Bali - land of giant figs and drunk Australians

First ten days in Bali. The expedition is off to a flying start. Studying pollination and seed dispersal interactions in three different island regions of the world: Bali & Lombok, Vanuatu, and New Caledonia – from ancient volcanic islands to Gondwanaland relicts. First night, arriving late and utterly exhausted in Denpasar airport, we of course manage to let a nice woman book us into one of the two hotels that Lonely Planet warns are “past their prime” (i.e. old, over-priced tourist-traps). For two Danes just escaped from the gloom of winter, however, it was paradise to spend an hour in 32 degrees (midnight temperature) on the beach with a beer – and to retreat to a nice and cool 25 degrees airconditioned room afterwards. First day was spent in a haze of heat and jetlag; we repaired to a nearby hotel – also straight on the beach – which had a most beautiful garden in which we saw the first 1,678 of Bali’s 34,987 shades of green.

Next day we went up to the central mountains, to Bedugul, to see the botanic gardens and get an idea of what the native vegetation looks like. Being lazy bastards, and realising that a car WITH a driver costs only 10 dollars more per day than a car without one, we chartered a car & driver for the whole day, and set off. Bali is incredibly fertile – it had its latest shower of ash from a huge volcanic eruption in 1963. We were both stunned at how green and lush everything was – and this is at the end of the dry season! Of course, most of the island is covered in rice fields (but extremely pittoresque ones, that is; countless emerald green terraces hugging the hills), which leaves only little room for natural forests.

Traffic in Bali. What can we say? From the cars’ perspective, it is no better or worse than, say, Cairo or Port Louis. However, here in Bali you have the added delight of a horde of fast and death-defying small motorbikes zooming around the cars, weaving their way through the traffic whereever there is a gap of 20 cm. Sitting in a car, it felt as if we were surrounded by lots of large mechanical mosquitoes zooming by on all sides. Generally, one motorbike will carry at least two people (range = 1-4), usually a guy and a woman and up to two kids, and what seems to be a random assortment of household equipment and other necessities.

We had a hard time explaining our driver that we wanted to see some real forest and wildlife, and after the first three stops at monkey-infested temples, villages with caged birds, and other touristy knick-knack, we resigned, and let him show us whatever pleased him on our way up into the mountains. The botanic garden was very nice and at 1200 m above sea level a few degrees cooler than at the coast; an added bonus. We quickly descend down on the eastern side of the island, though, to meet Max van Balgooy in Jasri, where he escapes some of the Dutch winter.

Max is a retired botanist from Leiden in the Netherlands, and is after a lifetime of exploration and research arguably one of the most knowledgable scientists working with plants in Southeast Asia. We stayed at a small homestay near Max’ place – which was run by a 50-year old ex-pat Australian, whose answering machine said, in a thick Aussie lingo, “If I’m not answering, I’m either out surfing or drunk”. ‘Or both’ we felt like adding, after seeing the copious amounts of beer he gulped down with gusto, while holding on to his 18-year old Balinese girlfriend. Bali is home to some weird creatures indeed.

Next day, Max took us to a holy moutain, where the forest was still relatively intact, and where there were steps all the way up through the forest – with a generous helping of temples scattered along the way. Here, we got our first whiff of real forest – which was increased to being blown away the next day, when we went with Max to the botanic garden, lodging in their fabulous Balinese-style guesthouse right next to the rainforested mountains. From here, we went into the forest -and obviously took a lot of photos on the way.

The stroll through this mountain forest was like unleashing two kids in a candy store; we continually emitted sounds like “wow!”, “look at THAT!” – usually followed by a “bloody dang leeches!”.

Max to the rescue – he kindly demonstrated two of the 999 ways to get rid of leeches: burning them off with a match, or simply tearing them off and biting them in half (quote: chew, chew, “this is a tough one!”). Unlike the darn mozzies, the leeches carry no diseases – but they are indeed infinitely more gross than any blood-sucking dipterans. The most intriguing find was a giant (and we MEAN giant!) fig fruit, half rotten on the ground.

The beast was a full 12-14 cm in diameter, and had obviously lain on the ground for quite a while without being eaten. Despite searching, we could not find the fig tree it had come from, and retired to our bungalows before the night set in with its blessed relatively cool air (even a 3-degree drop is MOST welcome, we can assure you!).

Next morning, we set out and climbed one of the two mountains behind the botanic gardens, a rather small-looking 1800 m tall – a mere bump from the 1100 m the gardens already are located above sealevel. Or so we thought. With 12 kilos each of camera equipment, it becomes a mighty tall bugger indeed – and copious amounts of sweat were added to the already high humidity of the surroundings. However, if the previous day had been like a candy store – then this was like being taken through the Chocolate Factory! (alas, we didn’t spot Willy Wonka, though). Especially when we spotted two giant, orange-red globes with yellow spots hanging on a liana some 30 metres above our heads – the mystery giant figs in their natural surroundings! We managed to get some photos of the beasts, and were puzzled to see that, despite their apparent ripeness, they looked completely untouched – not even a small nibble scar was visible. In the big tree, on which the fig liana grew, a small brown squirrel-like creature (i.e. most likely a squirrel) crawled around less than 1 m away from the figs – completely ignoring the apparent smorgasbord of figgy yumminess nearby. A mystery indeed.

On the way up, we also saw several species of Hoya (Asclepiadaceae) in flower – and of course, Dennis had to check for coloured nectar. Of which there was none, bugger. We made it to the top of the mountain, where we spent a few hours trying to observe the pollinators of a red-flowering Agalmyla (Gesneriaceae), but no such luck. On the way down, we spotted another spotted fig liana, this one more accessible than any of the others, and we proceeded to do what biologists do best: collect & look at. This involved a great deal of Dennis shaking the liana at ground level, while Jens stood a sensible distance away, promising to yell out if giant figs, lianas, snakes, monkeys, or other (un)desireables chose to let gravity rather than the tree dictate their vertical movement. “There they come! One, two, no THREE figs!” – at the same time, three figs had chosen gravity over continued violent wobbling from side to side, and Dennis jumped to the side – hoping not to be hit by one of them. If worst happened, though, they would surely be rather soft – being red and ripe and all. The steep slope with its dense understory of shrubs and climbers swallowed one of the three figs completely, but two of the others lay right next to each other a mere five metres down. And they were stone-hard, having suffered absolutely no harm from their 25 metre drop.

Ze plot zickens. Why make a giant fig that LOOKS ripe, in clear signal colours, but which is hard and filled with latex, and unripe on the inside? Is this another case of the ‘riddle of the rotten fruit’ – fruits that have lost their dispersing partners, and are now left to rot on the ground? Maybe the signals are warning colours to signal inedibility – like the red fungus from the forests home in Denmark? Maybe the fig only goes soft and start to emit a smell when fallen to the ground? Maybe it evolved on some of the other nearby islands, which have or had forest-living rhinos that ate the figs? More questions than answers, to be sure, but all good reasons to come back and do a proper study of these fascinating buggers later!

Now we are sitting at a hotel at the coast, observing sunbirds pollinating flowers right next to our veranda, and shooting a few photos of those. “We’ll just tell people we got the pictures after extreme hardship in the jungle, right?”, we both agree. Tomorrow we are set to explore the slopes of the highest mountain, Gudung Agung, where we will do a pollination observation transect, spanning the altitudinial range of native vegetation. In a weeks’ time or so, we will do the same on Lombok’s highest mountain, and then compare and contrast the results we get. More adventures coming!