Monthly Archives: August 2009

Do you wear shorts on your head?

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Friday 31st of July

After the torture of the jungle trek at Juara first of all the entire team had to relax again. For that Friday a BBQ and a hat party were scheduled. The guys from ‘Swiss Cottage’ seated up a couple of tables and chairs at the centre of the resort and started to create a great dinner on the BBQ. In the meantime everybody from our group was busy with creating their headwear. Especially the female expedition participants showed their amazing sense for creativity and handwork and constructed – only with natural building material – the most wonderful hats.

Afterwards we made our way to the ‘Tioman Cabana’ – as usual. There Brian showed us once again his unbelievable skills in playing with the fire-poy. Christian tried it out as well, which did not stay completely without consequences…

The next day, we plunged back into surveys and research.

While everybody who had not done this already was working on passing their fish tests, everybody else started to decorate the dive shop by painting it. Mother Nature was the model.

But for the entire week there were many other activities that kept us busy:

One group continued working on the campaign ‘Don’t drop your anchor’, preparing T-shirts with the appropriate motifs on them. Other volunteers created posters and leaflets which shall inform tourists about the interesting marine live in the waters around Tioman along with advice for how to conserve it.

In addition to those activities, Thomas and John made some video editing for the ‘How to be a responsible diver’ video based on the clips taken on previous dives.

For two days a delegation of BVM-volunteers worked together with the Tioman Marine Parks and other dive centres of the island on testing and introducing the Reef Watch programme. The goal of this project is to create and improve a method of data collection for tourists who are interested in getting active for environmental conservation. We tested the survey methods, collected the data and reported back to the Green Fins team with thoughts and suggestions.

At the end of the week, everyone had finished their scientific training. Thus, we could start to practice the surveys, because next week the actual data collection will start…

Friday evening something very special was planned: Swiss Cottage provided our dinner in Tupperware boxes and we made our way on to the dive boat. We motored around to Monkey Bay, a quiet bay north of Tekek where we moored on to a buoy (Don’t drop your anchor!) and had dinner. The ambience was great, the mood high and the food awesome. It was great fun for everybody.

Way too early our excursion found its end. But the night was not over.

Back at Swiss, we lighted up a bonfire on the beach, gathered around it and laughed until the dawn came.

And then – way too fast – another week with BVM was over.

Welcome to the Tioman jungle!

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Welcome to the Tioman jungle!
Our 3rd week of the expedition was very exciting and we got to explore a bit more of Tioman island, especially the very spiky jungle – but more about this later ;)

On Sunday the 11 of us started on a hike to cross the island from Tekek (our homebase on the west coast) to Juara (a small village on the east coast). The trek led us steeply up the mountain chain and after crawling up 946 steps (!) we rolled down the other side straight into Juara to stop at the next shop for cold drinks and a tasty Milo icecream. Late afternoon we arrived at the Juara Turtle sanctuary (link: www.juaraturtleproject.com) – our home for the next 3 nights, where we met Joe, the blind green turtle, and the turtle project team. Tom, John and Charlie are running the sanctuary with the help of volunteers and donations. During our stay we learned a lot about the native turtle species. The most exciting part of it was taking part in the nightly beach patrols to check for nesting turtles and new hatchlings. I got to hold a hatchling in my hand and it was amazing how small and soft it is – yet very energetic and determined to crawl off into the sea as soon as possible!

We also got a chance to explore some interesting dive sites on this side of the island, which is generally more rugged due to the monsoon hitting the east coast every winter.

On Wednesday, we took off from Juara to our 3-day-jungle-wilderness-camping-hike taking us through the most dense and steep jungle bits of Tioman, aiming to summit Gunung Kajang – the highest point of the island at 1038m above the beach. Day 1 was basically a warmup of 5 hours walking/scrambling to basecamp – well, a clearing in the jungle with a little freshwater stream nearby.

Day 2 was very rough, I only remember bits of it, like fighting the nasty spiky branches and trying to keep the leeches out of my socks which kept me really busy. This jungle contains the biggest variety of spiky leaves and branches I have ever seen in my life. It is almost impossible to not get stuck in them. Especially people with long hair are heavily disadvantaged. Somehow we made it up to the peak by noon, thanks to our wonderful guide Sahak who is incredibly experienced and has a talent to motivate even the most tired person. Whoop whoop – we survived. You can clearly see how proud we were:

After a second night in basecamp – including washing-up in the stream with some curious catfish and jungle rave party at the campfire – we went back to Juara on day 3. Oh my god, everyone was really exhausted and all of us had some serious jungle injuries (leech bites, cuts and scratches, and veerrryyy soooore muscles). But after all, we have summited! Being back in Tioman Dive Center feels very good though, as we get spoiled with BBQ nights and very comfy beds here again. What an exciting week!