Belitung to the equator

Having checked out of the country didn't mean that we actually had to leave straight away.  There was a beach that we wanted to anchor off not far away in Belitung, so we headed straight there.  It has a long white beach and huge granite  boulders.  This is where the big farewell party will be held for the rally in a few weeks time, and it is going to be a very big thing.  The president of Indonesia is supposed to be coming along with lots of other dignitaries.  Already small cafes and restaurants are being built along the beach, paths and garden areas are being prepared, and a brand new tarmac road leading nowhere has been completed.  Maybe the president is coming, but nevertheless we feel that the money could be better spent where it is more urgently needed.

Joni came across on his motor bike to visit us, and we took him in the dinghy to Pegasus for a visit.  He said that he would arrange for the little restaurant on the beach to cook us the local speciality, a fish soup with pineapple.  We went across in the evening, and got chatting to three young people who wanted to practise their English.  One was an English teacher, one ran a small travel agency and is going to be one of the tour guides when the rally fleet arrives.  The third was a musician.  They were very keen to take us on a trip the next day and show us a bit of the island.  The soup was spicy and delicious, with chunks of the head of a large fish in it.  The fish pieces are eaten off the bone with the fingers, and there's a bowl of plain rice to go with it.

So the next day off we went.  The plan was to visit a pepper plantation belonging to the brother of Anto, the teacher.  It turned out to be right at the other side of the island so quite a long drive.  Interesting though. We passed a lot of open cast tin mines (the first tin mine was started by a Dutch company who named themselves Billiton after the island, then Shell Billiton, now BHP Billiton.) Now the mines are all Indonesian owned, quite small operations, and there is no control over them so big patches of land are just red scars full of dips and peaks and with all the topsoil washed away so it will be many years before they grow over.  Clouds of smoke hung over the road where jungle was being cleared by slash and burn to grow palm oil trees.  One of the things we will remember about this country is the smell of smoke everywhere - if not burning off growth then burning rubbish or just cigarette smoke.

We bumped down dirt tracks to get to the pepper plantation.  The brother wasn't there, but we met one of his 4 employees.  Quite a plantation.  The peppers grow up poles about 8ft high, and the poles are only about 4 ft apart.  Each plant produces at least a kilo of pepper corns a year, so quite productive on the 30 hectares farmed.  When the plants are a few years old they plant rubber trees between the rows.  These take 8 yrs to mature to the stage where they can tap the latex, by which time the pepper plants are finished.  All very efficient, and other plants like ginger, and hot pepper bushes grow along the edges.  Now we know (and when I checked with Delia it is all written in her Complete Cookery Course!) that black pepper corns are the whole seed dried, white corns are minus the outer husk so hotter in taste.  Here they soak the seeds to remove the husk.

There was a little wooden building up on high stilts, just a room with a covered verandah outside.  It is used as a resting place for the workers, and being high catches the breeze.  We were taken up for a drink of water and were assured the water was good.  It had a smoky taste as it had been boiled on a wood fire.  We just drank a little to be polite, but normally only drink water from sealed bottles or our own supply that we always take with us.

On the way back we stopped at the house where Anto was born and brought up, now belonging to his nephew and wife.  A very simple though spacious wooden house with very little furniture.  All of our companions disappeared to another room to pray as all are Muslim.  We were given cordial (bottled water this time!) and mango, then set off to see the Regent who is the governor of the eastern part of the island.  They were sure he would want to meet us being honored foreign guests! but he was away on another island as it transpired.  Then lunch at a large smart restaurant, the sort of place that hosts weddings and functions.  We would much rather have eaten at a little local place, the food wasn't even that good.  However it was the sort of place that our young hosts would never normally come to, so we were happy to treat them.

I gave Siska, who had organised the whole trip (and had borrowed her father's car to  do it) our old Lonely Planet guide to Indonesia.  Belitung isn't even mentioned in it, but I thought she might like to practise her English by reading the general sections.  She spent much of the time on the journey back reading bits out loud to us to check on her pronounciation, and it turned into a bit of an English lesson on how to pronounce th and t and f and make them sound different!

Bastian, the musician, was dropped off at his house, and we met his wife and two little children.  A beautiful family who live in a tiny wooden house, and obviously have no money; he is dependent on what he earns from playing in a group in the evenings.  His English was the best of the 3, and he was a quiet, relaxed and thoughtful person, happy with his life.

Siska would not let us give her any money for the day's outing, not even petrol money.  She just wanted a promise that I would email her - which I promised to do if she writes to me first!

Early the next morning we set off again, for the long 2-night passage to an anchorage on an island just north of the equator.  Lots of shipping around, and our AIS system took the opportunity to stop connecting with the computer.  G managed to re-route it to the cockpit GPS, but it is not as user friendly there, partly because of the size of the screen. (It now seems to be working OK again, just had an off day.  The humidity is very high now which is not good for electronics.)   We knew that we were entering the zone for squalls, and had two vicious ones as an introduction.  The first had torrential rain and winds gusting just over 40 knots, staying at 30 knots for more than an hour.  The second was dry but stronger winds, hitting 45 at one stage.  For both we just had a tiny bit of sail out, and the motor on to drive us through the increasing seas.  Another boat, single hander, arrived in the anchorage today with a torn sail from a squall.  Luckily both happened in daylight, as the nights were very dark with no moon.  A fleet of small fishing boats were a bit of a worry at night, but we kept the radar on and weaved our way through them, just hoping that they all had lights and didn't have long nets behind them.   With one thing and another (and the boat was rolling a lot with the wind behind much of the time), not much sleep.  So when we crossed the equator G was asleep, and there didn't seem much point waking him up.

Anyway we are now at 1 degree north, having crossed the equator heading south near the Galapagos in March 08.