The Puncak area lies in the rugged western end of Java’s
1100-kilometer-long mountainous spine. From Bali, it’s
only a Rp360,000 flight with Adam Air to Jakarta. If you get
an early start from Jakarta, you’ll arrive in the Lido
Lakes area of the park in the early afternoon.
A convenient place to stay for only about Rp300,000 per night
is Hotel Lido Lakes, Jl. Raya Bogor, Sukabumi
Km 21, tel. 251-220922. There are also a few less expensive
homestays at Situgunung, 10 km from Cisaat. Through your accommodations,
book a guide and vehicle up to the task for the next morning.
The Puncak was once one of the most inaccessible regions of
Java, an island the 19th century traveler, Marianne North,
called “one magnificent garden surpassing Brazil, Jamaica,
and Sarawak.” Other visitors of the time waxed equally
rhapsodic, observing that Java was “a land where it
is always a dreamy summer forenoon of the rarest June.”
That was a long time ago. Although highways, factories and
encroaching urbanization have now permanently altered the
landscape, there still remain pockets of wild and untrammeled
beauty. The main attraction of the Puncak area today is the
unusually wide variety of sporting activities offered - golf,
parachute jumping, tennis, fishing, river rafting, mountain
biking, paintball gaming, ATV1s - as well as a superb mountain
conservation area, perhaps the island’s finest.
Dominating the entire region are the twin summits of Pangrango
and Gede. These looming purple mountains and all the area
surrounding them make up the Pangrango- Gede National Park,
a majestic bastion of rushing rivers, high waterfalls, mountain
lakes, sub-alpine meadows, and semi-active craters enclosed
by imposing crater walls.
Covering over 15,000-odd hectares, this was the first nature
reserve established in Indonesia, in 1889. Though it is the
second smallest national park in the country, what it lacks
in breadth, it more than makes up for in quality. The park
is considered the best undisturbed example of the Javan rainforest,
encompassing an astoundingly rich bio-diversity - from lower
montane forests to high elfin woodland. In the kampung bordering
Pangrango- Gede, Javan panthers (macan tutul) and forest cats
(macan kucing) are often sighted hunting for chickens and
goats.
A good road took takes you up behind the Lido Lakes and then
deep into the hills through silk-tufted cornfields and gardens
of tubers, chilies, papayas and bananas. Eventually the pavement
ends. The sounds of mosque loudspeakers and dangdut music
from tinny radios can be heard from Sundanese farming villages
below, then fades away.
The rough road leads over hills that still had not been cleared,
the density of the foliage thickening the higher you climb.
At around 600-700 m, the road skirts the forest boundary of
the park in the foothills of Pangrango-Gede. The dark trees
above stand out in contrast to the intensively cultivated
fields below. The road then ascends a ridge, and finally plunges
into the woods on an impossibly rutted dirt road.
After several kilometers bounding over this rough and muddy
road is the Bodogol Conservation Center, a complex of offices,
lecture rooms, mess halls, dormitories, one of four entrances
into the park. The loop trails here are of particular interest
to bird watchers.
Your guide will give you a choice of the “soft”
trek or the longer, tougher trail leading to a waterfall,
a five-hour roundtrip (4.5 kilometers). Signs announce the
Javan gibbon (owa), Javan eagles and other exotic birdlife
inhabit the area.
What is remarkable about this reserve is that it is effectively
patrolled. Local farmers and forest workers have been made
aware of the importance of keeping the park in its natural
state. On weekdays there may not even be another soul on the
path. Trails are clean and well-maintained, and you can’t
hear the whine of a chainsaw.
Instead, the forest is enveloped by a cacophony of insect
sounds, surely one of the rarest sensations in 21st century
Java. Along the way, tree species are labeled in Indonesian
and Latin, and charts and other pertinent information is also
posted.
The primary attraction is the jembatan kanopi (canopy bridge),
1.5 kilometers from the Conservation Center. Slung across
trees just fifty meters from the bottom of a steep gorge,
it’s a hair-raising experience clinging to the swaying
130-meter-long synthetic fiber bridge, which twists around
mammoth tropical hardwoods and finally disappears into the
forest again on the other side of the gorge. It’s refreshing
in the depths of the rainforest, and even in the trail’s
open sections the heat is kept down by almost constant cloud
cover starting in the early afternoon.
Later in your hotel room, it’s difficult to believe
a place so completely natural could be so close to Jakarta,
one Asia’s biggest and most congested cities. But you’ll
be able to cherish the park’s calm and beauty a little
while before the blare of the TV and drum of traffic outside
wrenches you unequivocally back to the 21st century.
