In June, one of the teachers at my school invited us to go with her family to Baluran National Park in Situbondo district, North of our site. We had a great time and we really enjoyed hanging out with my teacher friend. The previous time we hung out, she took me to a trash-covered beach where she talked about how people should care more about the environment, and we should organize a beach cleanup day for the students. And if that wasn’t enough to make me completely love her, on the way back to the car, we found a mama cat and a box of abandoned kittens and my teacher friend packed them all into the box and took them to her car where her husband just said “ya allah…” ( “oh god…”), shook his head, and put the box in the backseat to take the cats home and feed them. Then when we got in the car, I found out that she doesn’t even really LIKE cats!!! She just felt bad for them and rescues them because she’s a compassionate human with a giving heart.
We had been unsure if we wanted to go to the park with them because just a couple of weeks before, a fellow PCV tried to go to Alas Purwo National Park (the place Craig visits in his post, “I have no idea where I’m going”) and she was asked to pay the “Foreigner” price of 250,000 RP ($23 US). By comparison, the “local” price paid by Indonesians is 7500 RP (less than 75 cents US). No matter how many times our friend explained that she is a volunteer, she isn’t a tourist, she doesn’t get a salary, she lives here in Indonesia, the ticket people at the park wouldn’t budge. She was also with her counterpart, a fellow teacher from her school, but since our friend didn’t want to pay over 20 times the normal entry fee (and hadn’t even brought that much money with her,) they turned around and went home without even going into the park after making the 2 hour drive there. It turns out that the exorbitant entry prices for foreign tourists at national parks in Indonesia is part of a new governmental policy enacted in the past year to increase revenue at the parks. I guess as a foreigner, I can understand having to pay a little more than the local people, but 20+ times the local price is ridiculous, it’s horrible business sense, it’s unfair and I think it will really backfire . Maybe I will write more about this one day in another post on responsible tourism and call it “On Responsible Tourism.”
So we told my teacher friend about this experience our PCV friend had, and she said, let’s just try to get you in and if we can’t get you in for the normal price, we’ll go somewhere else. And to our awesome surprise, when we got to the park, she and her husband were able to negotiate with the ticket salespeople by saying that yeah, Craig and I are foreigners, but we live here and we’re her friends and can’t we just pay the normal price? Which is what we did- 15,000 RP 🙂
Baluran is marketed as “The Savannah of Java.” One of the slogans you see around are “Spending your holiday in Baluran, is like spending your holiday in Africa.” It was indeed very different than what we’re used to here- less lush green forest, more open, dry meadows, less sand and more mangroves at the beach, and lots of monkeys, deer, and water buffalo bathing in mudpits. We saw wild cattle native to SE Asia called Banteng, and some peacocks! Apparently there are also foxes and wild cats in Baluran- a cat called a Fishing Cat as well the Javan Leopard. We didn’t see either of these, but if you go to Baluran, keep an eye out for them because they look AWESOME.
Instead of telling you more about the park, we will just leave you with these photos to enjoy. We definitely recommend going to Baluran if you can get in at a decent price.
JAWANIMO 