resort, which you can read here.

It was a very busy month for my camera - I've linked five new slide shows within this update. I've also added three new slide shows from Eric Battistoni, who visited Misool Eco Resort in May. Click here to go to the albums page.

Right, so about my trip...

Andrew and I slowly made our way to Batbitim on a meandering cargo ship. We first stopped in Kafatlap to pick up another 10 cubits of wood. You may remember Cherry's post from May in which he described finding this site - it's about a two hour boat ride from Sorong. The place is littered with naturally fallen trees, and we've hired the local community to clear these logs and carve them into lumber with a chainsaw.

Kafatlap

moving wood from a bamboo barge to our cargo ship

They reached our cargo ship in about an hour, and then they began the arduous process of transferring these massive lengths of ironwood from a slippery shifting bamboo raft onto our cargo ship, the deck of which was several feet overhead. Happily, after unloading the first batch, a little dugout canoe with an outboard engine appeared to help tow the bamboo raft back and forth.

The guys were shifting wood well into the night. They must have been absolutely exhausted... (For anyone still wondering why this resort is taking so darned long to materialize, I hope this will help to illustrate our situation. Our commitment to sustainable building is unswerving, and the man-power required to make this happen is astounding.)

The construction is progressing well. Just before we left, the generator room had been given walls, and the alang alang roofing experts arrived from Ceram to start on the dive centre's roof. And the first bungalow was shaping up well, thanks to the brilliant work of Ben and Tadin and their apprentice Mawan. Click here to see a slide show of how Batbitim is looking as of July 31st.

the first bungalow...

Bapak Mohammed

I had quite some fun following all the workers around, poking my camera at them. I was quite uncomfortable with it at first, as I can be quite shy. But after the first slide show, we were all totally hooked. They hooted and cackled with laughter throughout the whole slide show, slapping and nudging the person whose portrait was being shown - I don't imagine they get to see photos of themselves all that often. Click here to see a slide show of their portraits.

We didn't do much diving on this trip. It was cold. I know, I know, all you folks in the Northern latitudes must be shaking your head in disbelief. But it's true... Batbitim in July/August is really nippy, as the trade winds race up from the Australian winter. The sea, normally flat as a lake and clear as a bell, arches and bucks in big unfriendly swells, and the temperature drops to a brisk 26 degrees. I concede it's also possible that living too long in the tropics has spoiled my hardy Arctic blood.... The few times we did brave the water, it was typically mindblowing.

We spent a lot of time in Yellu, the local village. Indonesians take their Independence Day very seriously, and the celebrations start weeks in advance with lots and lots of football games. A regional tournament was organized with teams from Yellu and the pearl farms, and Team Batbitim represented us well.

Yellu seems to have the only strip of land in the area horizontal enough for a football pitch. It's maybe about half the size of a standard pitch, but what it lacks in size it makes up for in uniqueness. It's sandwiched between the sea on one side and the hill-side cemetery on the other side. And so the cemetery doubles as the grandstands, with spectators perched on tombs. And if the game gets boring, it's always sort of fun to watch the goats and the kids frolicking in their own corner of the pitch. Click here to see more photos from Yellu.

New friends from Yellu

We had so many terrestrial adventures vying for our attention, it was hard to regret the lack of dives. We penetrated some of the neighbouring islands, collecting more wild plants for transplanting, and exploring three different salt water lakes. If you've had the pleasure of visiting Raja Ampat, then you know how unwelcoming the terrain can be. Many of the karst islands are comprised of series of ridges, like a jumble of knife blades, the spaces in between filled in with loose rocks which shift under your feet. The thrill of exploration is certainly heightened by possibility of sustaining serious injuries!

The tide was dropping when we jumped off the speed boat and swam to shore, then through a narrow opening into a well-protected lagoon (the same one, in fact, where Andrew and collected wild orchids on my birthday last January). From there, we snorkeled to the far end of the lagoon, stopping to watch a sea snake along the way. It was clear that the water was flowing into the lagoon from some underground source, through the rocks. We stashed our fins and followed this river, which was sometimes underground and sometimes not, and it lead us to a shallow lake. The steep cliffs surrounding the lake were trailing lianas and sweet smelling flowering vines into the lake, and a cockatoo let out its grating shriek. One side of the lake was lined with mangroves. Once my rational brain had convinced the rest of me that there couldn't possibly be enough food to sustain a crocodile population in such an environment, I pulled on my mask and jumped in.

It was so beautiful. The top layer of the lake was chilly, just like the sea. But just a few meters below the surface was a thermo cline, and the bottom layer was positively balmy. Separating the two layers was what looked much like mist, trailing through the branches of fallen trees and mangrove roots. As Andrew swam ahead, his movements sent the 'mist' into eddies and whirls behind him, and a school of surgeon fish swam below.

Jellyfish lake. Photo courtesy of Exploraction

I was in the water before I could bother my head about those silly crocodiles. I held my breath and dove down into the green, completely engulfed by jellyfish. Given my lack of forethought, it was lucky indeed they weren't the stinging variety. The sunlight filtered through their pinkish bodies, revealing their pulsating guts. The big ones moved languidly, the tiny ones chugging by with frantic twitches. It was terribly thrilling, fantastically surreal, even bordering on erotic. I floated slowly back up to the surface, enjoying the riotous colours and higgeldy piggeldy movements and absolute silence.

Click here to see a slide show from the jellyfish lake.

Note the ghostly white jellyfish at the centre. Photo courtesy of Exploraction

Merdeka led us through a confounding maze of lagoons and passages and then led us to a long sheer cliff face with a small cave at the water level. As we approached the wall, rough ochre markings became visible. Dolphins, tuna, hands, turtles, bats, and all sorts of mysterious markings, including one that looks a lot like a ball bearing.

They sprawled from just a few feet above the water to high high up on the cliff, as well as deep inside the cave. Nearly all of them were a deep ochre color, though we did see some in black, yellow, and grey. Most looked as though they had been made with fingers, but there were others which were clearly 'spray painted,' presumably using the mouth as a vehicle for the spray. The silhouette of the hand may look familiar to you - they are often seen in Australia.

I can't find the words to describe how it felt to see these paintings - you'll just have to come and find out for yourself. As far as we know, these petroglyphs have yet to be studied (yet another great project for the Misool Conservation Centre!).

According to some friends, similar markings have been found and studied on mainland Papua (I'm very eager to get my mitts on this book, but I haven't been able to find it. If any of our readers have any tips, please contact me here). Those mainland markings have been studied by an archaeologist and carbon dated to 3,000 years ago.

According to this story, which I have yet to research and confirm, the Torres Strait which separates Australia and Papua was last dry 3,000 years ago, and Aboriginal Australians made their way north to Papua, leaving petroglyphs along the way. The local Raja Ampat people and Papuan people have no tradition of this sort.

Click here to open a slide show

Merdeka

I wish I could give you more information about these incredible paintings, but that's all I know. I'll certainly be doing more research on this topic (I studied Mayan archaeology at university, so this stuff is all new to me), and any information or tips for good reading would be very much appreciated.

The sun was on its way down as we motored back to the village, and I was completely consumed by daydreams about these petroglyphs. If the sea level was so low that people could walk across the Torres Strait, how many of these painting are now submerged and covered in coral? That would mean that the ones high on the cliff were even higher...

Perhaps they were just common but ancient graffiti, left by people just wanting to be remembered. Or maybe it was meant to convey a specific message to a specific party, like 'great tuna fishing here, but watch out for the centipedes' . . . . Or perhaps there was a deeper significance, a cosmic incantation of sorts.... but to whom?

Although I can only speculate at the intended message, the artists definitely succeeded in making a connection through the millennia. I can't stop thinking about these people. Strangely enough, that day we noticed eucalyptus trees growing at the mouth of a passage not far from the paintings...