A trip to Zeba Zeba

This past weekend I made the long journey back to Canada. For those of you wondering about how long this trip is, it is over 24 hours on planes with the longest leg being 12.5 hours in the air. And of course multiple hours between flights at various airports along the way: Makassar, Jakarta, Hong Kong, Vancouver and Winnipeg.

On the Thursday before leaving I had the opportunity to visit the Bahodopi project and spent the night at their main exploration camp, Zeba Zeba. There were 5 of us who made the trip: myself (I drove), Sopi, in charge of resource modelling and who has never been to Bahodopi before, Gia, a surveyor, Gunter, a geologist responsible for organising the drilling, and Sigit, a geologist working on the project.

This project is the next laterite concession to the east of Sorowako. It is only about 60 km away but, up until earlier this year, was very difficult to access involving taking a boat across Towuti Lake and then by dirt road to the camp. All told this journey previously would take at least 6 hours. This spring they began building a road from the mine site and they are now about 2/3rds done although the right of way is cleared pretty much the whole way.

This first picture shows the new road, on the left, and a portion of the old on the right.

Construction is being focused currently at the west end of the road and involves dumping rock and coarse aggregate to form the road bed. It is pretty rough right now as they are not grading or using crushed or screened top surfacing. The middle portion is pretty much done although they do have to upgrade a few culverts. Still a bit rough due to the course aggregate being used (river channel bouldery gravel) but even so I was able to do 60kph for a little while. Here is a view of one small river and the source of some of the road building material.

The last 15 or so kilometres has had nothing done to it other than the clearing of the right away and the exposure of the underlying laterite which, thanks the plentiful rain of late, is nothing but mud! The only saving grace is that under this mud is bedrock and bedrock boulders. These give a solid but very rough base that allows vehicles to still pass although with great difficulty.

About 5km from our final destination we caught up to a red Ford Ranger truck with a load of fuel drums that was stuck pretty good! We were able to pull them backwards at which point they took another try at moving forward and were successful. We made it through our first try but it sure wasn't easy! Just before the camp we had to scale this long and steep hill. I wasn't able to make it and ended up getting the truck stuck at the side. One of the other guys got in, switched to 4-high from 4-low and flooring it managed to get it moving again. He drove to the top of the hill and I drove the rest of the way. Altogether, including the delay pulling out that Ford, it took us about 3 1/2 hours to make the trip in. This is a far cry compared to how long it took to make the return journey the next day!

The camp is on top of a plateau and apparently it rains there every day! The buildings are made from rough sawn lumber that likely was milled right on site, all done with chain saws as you can see the characteristic cutting pattern in every board. While not fancy as exploration camps go it was pretty good. They were kind enough to give me a guest room with a mosquito net as apparently at least two of the other guest rooms did not and so their residents had a less than stellar sleeping experience. Each room is fairly spacious with a mattress on the floor, a couple of pillows, a single blanket and a shelf. The dining area has open walls so it is airy but protected enough to keep the rain off. The food was all right but since it was just Indonesian fare a lot of it is deep fried, something I try to have as little of as possible for health reasons.

The reason the camp is called Zeba Zeba is because this area is endemic to a special kind of plant sometimes known as "ant plants" and with the scientific name Myrmecodia. The local name for this plant is Zeba Zeba, or Seba Seba, depending on where you are. This plant appears at first to be a parasite in that it grows on the trees but in actual fact is a symbiotic plant as it requires ants and fungus for nutrition and its root structure is only to fasten it to its host and to absorb moisture off the surface of the host tree. Here is Gunter holding one of these plants.

It is shaped like a rough-surfaced gourd with a few leaves at the top and has numerous passageways in which the ants live. It is considered a medicinal plant and when found is sliced up and each slice dried and then ground so a tea can be made that is said to improve vigour. It is highly prized by the Indonesians with it selling for 30,000 to 50,000 rupiah (~$3.40-5.70 CAD) per slice.

One of the geologists who was supposed to come in with us had to leave his departure from Sorowako until the afternoon. By the time he left it had started to rain and he eventually got stuck at the same spot that red truck. In trying to get out a couple of people got seriously injured and so they had to arrange to turn around and get these two to the hospital. Sigit took the truck we had driven in and had gone to provide assistance. While he helped get the other truck out he ended up getting stuck too and had to walk back to camp!

I had a good sleep but was still up at 5:30, well before anyone else. They only have the generator running from 7am to 10pm so I couldn't do much, not even have a hot bath as the water heater is electric! I did find a place that had enough natural light and worked on my computer until everyone else was up. After a couple of hours we headed back to Sorowako. As it had rained all night it was a lot muddier than when we came in. While I was prepared to let someone else drive everyone was satisfied enough in my abilities that they asked if I could drive out on the muddy part of the road. It was like driving on grease! It was very hard, even at very low speed and in 4-low to keep it going in a straight line. One of the members of our little group, Gunter, as he was one of the few qualified to do so, drove out in a 4-wheel drive tractor to pull out the stuck truck. That red Ford also was going back out so we made a bit of a convoy. It was a good thing we had the tractor as he had to pull both trucks out of mud holes several times!

It took us about 4 hours to go that first 15 kilometers, thanks to all vehicles getting stuck at least a couple of times. But I think I did the best at getting stuck! At the one place that was the most problematic it became obvious that you needed to build up some momentum if you wanted a chance of getting through. But because it was so slippery any attempt to accelerate got the rear end slipping sideways. That plus obstructions buried in the mud and voila - I had the truck nose first into the mud back at about a 30° angle unable to go forward and too slippery to reverse! Again, thankfully we had the tractor and after several tries he managed to pull me backward and then had to reverse and pull me through going forward. What a mud hole!

We finally made it to the river that divides the good road from the bad. After fording the stream we stopped at the other side and washed off some of the mud (you couldn't see through any of the windows because of a thick coating of mud, except where the wipers could do their work, with a lot of assistance from the windshield washer)! Once we got things clean enough to see again we then parked ourselves on a platform located in the middle of the river and had a late lunch. Here we have Gunter, Gia and Sopi enjoying lunch.

That evening, once we finally made it back to Sorowako a group of my Indonesian friends and most of my students from the Datamine course I presented the previous week, threw a barbecue in my honour. We had barbecued fish, shrimp and chicken and all was very tasty, especially the chicken. I took the opportunity to take some pictures of everyone. Note that the men and women ate apart. How this fits in with the local traditions I am still learning so I don't know if this is normal, but I suspect, for group gatherings it is.

From left to right, followed by their husbands name in brackets, we have Gita (Alan), Aci (Yohan), Dewi, Hera (Sopi), Sri (Wanni), Erna (Anto), Rosalyn and Selvi (I don't know the children's names).

And in the next photo we have, again left to right, Yohan, Alan, myself, Anto, Sopi, Gunter and Wanni. Missing is Sahlan, who had to leave to pick up his wife Nelly.

Here is a picture I took of Sahlan and Nelly at the airport the next morning. He, Rosalyn and Wanni were all heading to Bali for a course.

Well, that concludes this latest chapter. One thing I can say, boredom has never been an issue, even now after being there so many times. Great people, good food and many more sites yet to see!