Gentle adventuring on Indonesia`s Sulawesi island

Manado - Indonesia consists of more than 18,000 islands. Bali, Sumatra and Java are familiar names for many travellers but Sulawesi, formally known as Celebes, is relatively unknown to most tourists. But anyone who makes their way to this island is richly rewarded with unusual sights and experiences and some visitors have even been invited to funeral ceremonies.

The island`s jungle has a vast variety of fauna such as apes and the surrounding coral seas are populated by seahorses.

Most tourists travel to the highlands in the south or to the Manado region in the north. Outsiders are still a novelty for most locals.

"We did well by the creator," says Kern Panambunan. The tour guide is standing on a hill in the Tomohon highlands, about an hour`s drive inland from Manado.

He points out the beans and tomatoes growing between the banana plants. Cabbage heads nestle amongst cinnamon and papaya trees. In the background are palm groves, fields of rice and grazing water buffalo.

The people who live here are called the Minahasa and have mastered the art of cultivating the land and building terraces.

The market in the small town of Tomohon is not for those with weak stomaches: the roasted dogs, "did not originate from the streets but from a breeding farm," assures one seller.

Children chew sugar cane while a grandmother turns the handle of a press that squeezes juice from the cane as her neighbour grates coconut flesh.

Coffee, tea, tobacco, vanilla and different varieties of rice are all on sale at the market.

A python hangs from one stall, partially cut into rings, and aa man sits whetting his machete. A kilogramme of python costs the equivalent of 2 euros (3 dollars).

One of the main attractions for tourists is to experience the waterfalls, hills, mild climate and friendly locals.

There`s plenty of well-priced accommodation to be found around Tomohon. However, it`s not the picturesque highland scenery but the diving spots that attract most people to northern Sulawesi.

One of the pioneers of tourism here is Simone Gerristen from Amsterdam and a resident on Sulawesi for the past 11 years.

Her Dive Centre Thalassa has 10 diving boats and up to 100 clients a day seek to explore the underwater world of Bunaken National Park.

One couple from Hamburg, northern Germany, enthused about their encounters. "The visibility, animal and plant worlds are as good as in the Caribbean or the

Maldives. But it`s far value here," says the man.

His wife adds: "When did you last see 20 different types of seahorse?"

Two dives a day, three meals and overnight accommodation in a well-located house costs around 60 euros (88 dollars) a day.

There are 20 diving schools competing for business in the region. Visitors to the village of Rante Lemo in the Toraja highlands, on the other hand, do not come here to dive but to focus on death.

More than 100 villagers are busy making stages from bamboo cane as schoolgirls wearing blue dresses and light-coloured blouses wave to them.

Large, carved and decorated coffins are made in most dwellings in the village. A funeral ceremony is being held the following week and the stages have to be ready for the 2,000 expected guests.

The funeral ceremony is for a woman from the village who died in 2005 aged 65. "She will rest embalmed in her husband`s house for the four days of the funeral," explains tour guide Muhammad Haris.

Her family was wealthy, so about 30 water buffalo and 200 pigs will be sacrificed, says Haris.

The more animals, "that travel to heaven" with the deceased and the more tourists that travel to the ceremony, the greater the honour for the surviving dependents and the dead person herself.

Funeral ceremonies and Toraja`s cult of the dead have attracted tourists for decades.

But due to the remoteness of the region, most people here have maintained the traditional customs even though many of them are officially Christians.

Evidence of this ancestor worship is found in the decorated graves in the region`s caves, the tombs hewn into the rock and the mausoleums.

A sheer cliff face descends into the valley where breadfruit, yucca, cocoa, Brazil nut and sweet potatoes grow. It`s an amazing feat the way the people of Toraja have managed to carve the tombs into the rock.

Set into the cliff face are carved Tau Tau effigies that contain the souls of the dead.

Anyone thinking of making a trip to Sulawesi will need several weeks to explore the island. The journey on the "highway" from the north to the south covers 2000 kilometres.

All large towns have comfortable accommodation for travellers and busses journey travel the villages.

If you are travelling on your own it`s a good idea to hire a guide which costs about 10 euros a day.

Most holidaymakers, however, spend between 14 and 21 days on Sulawesi and fly from Manado to the south.

Source: www.earthtimes.org (16 Januari 2008)
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