The Puncak Pass

Leaving the house, we drive along the windy mountainous road called the Puncak Pass on our way to Pangrango National Park. The stalls that line this road are identical and block the view of the valley down below, forcing motorists to stop and buy a snack at a stall in order to enjoy the view. This is much to the complaint of those who remember what the road used to be like with “free” views. These stalls were started by villagers in the area, and soon by villagers from other areas, to cash in on the numerous motor vehicles traveling through the Puncak Pass, especially on weekends and holidays. Soon the supply outweighed the demand, so many of these stalls now stand vacant and, as Dr. Ko exclaims as we pass, “unsightly!”

(view from Puncak Pass - haha, no i can't take a pic this good, found it)

However, the car soon stops at one of these stalls and we get out to enjoy some warm spiced tea and some of the area’s well-known food. The shop owner brings us a plate of thin pancakes and another sweet doughy desert, apparently the Dutch did leave some legacy in the food. Picking up the phone Dr. Ko calls a friend, and below us maybe a hundred meters a lanky man dressed in a blue collared shirt and a flat styled cap comes out of his house, cell phone still pressed to his ear, and waves up. This is Yoen Wachyoe, a professional hotel manager. Born in Indonesia, he grew up in Baltimore, and then moved around the world during a 25 year career for Hyatt. He now manages hotels of his choosing back in Indonesia. With a cigarette pressed to his lips, he and Dr. Ko commiserate on how tourism is losing its soul, and how many in the business are forgetting about their own culture as they try to gain short term profits from tourism. Maintenance, they decide, is one of the biggest issues facing a tourism location’s long term outlook. Even the most sustainable tourism plans often go astray due to lack of education for the locals who are involved in the area’s upkeep and maintenance. By not allocating enough money to continual worker training and development, community education, and facilities upgrading the long term potential of even the most responsible programs disappears quickly.

Recentlly, Yoen has been developing approaches to make the Puncak Pass Resort better, environmentally, socially, and economically. The resort is just down the road, so he invites us to take a tour. Originally built by the Dutch in 1928, the owners have kept this old world Dutch theme and marketed the place as a heritage hotel. Pointing towards the back of the resort, he talks about purchasing some local animals like goats, deer, and turkeys to help expose the city kids to a more rustic environment. We move through the garden, and he shows us the fresh herb garden he started. Instead of importing spices from McCormick, the kitchen staff now uses the fresh herbs. He also trained the kitchen crew on the plants upkeep and encouraged workers to take snippings to start their own spice gardens at home. A management training program is in the works with the Buena Vista center to provide additional training to wait staff in order to improve their skills training. In an attempt to engender a sense of native pride, framed Batik cloth are used as decoration and a soft melody of traditional Sundanese music is played in the dining area. He also has it set up so that almost 2/3rds of the waste generated is then absorbed in the upkeep of the hotel. The way he talks, shows his passion for this work. Yoen describes it as trying to make the place “holistically” improved.

While the Pangrango National Park ended up being closed, I still had a very enjoyable time listening to these intuitive discussions on tourism. In addition, we were still able to visit the stunning Cibodas botanical gardens branch located next to the National Park.

Other Places to Visit

While I won’t have time to visit these places, I did stop by the National Parks office in Bogor to pick up some information on Halimun National Park and Ujung Kulon National Park. Both parks are currently involved in management projects to actively involve locals in preservation of the protected areas.

Halimun NP is about 50 to 100km SW of Jakarta and is a large primary rainforest. The park reports that more than 300 settlements exist inside, and more than 100,000 people depend on the land and resources of the park for survival. The main threats to the environmental ecosystem come from illegal logging and illegal gold mining. Gold mining can be particularly dangerous to the people and wildlife as a water-powered revolving drum is used to separate gold, and then mercury is used on top. The park is currently being sponsored by JICA, Japan International Cooperation Agency, to work together on a 5 year management project designed to increase community involvement. The park will still have special core zones where no development is allowed to take place, but will also be using an experimental approach that allows sustainable land and resource use in other areas and gives more responsibilities to locals in managing the park in hopes this will prevent the more dangerous practices of logging and mining.

(View from top as shown by ekowisata.com eco-tours)

Ujung Kulon NP is located on the Southwestern tip of Java and is home to the nearly extinct Java one-horned rhinoceroses and is a Unesco World Heritage Site. The park is difficult to get to and remote, and as I understand nearly impossible during the rainy season of Jan and Feb. However, it’s supposed to be an amazing park containing exotic wildlife like panthers, crocodiles, wild pigs, and of course rhinoceroses. The entrance is from Tamanjaya village, where local guides are hired for a fee of $25 a day. Locals from the village are also responsible for helping maintaining and managing the National Park, and run local homestays.

I tried to visit Mt. Gede Pangrango National Park in the town of Cibodas with Dr. Ko, but unfortunately the park is closed from Jan-Mar. The park ranger explained that the trails are yearly closed at this time to allow recovery from hosting tourists. This area was first made a tropical forest reserve back in 1889, making it one of the oldest formally established, and can be reached by public buses going between Jakarta and Bandung. The main attraction is a 10hour climb to the summit of Gunung Gede, a huge active volcano that dominates the landscape, and that passes waterfalls, hot springs, and a giant crater. The park is home to a World Biosphere reserve started by Unesco, thus has received help from the British Council and Voluntary Service Overseas Programme to create an excellent, and thick, guidebook in English and Indonesian detailing the hike and specific vegetation that can be seen. Guide services can also be arranged for a fee through the park to help further “interpret” the park. These services provided by the park started in response to acts of vandalism on the canopy trail and extreme litter on the mountain trail. The park management decided to increase patrols of rangers, provide “interpretation guides”, as well as the guidebook in hopes to increase awareness of proper care for a national park.

A Buena Vista Ecological Tour

Before I left for Indonesia I’d been in communication with Dr. Robby K.T. Ko, a medical doctor, geologist, English enthusiast, Tourism instructor, Cave guide, and founder of the Buena Vista Outdoor Education Center, so a very eclectic man. In fact, this is just a brief listing of his many accomplishments, so I was honored to receive an invite to stay at the BV Education Center with him and a few other guests.

Dr. Ko’s driver was kind enough to pick me up on Monday morning along with Lulu, a tourism school employee in the school where Dr. Ko teaches classes on eco-tourism management, and who would also be visiting. We chatted during the ½ hour or so ride from Bogor to Cisarua. From this main road, we took a smaller and uneven street that led us to BV, where we were greeted by Dr. Ko and Manolito, his friend and a fellow cave enthusiast. We were shown around, including to an enviable library of material on Indonesia, tourism, caving, the English language, and local mythology that he offered to let me peruse during my stay. Dr. Ko also has a large collection of books he’s written, both in Indonesian and English, though interestingly his first language is Dutch as he was born during the Dutch colonial reign. The Buena Vista Center where he lives is decorated with mementos of his interests, so paintings of Indonesia, countless varieties of plants, and geological objects (or to the layperson like me – rocks!).

(Tree near the entrance of Buena Vista)

The four of us sat down to breakfast on the patio, from my seat I could see a large mountain with rice fields and houses that climb 2/3rds up to the mountain, until they reach the tree line. Over breakfast he tells us a little more about this area, as he’s seen it change since he first bought the house back in the 1970s. It was the tale of overuse … a place formerly of pristine and panoramic views, but unhealthy tourism practices. Wealthy Jakarta residents discovered the area offered a relaxing escape from the city, so many started building resorts and villas that they could then rent out when not in use. These tourism resorts and villas began doing a tidy profit from other wishing to escape the city during the weekend. This in turn promoted more additional villas and resorts, and encouraged villagers to open restaurants and food stalls catering to tourists. Since the area is no longer as pristine it has seen a drop in visitors, causing many businesses to close and stand vacant. Many of the villas that were build as investments now stand vacant as well, and while locals made some money originally selling off their rice fields and helping with construction, they now suffer from a loss in water supply and must create new rice fields further up the mountain. The tree line is continually being moved. One of the main projects of Buena Vista has been Ecological fieldtrips to teach kids from Jakarta more about nature and warn about these sorts of unhealthy practices.

(picture by Manolito of us on the ecotour)

While the Buena Vista Outdoor Center has been dormant for a few years due to a lack of guides, on occasion Dr. Ko will still give private tours. Lulu, Manolito, and I were lucky enough to accompany him on an ecological fieldtrip of the area. As the brochure he gives us explains,

The target of OUTDOOR EDUCATION is to
convince people, especially city dwelling
persons, who will become or have become
decision makers, to prevent overusing,
overexploiting and over visiting nature
and its resources. To stop mismanagement
of natural resources including nature tourism.
To stop negligence towards nature.

When children go on these tours he gives them each a plastic bag so they can pick up litter on the way, when they return whoever has the most gets a prize. Each child is also given a little notebook to write observations and to answer questions printed in the notebook. The tour includes different stops to identify plants, see animals, and learn more about village life. On this tour we try to identify various flowers along the path, and pass irrigated rice fields. Nearby two women are hard at work washing their clothes next to the rapidly moving stream. Visiting an empty villa is also a requisite of the tour, and Dr. Ko explains the issues concerning the villas to all who attend the tours, especially young people. A gardener attending to one of these vacant villas lets us inside. It rents for $80 a night, but can sleep up to 40 people. Most nights it stands vacant. While Dr. Ko doesn’t operate too many of these tours any more, he emphasizes the importance of these types of programs that teach environmental awareness and the interconnection of people with their natural environment.

(an example of a villa)