Episode summary:
I joined an old friend to take a walking safari in a lesser-known corner of Bali, far away from the mopeds, the gridlock and the grind. We strolled through a forest in the West Bali National Park in the island’s far north-west, exploring its mangroves and monsoon forest, watching rare rusa deer and meeting some beautiful but endangered Bali Starlings.
If you are wondering ‘is West Bali National Park worth visiting’, ‘what kinds of wildlife can be found in the West Bali National Park’, ‘where can I see the Bali Starling’ and ‘what are some hidden places in Bali’, this podcast might have some answers for you.
Listen to a podcast about taking a walking wildlife safari through a national park in a secret corner of Bali.
Transcript – S4 E12: On safari in a secret bit of Bali
This week we’re on a walking wildlife safari in a lesser-known corner of Bali.
I have a very close, personal relationship with Bali. I was the first journalist on the scene of the bombings of Paddy’s Bar and the Sari Club in October 2002. I had touched down hours earlier to review a heap of the island’s five-star hotels and resorts for the travel section of an Australian newspaper. I was on Night 1 in the wonderful Four Seasons Jimbaran Bay and just settling into a luxury four-poster, king-sized bed when the phone rang.
It was around midnight and outside I saw a plume of smoke in the distance. Suddenly, terribly, I had to switch to my foreign correspondent role and fight my way through the burning horrors of Kuta to report on the tragedy that claimed 202 lives – Indonesia’s worst terrorist attack.
I have returned to Bali annually since then and watched the island change. Today, it’s much more crowded, much more developed… and visitors eager to find nature and serenity have to venture further and further out from the growing urban sprawl which dominates the southern part of the island.
Finding solitude on the Island of the Gods
Today I am far, far away from the swarms of mopeds, the gridlock and the grind. I am walking through a forest in the far north-west, just a short drive from Gilimanuk where you catch the ferry to Java.
I am in the West Bali National Park. The park covers roughly 190 square kilometres, or 73 square miles, and occupies pretty much all of the north-west tip of the island, plus some offshore marine areas.
I am on a nature safari with my friend Jose, who has lived in Bali for many years and knows this park well. He tells me about its different habitats – savanna, mangroves, monsoon forest and coral islands such as Menjangan, which thousands of divers and snorkellers visit each year.
This is not rainforest – as we might imagine in Borneo or the Amazon – but drier, less dense woodland. This makes it slightly easier to spot things, such as the rare species of rusa deer that Jose and I are looking at right now. We stand – frozen-still – lest we spook it and it prances off.
Wildlife in abundance
I’m always impressed with how delicate deer are, considering they are quite large animals. They raise and then place each hoof so carefully, as if not wanting to make any noise or tread on an ant, or disturb so much as a leaf. I watch its furry, back-lit ears flick away the flies as it moves sedately through its forest home.
There are more than 160 species of birds thriving in this park, including several species of kingfisher, nightjar, stork and eagle. Many of the species are endangered, including one called the Bali Starling. This remarkable bird – endemic to Bali and also known as the Bali Mynah – is stunning but almost impossible to see in the wild because there are believed to be no more than 50 adult birds alive. The Menjangan eco-resort (which Jose managed for years) has a breeding program set up to protect this critically endangered species as it fights its way back from extinction.
Jose takes me to their enclosure where I see what all the fuss is about: it looks nothing like any starling I have ever seen. It is almost completely ghostly white with black tips to its tail as if it has perched on an artist’s table and accidentally dipped its tail feathers in an ink pot. Around its eyes are splashes of brilliant Lapis Lazuli blue.
It is a beautifully coloured bird… the kind you would expect to see in a miscellany of tropical colour sketches by the Scottish botanical illustrator Sydney Parkinson who brought to the page (and, thus, to the world’s attention) so many of naturalist Joseph Banks’s plant discoveries during the famous Endeavour voyage in the South Seas.
I just hope the Bali Mynah is not resigned to the ‘extinct’ section of such collections and, instead, can be saved and can flourish.
Call of the wild
Jose and I walk on, listening to the screams of swallows and swifts in the airspace above the forest canopy as they dive for insects. We inadvertently disturb a monitor lizard from its sunbathing spot on a rock and can hear – in the far distance – the raucous call of monkeys… macaques, we think.
There aren’t too many predators here, which is good news for birds and other smaller creatures but one that they are wary of is the Leopard Cat. It’s about the size of a domestic moggy but with a leopard-print coat that makes it perfectly camouflaged in this brown and khaki environment. One might be staring at us right now from just a few feet away and we’d never know.
Dusk is falling now and the first flying-fox fruit bats are flapping across the forest. Time, we think, to leave nature alone and toast its beauty and wonder with cold Bintang beers back at the resort.
