Bali & Lombok - different, yes, but not due to the Wallace Line!

Let us see. We ended the last installment of this blog with the following lines, about us wanting to “explore the slopes of the highest mountain, Gunung Agung, where we will do a pollination observation transect… …we will do the same on Lombok’s highest mountain, and then compare and contrast the results we get”. So far, so good.

From the botanic garden in Bedugul, we set off towards the volcano Gunung Agung and the first pollination transect. On the way we stayed in the small tourist trap of Lovina on the north coast, where we finally managed to get close to the sunbirds visiting an, ahem, erhm, endemic and VERY rare Hibiscus in the garden just outside our window. Yes, that will do.


Mmm, the joys of living in a tourist trap. If the Chinese and Japanese can be said to sometimes have a problem with the letter ‘r’ – then the Indonesian equivalent is the letter ‘f’. This is commonly pronounced as the letter ‘p’, making for some fun misunderstandings.
“Good morring, pried rice and kopi?” What?!
“Do you peel happy in Bali?” Que? –no thanks, we think we’ll just hold on to our skin for a little bit longer, if you don’t mind.

Anyway, next day we arrived at the foot of the volcano, where we once again managed – completely and utterly unknowingly, of course – to check into a rather spiffingly nice little homestay. It was nestled in a beautiful valley among emerald-green rice fields in the village of Sidemen, to the south of Gunung Agung. In the late afternoon sun, we explore the beautiful rice fields, and thoroughly enjoy the tranquility of the village and its surroundings. We get back to our “fieldstation”, and enjoy a beer on the veranda – looking longingly at the massive volcano that dominates the view to the north.
In the evening we get a good example of the mixture of ancient and modern that is Bali. There is going to be a blessing of a newly bought car. The son of the homestay-owner has returned from Canada with money to spend. His grandmother, a tiny woman with skin like brown leather, presides over the scene together with a Hindu-priest, clad completely in white. The car is covered with offerings of food to please the gods (of which the Balinese pantheon holds plenty).

After the blessing, we are offered to taste some of the things, including a palm-leaf wrapped bar made out of black rice pudding, palm sugar, and banana. One such bar looks like it contains as much energy as about seven of the fabled lembas-breads of elvish Middle-Earth fame. Perfect for the ascent into the jungles of Gunung Agung!

The next morning, bright and early, our driver arrives with the car. It is none other than the Hindu-priest from the night before, now wearing a t-shirt and a cap instead of his white gown – but still the same wide smile. But of course. With a driver like that, we reckon that the gods of Gunung Agung will look with great favour upon our little quest.
“Jens, did you remember the One Ring? We MUST throw it into the fiery chasm from whence it came, to destroy it before Anders Fogh [Danish PM] can lay his slimy hands on it!”, Dennis exclaims, with nerdy passion and a goofy smile.
“Dennis, stop it, for crying out loud!”, Jens cries out, the despair evident in his face that he will have to endure this for yet another two-and-a-half months. Little did he know. Alas.
We reach the temple (of which Bali has enough to make sure that even the smallest deity feels loved) halfway up the volcano, and set off into the forest that beckons behind it. Just behind the temple the forest is absolute crap; invasive shrubs, herbs, and trees. Nevertheless, we start recording every pollination interaction we see – maybe we can observe a gradual shift in pollinators as we ascend up into the real forest?
After climbing a few hundred metres, we realise that the forest is STILL absolute crap; invasive shrubs, herbs, and trees. Where is the rainforest? Where are the epiphytes, the orchids, the fig trees? What has happened?
Without the often taken-for-granted instant access to a good chunk of the world’s scholarly journals via the Internet, it is hard to tell if anyone has studied this, and come up with an answer. We came up with the following hypothesis: After the eruption in 1963, the native forest was badly damaged. The nearest source for regeneration was from the agricultural lands just below – from where the birds ate the berries and fruits of introduced and invasive species. Depositing them onto the ash-fertilised remains of the native forest, the seeds quickly grew into a forest of invasive species, before the few remaining native plants could regenerate.
We don’t know if the forest on the entire volcano looks as bad as here, but time is running, and sadly we cannot afford to spend too much time exploring here. We have to leave for Lombok, and hope that the volcano forest there is in better shape.
After a looong walk down from the volcano, we happily flag down a bemo that takes us the last 15 km down to Sidemen - Dennis has to fold over three times to crawl into the vehicle, which is tiny indeed.


We embark on the ferry to Lombok at Pandangbai, a small, bustling town on the eastern coast of Bali. Now is the time. The fabled Wallace Line awaits. We both stare towards the horizon, where we can see the coast of Lombok. Somewhere out there. Nerd-fever rising, we flip open a laptop and read the bit from Wallace’s ‘Malay Archipelago’, where he recounts this small, but very significant step on his way to becoming the Father of Biogeography. Almost exactly 150 years ago, in July 1856, Wallace sailed here. Is it just the wind, or is it a gust of history blowing across our faces? (yes, yes, Dennis, cut it. We get the idea. –Jens).
Halfway across the strait, we see it! The Line! …-or is it just an oil-spill? Fata Morgana for nerds? Who can tell; but we are mightily excited, that’s for sure!


In Lombok, we jump into a small, ancient bus that looks as if it could well have been the very same one that carried Wallace so long ago. We share the bus with a few other tourists, who probably all are going up north to the Gili Islands – Lombok’s 7’in-place’ among the hip & cool backpackers who dare to venture out from Bali. Gili means ‘island’ in Indonesian –so, “the island islands”? – maybe like the Irish, who like to say “to be sure, to be sure”? Just to be sure.

We depart from the merry crowd of surfers and drinkers in Mataram, the capital of Lombok, and charter a small bemo (local mini-mini busses, which nevertheless sometimes manage to hold 15 people with luggage, 7 goats and 381 ducks). This takes us eventually to Senaru, a small village at 500 m above sea level, and on the northern slopes of Gunung Rinjani – the highest volcano, and second-highest mountain in Indonesia (around 3700 m). We find a lsmall lodge with a perfect view of the rainforest.
A perfect hiking trail goes all the way to the top, so we set out the next morning to explore – and found that the rainforest WAS there (lo and behold!) – but it only starts after an hour of steep uphill walking through two villages and banana/coffee ‘forests’.
“At least we get our morning exercise before work starts”, Jens cheerfully said, while watching the very last 3 square centimetres of his t-shirt that did not yet look like a wetsuit succumb to the tide of sweat. Luckily, there was a tiny hut just before the rainforest, where yet another ancient, tiny woman sold bananas and Coca-colas and Fantas. Lifesaving.

The forest, though! Mindblowing, tall, green, dark, humid, yummy.
We walked up the steep path, wringing sweat from our t-shirts every 500 metres, and looked. And looked. And found almost nothing in flower! As even an imbecile can tell, after some mild tutoring involving a bamboo stick and a carrot, pollination biologists NEED flowers to achieve their Nerdvana.
It was the end of the dry season, the rains had still not begun, and were more than a month late. Consequently, most plants were waiting for the first downpour before comitting to reproduction. We managed to find two species of parasitic orchids (i.e. no chlorophyll and no leaves) in flower, and spent hours observing both species the next four days, but saw nothing apart from a few flies landing on the outside of the flower. Meagre food for pollination biologists indeed.

We had better luck with fruits, as we unexpectedly encountered our friend, the giant fig from Bali, again at 1500-1800 m above sea level, where the forest was getting a bit more open and low. Here in Lombok, there was also nothing eating these figs – we found many rotten and semi-rotten fruits on the ground.

But the forest also held a plethora of other fig species; huge trees with thousands of fruits adorning their trunks and branches – and at one of these trees, we saw the long-tailed macaque eating the fruits. Our first seed dispersal interaction! The next days we hauled our camera equipment to these trees, and spent hours observing them.

Most of the time, the monkeys proceeded to sit and eat figs tantalisingly near to our poised cameras, but they somehow always managed to either, a) sit with their backs to us, proudly displaying their tail and buttocks, or b) sit in cover behind a thick branch. In both cases the result was the same: only the slurping noises and a glimpse of a simian hand or leg holding on to a fig reached our perceptive apparatuses (apparati? aperitif? anyone? –where’s the dictionary?) – and hence the sensor plates in our digital cameras had to remain hungry for the time being.
“This pisses me off”, Dennis blurped out,
“Rather”, Jens added,
“Bugger”, Dennis said, once again using his favourite British swearword.

We had now spent four days exploring the rain forest on the slopes of Gunung Rinjani, and had only one more day left here. We decided to go to Sembalun Lawang, a village on the north-eastern slope of Gunung Rinjani, and up in 1200 m above sea level, to check the forest here. We chartered yet another bemo for the drive, and finally found out where the name derives from: “Bouncing and Erratically Moving Object”. Ouch.
On a particularly steep part of the badly maintained road, the driver had to remove the spare tyre to remove a small plastic object from beneath the car; two blows, removing 2 litres of oil onto the road, and we were ready to go again. We were calmed by noting that the spare tyre at least was in a good shape. It was in fact more or less round, and had a layer of rubber left that in comparison made the membrane of a condom seem very thick indeed. Splendid.

Sembalun Lawang turned out to be on a wide grassy plain, surrounded by grassy hills, where all the forest had been burnt and removed a long time ago. Bugger.
However, we met a few local trekking guides who invited us in for a kup of kopi, and all was better then.

Afterwards, we had a few hours of touristing around the village with the guides and some local boys - and saying “hello” to about 2,189 people who all (but one!) smiled widely. THEN the rains came, a! It was good fun watching the kids play around on the still hot tarmac roads, and enjoying the shower from above.

Also, Jens got a horde of new admirers; mayb the nest generation of tropical biologists?


The kids were also more than happy to show us their new puppy - even though it had to be hauled up on the leash to make it into the photo. Alas - dogs are not worth too much on Bali...Next morning, a gorgeous sunrise showed us the volcano in all its glory - yumyum for photo-nerds.

Right now, we are in a secret place, hatching secret plans that if it turns out all right will secure us the front page of Nature. Cross your fingers. More later. Giggle.