After much anticipation for finally being set free to leave the island for the first time, we picked up our passports from the Human Resources office and e-ticket receipt from the travel office.We were FREE!!
Eric took me to the airport, where I babysat the luggage while waiting for him to return (he can’t leave the company vehicle parked there, so had to drive back to the resort and take the shuttle bus back to the airport, but it was almost full so I had to sacrifice myself to the Timika heat in the name of Vacation). There were a few people sitting on the benches outside when we drove in, and of course, were watching us very closely because nothing we Bulehs do goes unnoticed. I had been standing there for several minutes waiting for Eric to come back (because I had his passport and ticket, meaning security would not let him into the airport without it). A gentleman came over to me and asked me where I was going, so I said Bali, and he said I should go inside because it was cooler than standing outside. Anyway, I explained the situation about the passport and ticket, and said I’d wait for Eric. He seemed to understand. But we conversed a little bit more in English so he could practice it.
After about five more minutes of standing in the heat, which seemed to resemble a toaster oven by this point in time, two Papuan ladies who had been watching me came over to talk to me. One knew English very well and introduced herself and sister, and we conversed in English for several minutes. She asked me if I knew Indonesian, so I told her “a little bit” in Indonesian. And after our part Indonesian and part English conversation, we concluded her English was better than my Indonesian. When she left the parking lot, she rolled down her window and waved and yelled, “Goodbye Ibu!” to me. I couldn’t help but laugh to myself. People here love to practice their English and are very proud about the fact that they can speak it. And all fifty people hanging out in the parking lot were instantly aware of my presence, and all had the same curious look on their faces, because Freeport Ibus just don’t hang out in the airport parking lot – that’s just not normal.
Then another man came over to me… again to practice his English. He said he had a taxi and could go pick up Eric if he needed a ride. People are so helpful here when money is involved. I politely declined a few times, since he and I exchanged the same sentences about four times (I wasn’t sure if he knew any other English than this), and finally after about 30 minutes, the shuttle showed up. After checking in, we were allowed to go into the air conditioned lounge. Thank goodness. All of the people I had talked to outside were very amused at me because I was hot (red faced, sweating, fanning myself with the plane tickets). This Buleh is definitely not used to tropical heat, and it shows.
Bali Day 1 (Eric)
We very quickly found out, that even though we came from only one time zone to the east, we were absolutely not on “Bali” time. Waking up at normal time (3:00am) wasn’t an issue, we did sleep in ‘till 5am (local time which is 3 hours more than normal). We did have to wait for the breakfast buffet to open at 6:30. After eating breakfast, we decided to do a bit of shopping and find a Starbucks. It was after 8:00, things should be open, right? WRONG. We quickly found out that the only early people up at this time were jet-lagged tourists, early riser street-hawkers and us. Since the street-hawkers mistook us for jet-lagged tourists, we only made it a block from he hotel, and we had two people attached to us trying to lure us into a shop that wasn’t open (“I give you good deal”) or get us to go to different Hotel. I had to basically yell at both people in Indonesian to get them to realize I wasn’t your average jet lagged tourist, and I did want to be left alone. We retreated to the hotel to come up with an alternate plan.
We walked along the beach for almost an hour, dipping our toes in the Indian Ocean. After waiting till 10 (when the early risers get up), we snuck over to Starbucks. To our relief, there were more people on the streets, and we weren’t the only targets for the hawkers. My first Starbucks in over 6 months tasted as good as I remember. We laughed at ourselves because of all places to feel like we were really on vacation was in a Starbucks. We walked around the mall in awe of all of the things we “could” buy, and had a hard time deciding which store to go to first.
After the mall, we walked down the street to see what all was there. It was a combination of new western stores mixed with local street vendors, and everyone wanting you to come into their store, and taxi drivers offering “transport”. After being hit with all of the people shouting in our direction and the immense heat, we ducked into an open air restaurant for some refreshment and a little bit of quiet.
That evening, we ate at a beach-side restaurant and watched the sun go down while eating sushi (not typical Bali food, but it sure tasted good).
Another thing we learned on Day 1, is that Euros really like wearing the Speedo for swimwear…yeah…I won’t go into more detail. I had a better picture of this sunset, but a Euro wearing a speedo walked into my picture right when the shutter clicked. I didn't think you all wanted to see that!
Bali
Day 2 (Cherine)
We ventured outside of the hotel, armed with my memory of a map in a Bali guidebook, and found Poppies Street II and some of the more well known Indonesian restaurants. We walked by an infinite number of stalls selling everything from tshirts to necklaces to pottery. By this time we figured out not to speak English to any of the hawkers. We were asked if we were from Netherlands, Russia, Germany and Estonia. Not answering any questions made people think we didn’t know what they were saying and they didn’t waste their time trying to talk to us. Eric was seriously doubting my navigation skills after this very narrow street turned a couple of times, but we found one of the restaurants I was looking for, just like I had been there several times before. This was a typical Indonesian affair, with open walls, no air conditioning, and random cats running past you. This place is known for cooking good sea food, so that is what we ordered. Eric picked out some sort of fish that was then sliced and fried in lots of spices and then drenched in pepper sauce. I had squid with black bean sauce, and we shared Indonesian fried noodles. It was a fun and really typical Indonesian meal. Afterward, we found the original Poppies Street, which was the road I had been trying to find a few hours earlier, and had missed it (don’t tell Eric- he still thinks I meant to go on Poppies II). Hee hee.
The Poppies streets are very narrow alleys but they are still used as regular streets, with stores, restaurants, motorbikes and cars…and pedestrians hugging walls or jumping into the stores to get out of the way (known from personal experience). Picture below of me right before we both had to jump into someone's front porch to avoid speeding motorbikes coming our way.
Bali
Day 3
After explorations of the Day 2, we were fully prepared for where we wanted to go today. Instead of having to wait until 10:00 for coffee, we had scouted out a different Starbucks that opened at 9:00. We also figured out that we could walk there along the beach instead of along the taxi-driver laden, ankle-spraining sidewalks. It was a much more peaceful walk, albeit hotter than the previous few days. Once inside an air conditioned Starbucks and with lattes in hand, we finally felt like persons in the world again, and watched the wide variety of people walk by. Surfers, tourists, Hindu ladies carrying their offerings to their shrine and everyone in between walked past here.
We took our lattes to the beach (a half a block away) and sat on the sand, watched the surfers, and tried to politely turn away all of the nice ladies who were selling massages, sarongs and pineapples (“I give you good price, dahling”). We tried taking pictures of the surfers, but we seemed to capture them right as they were wiping out. So as we took a picture of a barge, we just captured someone actually surfing in the far right side of the photo. At least it's proof that people really do surf here.
For lunch we walked back up to Poppies Street and ate at the Poppies Restaurant. It’s another Indonesian restaurant, open air with thatched roof. It has wonderful ambiance with tropical plants and even a stream in it. The food was great (we both tried some traditional Indonesian foods), and we made friends with our waiter who recommended another restaurant to us for supper. But first…a walk to another (yet a third) Starbucks for more coffee. I can’t even begin to tell you how many different people asked if we wanted “transport” or “taksi”.
Our waiter at Poppies Restaurant had arranged for someone to pick us up at our hotel to take us to supper. Neither of us had any idea what type of restaurant to expect. After about a 15 minute drive, we arrived at Jimaryan Beach and were shown to a table on the beach. And much to our relief, we discovered we were in a fairly busy restaurant area – beachside restaurants as far as the eye could see. We then picked out the live crabs and giant prawns that we wanted grilled. And we couldn’t complete the meal without the token Indonesian mariachi band, who thought I looked like Kate Winslett (granted it was very dark outside tonight). By the way, Eric had “sark fin” (shark fin) soup.
One thing we have noticed here, is that people love to know where you are from. When we tell them that we live in Papua, they completely change their attitude toward us, and become much more friendly and talkative. Every Balinese person we have talked to for very long has recommended we visit Ubud…what they think of as the “real” Bali. We don’t have time to go there this trip but will definitely go there next time we are here. We are saving much of our souvenir shopping for Ubud, because it is the major arts and crafts center of the island. However, that didn’t stop us from shopping quite a bit. It was fun to look around and see all the new things that have come out since we have last been in the Western world.
Bali
Day 4
Our trip is winding down today so we took it a bit easy. We walked along the beach again and had our morning coffee fix. Then we found a “taksi” who took us to The Bali Deli to buy a few grocery items that we needed to take back with us. We could have gotten reindeer and kangaroo meat besides all the other normal favorites, but figured we couldn’t keep any of it cold on the plane. We spent the rest of the day at the hotel, relaxing on our patio while listening to the waves roll in.
October 17
We don't see sunsets often here because it's cloudy most of the time. We finally got to see one, and it was spectacular!
We took Jessica down to the lowlands to see some scenery. It has been pretty foggy and rainy since she has arrived, making it hard to see much. We did get to hang out with the natives at the port site. Enjoy the pictures!
A Papuan woman taking fresh water back to her "stilt house"
A papuan child very diligently sorting and collecting rocks while waiting for mom.
For those who think snow on the equator would be impossible, I've included a page from our company newsletter about snowfall at the open pit mine here (hint for English speaking people: read the right hand column).
E - N E W S L E T T E R W A R G A F R E E P O R T
Kamis, 18 Oktober 2007
Hujan Salju di Grasberg
Snowfall at Grasberg
Para karyawan PT Freeport Indonesia (PTFI) yang bekerja di area Grasberg menikmati satu pemandangan unik minggu lalu (10/10) yaitu hujan salju yang menutupi berbagai area di tambang terbuka itu.
"Pagi itu indah sekali," ungkap Albert Marlissa karyawan HRD yang berkantor di Grasberg. "Selama saya bekerja sejak 2003 di area Grasberg, baru kali ini saya melihat salju yang begitu tebal menutupi area Grasberg. Ini merupakan suatu kejadian sangat langka di wilayah tropis dimana di Indonesia kita mengenal dua musim. Tapi dalam kenyataannya kita di Tanah Papua khususnya di area kerja PTFI di Grasberg boleh menikmati keindahan turunnya salju seperti yang biasa terjadi dan dirasakan oleh saudara-saudara kita di belahan bumi Eropa dan Amerika dengan empat musim."
Beberapa karyawan di area Grasberg yang tidak pernah melihat salju sebelumnya dan banyak dari mereka yang mengabadikan peristiwa pesona salju Papua itu sambil berpose di hadapan kamera digital, hand phone kamera dan lainnya.
Chief Scientist Departemen Lingkungan PTFI Sugio menjelaskan, "Salju biasa terjadi pada negeri beriklim subtropis dan sedang. Namun, ada juga daerah tropis yang bersalju, salah satunya di Pegunungan Jayawijaya di Papua. Grasberg kemungkinan menjadi satu-satunya daerah di Indonesia yang mempunyai hujan salju." Tercatat dalam data Departemen Lingkungan bahwa turunnya salju di Grasberg yang cukup luas dan lama pernah terjadi sebelum-sebelumnya dan terakhir pada tanggal 12 Agustus tahun 2003.
(Dalam setiap edisi e-BeritaKita, untuk membaca deskripsi foto, mohon letakkan mouse di atas foto.)
A rare sight greeted many PT Freeport Indonesia (PTFI) employees who work at Grasberg last week (10/10), as snowfall blanketed many areas of the open pit. "It was such a beautiful morning," said Albert Marlissa, a Human Resources Department employee who works at Grasberg. "I have worked up at Grasberg since 2003 and this is the first time I have seen snowfall this thick here. It is rare for us here in Indonesia to see snow, as we are used to only two seasons. But today we here in Papua, and especially PTFI, get to enjoy snow the way our European and American friends, who go through four seasons, do."
Several Grasberg employees who had never seen snow took the opportunity to capture the moment with their digital camera, cellular phone camera, and others.
PTFI Environmental Department Chief Scientist Sugio explained, "Snow usually occurs in subtropical and temperate climates. However, snow can also occur in tropical areas, one of which is the Jayawijaya mountain range here in Papua. Grasberg may well be the only place in Indonesia to experience snowfall." According to PTFI Environmental Department data, snowfall of this kind had occurred several times before up at Grasberg, the last time on August 12, 2003.
(In every edition of e-BeritaKita, to read the description of the photo, please hover your mouse over any part of the photo.)
Himbauan Safety Hari Ini: Pastikan tim anda bisa melalukan tugas mereka secara selamat.
Safety Alert of the Day: Make sure your team can perform their tasks safely.
