12-06 to 12-12 09 – Borneo Equatorial Expedition – Another in the Borneo Series

After spending two days in Jakarta and hanging in Pontinalak watching everyone else prep for the trip I was informed the ferry would arrive at 11am.

At 6pm it arrived and we retrieved it in the rain.  Pontinak is a fair sized city and scurrying through the streets in a Polaris RZR S with no windshield wipers was a lot of fun.  We arrived back at the hotel just in time for the 7pm briefing, we leave at 8am.  After sitting through a lengthy presentation I had the pleasure of trying to finish a ton of small projects and pack everything in the rain.

Luckily the following morning was beautiful weather and we loaded up and headed to the local police station for a kickoff ceremony.  Wow these guys really know how to do a send off.  As it turns out one of our participants is the former head of the Indonesian State police and is really respected.  We were all lined up parade style and after being treated to local dancers, karaoke, treats and too many speeches we each crossed the starting line and headed off.  It took a good trek to reach dirt road, probably 40 miles of pavement.

Not long after lunch the rain started.  Did I mention that it is monsoon season?  By the time we stopped and pitched camp I was totally soaked and mud caked.  Some genius had packed the rain gear in a bag that was placed on another vehicle.  That won’t happen again.  We camped in a palm oil plantation the size of Rhode Island. It went on forever.  It looks like carefully planted jungle, with all the palms line up in a row.

We passed through many small villages on day two, mostly plantation workers and lumber mill workers.  On the second day the road abruptly ended.  As in, there use to be a bridge but now only a giant crevasse with a 20 foot wide stream at the bottom, maybe 80 feet down.  Off we go.  They simply hooked a winch cable to the rear of the Polaris RZR S and dropped me straight over the edge.  I tried to get someone to take photos with my camera but apparently my Indonesian is a bit rusty so the camera guy only thought it was working.  After winching back up something that resembled a trail on the other side we found ourselves crossing the same river about 2 miles further down the trail.  This one we launch into at 4pm and at midnight, when I fell asleep sitting in the front seat of some very nice people from Australias jeep, there were still 20 vehicles on the other side of the river.  It will take them another full day to cross.  Each vehicle is a minimum of one hour effort.

The road we are traveling was a logging road twenty years ago, but twenty years is a long time in the jungle.  Most of the road has eroded or grown over so heavily it needs to be logged again.  Virtually all of the bridges, which once spanned 200 foot wide rivers, have rotted and collapsed.  All that is left is a foot trail the local villagers use to go from one village to the next.

We have now traversed about 20 of these river crossings, each one a serious winch down and a serious winch back up.   These big rigs have really powerful winches and it’s all I can do to keep them from ripping the RZR in half.  Several times the wheels have been so buried in heavy mud that I was sure they were going to rip off an A-Arm.  After a few of these incidents I have been using my own winch most of the time.

We have pitched camp in pouring rain and under beautiful starry nights.  Although we have an “Expedition stops at 5pm rule” we are regularly breaking it to try to keep a schedule.   Several nights have been until 10pm.  I feel bad that the blog entries are going to be few and far between.  But after a full day of serious offroad, winching and being drenched in mud I really can’t find the time to setup all the equipment, not to mention the mud and rain would likely ruin it.

Today we are sitting in a village at a river crossing where we have been loading the vehicles on two long boats to ferry across the river.

Here is a photo blast.  I suppose making sense of them may have to wait until I return.  The last of the vehicles is coming across now and I need to get packed up.  Back on the trail!

BTW, this place is absolutely fantastic.  This is a whole new class of offroading.

Tags: Borneo, Polaris RZR S

Category: Borneo Excursion, Polaris