June messages

1 June 1996

Update: We reached a new and large island the day before yesterday - Sulawesi. Here will be the final phase of our expedition, visiting the places where Alfred Wallace saw Sulawesi's unique animals and from his observations came to the idea that animals reflect geological history. Sulawesi has so many species of animal found nowhere else on earth that Wallace decided the island must have been separated long ago from the surrounding landmass.
Already we have seen two of those special or endemic animals: the black macaque monkey and the tarsier. Wallace called the monkey a 'baboo monkey' because it walks on all fours like a baboon, but it is true monkey. Several hundred of them live in the Tangkoko National Park near Bitung on the north east corner of Sulawesi. We have moored our vessel off the beach at the Park and this morning went into the Park where we watched a troop of about 60 or 70 macaques come down from the trees where they spend the night, then begin foraging across the forest floor. The macaques let you come very close and are not frightened of humans because they have been studied by zoologists who have followed the troop for weeks on end, so the monkeys are very used to humans. The previous evening, at dusk we also went into the forest to a hollow tree where tarsiers spend the day, sleeping. Tarsiers are small, furry animals - the body is about four inches long, with a tail maybe twice that length. The tarsiers we saw are spectral tarsiers with huge round eyes which lets them see in the night when they are hunting for insects to eat. The tarsier can swivel its head almost 180 degrees. It is one of the smallest primate animals, and s is related to man, apes and monkeys. In fact it has a very similar blood group to man.

In the next few days I will try to send pictures of the macaque monkeys and the tarsiers.

Tim

3 June 1996

Update: Now en route to Bunaken Marine Reserve from Tangkoko National Park where we completed our education and film programme yesterday. 75 schoolchildren came from Manado and Bitung to camp at the edge of the Park ad hear about conservation, and see the animals. They were very lucky: o Saturday night a researcher caught three tarsier for study, and before releasing them again back into the forest, the children could see and touch the tarsiers. Tarsiers do not survive in captivity, so it was important to release them after a few hours. Paul, a photographer who has come from London to take special photos of the boat, asked to be dropped off on a rocky islet so he could take a picture of ALFRED WALLACE sailing past, with the mountains of Tangkoko in the background. He got his picture, but when leaving the islet slipped and fell - cutting open his knee deeply on some coral. So last night Joe our doctor had to clean and sew up the wound - nine stitches. This morning Paul is hobbling, but still taking pictures.

All the best
Tim

11 June 1996

This will be the final message from our boat during THE SPICE ISLANDS VOYAGE as we are now sailing the ALFRED WALLACE towards the anchorage where we will leave the vessel.

The past few days have been very busy: we spent two days at the Bunaken Marine Reserve, a large island famous for its coral reefs. Budi and Julia did some snorkel diving to look at the corals, and the rest of us sailed the boat so that Paul, Joe and I could take it in turns to film and photograph ALFRED WALLACE under sail for the book and film about our expedition.

We also went overland to the Tangkoko Forest again, to film cuscus, an animal like a small bear, which lives in the trees and moves rather slowly and lazily. It has a long gripping tail and a pouch for carrying its young. In fact the cuscus is related to the Australian and New Zealand possums, and is an Australian type animal. Sulawesi, the island where we now are, is about the farthest place from Australia that these animals are found, and this is one reason why Alfred Wallace decided that Sulawesi must be close to the dividing line between the animal world of Australian animals, and the animal world of Asian type animals. This dividing line is now called the Wallace Line in his memory.

But Sulawesi is also the home of several animals and plants, found nowhere else in the world. We saw a maleo bird which looks like an oversize chicken and buries its large eggs (one egg would fill a big teacup) in hot sand and lets the heat of the sand do the hatching of the egg. The maleo chooses a spot where underground volcanic activity - north Sulawesi is dotted with volcanos - keeps the sand at a steady heat. The maleo also has a pronounced blue swelling on top of its head, which seems to act as a sort of protection against the strong sun. Another animal we saw, but only its head, was the babirousa, a wild pig which is unique to Sulawesi and has two extra tusks protruding from the top of its upper jaw, and curling back in front of its eyes. We saw only the head, because the local people love to eat babirousa meat and hunt it in the forest, although the animal is officially protected by law. Scientists say that the babirousa is almost extinct, but we saw at least a dozen babirousa heads at a local country market on Saturday. So there must be many more than the scientists know about, but if the local people go on hunting them in such numbers then the babirousa certainly will be extinct soon. The local people, the Minahasans, are said to eat anything that has four legs except tables and chairs. In the same market we saw for sale, for eating, dogs, bats, cuscus, and forest rats. Because Alfred Wallace ate fried bats when he visited this area, and the bats are not a species in danger, we tried a taste of bat stew. It tasted a bit like hare or quail, but was rather greasy as it was cooked for three hours in coconut oil. Anyhow it was a meal that we will remember.

As, indeed, we will remember the nearly four months we have spent on THE SPICE ISLANDS VOYAGE with its birds of paradise, turtles, volcanoes, whales, dolphins, parrot hunters, deep rainforest, clear seas, sago palms, and the friendliness of the people.

In the next days the members of the expedition will be returning home - Trondur to the Faeroe Islands; Budi to Kalimantan; Yanis to Kei; Joe, Julia, and Paul to London; Leonard and myself to Ireland. Leonard and Trondur will finish the paintings and drawings they have been making, to illustrate the book I will write about our journey, which will also show some of the photos taken by Joe and Paul.

But our boat ALFRED WALLACE will sail on. I am handing the boat over to an organisation whose aim is to preserve the beautiful corals of Indonesia. They will use ALFRED WALLACE to visit coral reefs near Sulawesi, and so our boat will continue to work for the preservation of the marvellous environment that Alfred Wallace the explorer and traveller first described to the outside world.


I would like to sign off with best wishes to all those who have been following the Spice Islands Voyage, and many many thanks to all those sponsors who have made this link to the schools possible - notably IBM for the ThinkPad computers, RICOH for the fax machines and printers, and TRIMBLE NAVIGATION for the radio which has linked us through the satellite. Thanks also to all those who kept the communications going - at British Telecom, in Jakarta, and at the University of Limerick.

All the very best

Tim