Boar Hunting and Bali

Boys weekend.  Ladies weekend.  Two totally different adventures.  I'll share mine and perhaps Maureen will get around to sharing hers.

Last September Maureen and I had traveled to West Sumatra.  It was less than a week before an 8.3 earthquake devastated the area.  We fell in love with the beauty of the scenery and the people. While exploring around we met Porcupine (Zal) a tour guide at his restaurant on the shores of Lake Minanjau.  He told us about his adventures on wild boar hunts and I knew I would have to return to check this out.

The architecture and the scenery around the lake are stunning.  Here is a typical building, viewed from the 44 hairpin corner descent to the lake shore and village.








It wasn't too hard to round up four other adventurers to check this out.  For all of us, the experience was totally different from our expectations.  We arrived in Padang, West Sumatra, Indonesia early Friday morning.  Zal picked us up and took us on a tour through the country-side en route to his home on Lake Minanjau.  Our first stop was to see an 8.5 meter python.  The python was found by a villager and he had him on display in a rickety tarp affair that left us wondering who the python's next meal might be.  According to the villager when he found the python they started up a conversation and the python told him he could put him on display until he had earned a certain amount of rupiah and then he would have to let him go.  The snake really was big, with its head about the size of my thigh.

The snake was on display right outside a restaurant where we had our first meal.  Padang food is renowned for its spice and the meal lived up to its reputation.   They brought out about 30 tiny plates full of food.  There is no ordering as you just choose what you want and pay for only for what you eat.  Even though we were in the heart of Sumatra it is really, really hard to get a good cup of coffee.  The local coffee is roasted till it is almost burnt and then ground into a fine dust.  It is prepared like instant coffee with a spoonful or two put into a cup and boiling water poured over top.  The big difference is that it doesn't ever dissolve so if you are not careful you can slurp up a whole lot of sludge from the bottom.

We drove a bit further into the hill town of Bukittinggi.  This a former hill resort town of the Dutch colonists.  Spices are abundant in the part of Indonesia, hence the former name the Spice Islands.  The Dutch controlled the trade and the area for over 350 years.  We explored the town a bit, checking out the central square and the market.  Cruising through the market with the guys was a little different than going with Moe.  We didn't really stop at any stall and nothing was bought.

Zal then took us to see the Japanese caves.  These were described in an early post.  Everyone found the story rather fascinating.  On our way to Minanjau we drove through the silver crafting village.  We did stop and gifts of appeasement were purchased.

The gang on the view site outside the Japanese caves. From left to right, Zal (our guide), Derald Cook (from San Francisco area), Jeff Cole (Bend, Oregon), Rick Pucci (Toronto), Paul Brodie (Sydney, Australia area), and moi.

Both Paul and Derald have had past teaching experiences in Indonesia (other islands though).  The locals were always amazed when they started speaking Bhasa with them and then loved to talk to them.









Zal has spent 25 years guiding in the area. A few years ago he settled down, married and then opened a restaurant on the lake.  His wife is a wonderful cook and both nights we were treated to excellent meals which were a fusion of local Indonesian food and other types.  We had fresh sweet water prawns done in a couple styles, an incredible venison dish, steamed fish, chicken dishes, vegetable and rice dishes.  The quality of the food and the presentation of the dishes really were a surprise.  I asked her where she picked up her skills and the response was from magazines.

  I walked through the village before we took off on our hunt the first morning and checked out buildings.  The curved, spiky roofs are supposed to represent buffalo horns.  Apparently many years ago a wise leader of Sumatra convinced an invading army from Java to settle their differences by having their buffaloes fight each other. This is a David and Goliath Indonesian story.  The Javanese brought their largest and strongest buffalo to fight for them while the Sumatrans led out a small calf.  The crafty Sumatrans had taken the calf away from its mother for a few days before hand and it was starving.  They also attached a sharp spike to the top of its head.  When the calf saw the Javanese buffalo he ran up to it looking for something to suckle and in the process stabbed the bull in the stomach with the spike and killed it.  Somehow the style of these buildings represent this victory over the Javanese.                                                                                        

 

Our journey to the hunt started off in the back of a pick-up.  None of us were really sure how things would work and with the language difficulties Zal was not really able to explain it.  We piled into the back of the truck with 3 dogs and a couple other hunters. As we drove through the village we stopped to pick up a couple other hunters with their dogs.  We then had a 45 minute drive through the Sumatran country side on the way to a small village on the edge of palm plantation.

When we arrived at the village we were immediately introduced to the chief who asked us to sit down and be served breakfast.  All of us had a hard time sitting cross legged but managed to squirm our way into some sort of similar position.  The food was excellent, mainly chicken dishes with lots of spicy sauces.  We washed it down with the local tea.  No utensils are provided and we did manage to eat with our hands although not as deftly as the locals.



Here is Zal and I with the chief checking out the spear.  I thought this might be the instrument that finished off the boar but I was very wrong.                                                                                

While we were eating men from around the area began arriving with their dogs.  We began to realize that this wasn't going to be a private affair.  For the locals, who are Muslim, the boars are haraam (forbidden) and unclean.  As farmers they also see the boars as a major pest as they dig up and destroy their crops.  There is no love lost between the locals and the boars and besides a concept like animal rights hasn't quite entered their radar of political correctness.  We found out that boar hunting in Sumatra is a rather bloody and brutal affair.

The assistant chief or deputy has this rusty old single shot musket thing that he signals the start of the hunt with.  In the hunt you a group of men who go to one side of a stand of trees or grasses where they believe the boars may be and then they drive to the other side where the hunters and their dogs are waiting.  The musket man leads the beater group while the chief takes the others into the area where the boars are being driven to.

Most of the boar hunting time is spent waiting patiently while the boars are driven towards the group.  There probably were 200 hunters with their dogs waiting for the boars.  All of the men had long scarves which they would throw at the boars to distract them if they broke lose and headed towards them.  Once the dogs picked up the scent or sound of the boars rushing towards them they would be released to chase them down.  The dogs were very well trained and waited quietly and patiently for the boars.

When they did manage to trap a boar they conquered with shear numbers.  They would bring the pig down and literally tear it apart.  Not a very pretty sight.  They group was followed by plantation workers from Miri (another Indonesian Island ,but Christian).  After the dogs were pulled off these folks salvaged what meat was left on the boar.

Derald displaying the boar's head after the Miri workers cleaned things up.

The hunters with the chief.














We came across these young girls in the middle of the jungle.  They were about 4 or 5 years old.  Their job was to sit in this little hut on stilts for the day and pull on the strings.  The rice in the field was just about ready for harvest and this is how they scared the boars away from the field.