Manjula goes blogging...

I was in Irian Jaya, Indonesia (now known as Papua and not to be confused with the other half of the island Papua New Guinea, which is a separate country) to set up a study quantifying factors affecting hatching success of leatherbacks on the 18-km long Jamursba-Medi beach. This is a collaboration with the WWF-Indonesia team--they have been monitoring leatherbacks on this beach for several years.

Getting to Jamursba-Medi took several days …by the time I left Los Angeles and arrived in Jakarta, I was into the third day of my journey having lost a day to the mysterious international dateline –bizarre feeling to know that May 22, 2005 never existed for me. Among the first things that struck me about Indonesia were the beautiful smiles of the Indonesians – the most grim faces could relax into amazingly charming smiles. After spending the day in Jakarta mostly re-energizing on ‘nasi goreng,’ I checked in for my night flight to Sorong, Papua. After foolishly inquiring if the mileage on this local airline could be registered on one of my accounts, I found myself in a little room trying to explain to three patient and encouraging Indonesians my desire to register the miles—the hopelessness of my request eventually made us abandon the subject and shift the conversation to one of their uncles who lived in San Francisco. Eleven sleepless hours later I was in Sorong in easternmost Indonesia. Another 24 hours later, after minimum sleep, I was on a 6-hour boat ride to the beach.

I finally arrived at the beautiful Jamursba-Medi beach in the evening of the fifth day of my journey:


Carl Safina, who joined me on a later trip summarized the journey well – he said he had been concerned about malaria, but he didn’t realize that he would die simply from the lack of sleep! Neither of us had spent so many continuous waking hours trying to get to a nesting beach before…

TO BE CONTINUED…