PRACTICALITIES

Flight and visa

We flew from Brussels to Jakarta via Frankfurt and Singapore with Lufthansa for 1128 EUR return, including taxes. For your domestic flights it is recommended to reconfirm your flight at least 24 hours before departure. Benny Lesomar and Yoris Wanggai arranged this service for us. If short in time it is best to book all your domestic flights in advance. Often it is not possible to book tickets at the primitive airports and you need to get to an office in town. We were only able to book and pay the Batavia Air flights in advance. For the two Merpati flights we made an online reservation (paying by credit card was not possible online). Bear in mind that these reservations are automatically cancelled when not paid 24 hours before departure. One time this costed us an extra 100 EUR each to take the plane to Biak which we thought we booked properly. So, we paid for the Merpati flight Jakarta - Biak 2252100 IDR per person (plus an additional 1400000 IDR each) for the Merpati flight Biak - Jayapura 574300 IDR per person and for the Batavia Air flight Manokwari - Jakarta 209 USD per person. Our other domestic flights were operated by Trigana Air and Express Air (see tour services and itinerary for further details) and were all booked by Benny Lesomar. In 2009 the domestic airport taxes fluctuated between 20000 and 35000 IDR per person. For the international flight you have to pay 150000 IDR per person.

Immigration officials will grant a 30 day visa upon arrival. The cost for this single entry is 25 USD. If you want to stay longer than 1 month you need to arrange your visa in advance at the embassy in your country. It is also possible to cross the Indonesian border after 30 days and re-enter the country with a new visa for an extra month. This procedure changed recently. Tourist visas are extended on the last valid day. You should keep the immigration paper given to you on arrival in a safe place as you will need to show this upon departure. It is recommend that your passport has a remaining validity of at least six months. To learn more about visas, check with your consulate or your embassy for details pertaining to your citizenship.

Another important thing to do upon arrival in West Papua is arranging your travel permit, a kind of document for Police and Army control that needs to be shown / copied in hotels as well. To get this document, better known as "Surat Jalan", bring a few copies of your passport, 2 passport pictures, a copy of your booking and your itinerary for all places you will visiting with you. The application can be filled in on the spot and the travel permit can be picked up on the same day. Biak, Jayapura and Manokwari are probably the best places to arrange these formality without too much troubles. Benny arranged this in Biak for us, Yoris can do the same in Manokwari if your trip starts over there. We were told several times that a trip not booked through one of the travel agencies in Papua might result in problems with the Police or Indonesian Army in Wamena when going to Lake Habbema. The Police and Indonesian Army consider the Lake Habbema area unsafe for tourists. When we prompted our travel permit to them and give some money we had no problem at all. Be sure to mention only the city of Wamena and NOT the Lake Habbema when applying for your travel permit.

Money

Indonesia's official currency is the Indonesian Rupiah (IDR). Notes are in denominations of 100000, 50000, 20000, 10000, 5000 and 1000. Nowadays coins are only occasionally used. The best currencies to bring are USD or EUR. It is recommended to change all needed money upon arrival in Jakarta or Bali airport in order to save money, time and cash problems. The exchange rate in West Papua is much worse and might consume valuable birding time looking for exchange bureaus which are scarce at the tiny airports. ATM's are hard to find as well and day limits for cashing money are too low. Visa cards were only accepted in Jakarta airport where paid some of our pre-booked domestic flights. The few hotels we stayed in during our trip didn't accept any credit card. Banks do exchange cash and travellers cheques without a commission. We all changed EUR in Jakarta airport at the rate of 14125 IDR to 1 EUR. The remaining IDR we had at the end of our trip could be changed without any difficulty in Jakarta, we sold them for 13900 IDR which is still higher then the price you can buy Rupiahs in West Papua.

Tour services

As stated in the introduction, a good preparation is essential for a successful trip to this destination. Especially when you have a busy program and you are limited in time as we were. We could not afford to loose one or two days to arrange domestic flight tickets, finding guides and porters for the trekking or finding a boatman to bring us to Batanta and Salawati Islands. By far the best way to get around when limited in time and unfamiliar with the Indonesian language is to contact local guides for all sites and make good appointments in advance as we did. Another possibility is to take contact with Mrs. Shita Prativi (papuabirdclub@hotmail.com), the staff leader of Papua Bird Club. They can offer you a total packet but expect a price twice as high as an independent trip. Papuan Bird Club's prices for 2009 were for 3-4 persons 270 USD per person/day and for 5-6 persons 235 USD per person/day and this for starting in Biak and ending in Manokwari. Our trip cost was about 3800 EUR per person, including our international flight.

Here is a summary of all our guides and the arrangements we made in advance;


Benny Lesomar (Biak)

E-mail: papua_trip@yahoo.com or info@discoverpapua.com or lesomarbenny@hotmail.com

Website: www.Discoverpapua.com or www.discoverpapua.multiply.com

Mobile: (+62) 852-44940860

The tour cost for 2 days birding was 80 USD per person. This cost included guiding fee, coach and "Surat Jalan" or police permit for Jayapura, Baliem Valley, Sorong plus islands, the Arkak Mountains and Manokwari. Benny his office is located at Arumbai Hotel (Biak town) so my suggestion is that you can stay at Arumbai hotel and he will book your rooms here. The hotel, meals and drinks were not included. Hotel Arumbai have free of charge transfer in/out. The hotel rate for a standard room was 300000 IDR per night. During our stay the hotel was already full booked but we had at Intsia Beach Hotel the same conditions. Benny booked also some domestic flights and issued our ticket for Jayapura - Wamena return by Trigana Air for 145 USD per person, Jayapura - Sorong by Express Air for 210 USD per person and Sorong - Manokwari as well by Express Air for 126 USD per person. Ticket delivery at Jayapura airport and in our hotel at Sorong by a local guide cost 2 x 45 USD for their service.

So, our total price was:

Ticket Jayapura - Wamena - Jayapura	145 USD x 4 p.	580 USD
Ticket Jayapura - Sorong	210 USD x 4 p.	840 USD
Ticket Sorong - Manokwari	126 USD x 4 p.	504 USD
Ticket delivery at Jayapura Airport by our guides		90 USD
2 days Biak birding, coach, guiding and police permit		320 USD

We transferred the total amount to the Mandiri Biak Bank:

Account No: 154-00-0431598-6
Att: Benediktus Lesomar
MANDIRI BANK BRANCH BIAK
Jl. Jend. Achmad Yani 2
Biak - Papua - INDONESIA
Swift code: BEIIIDJA



Jonas Wenda (Wamena)

E-mail: jonas.wenda@yahoo.com

Mobile: (+62) 852-44220825

We paid 700 USD per person for 7 days (including transport Wamena - Lake Habbema retour, porter fee, guide fee, food, tent camp, transport for our last birding day in the Baliem Valley and one overnight in Baliem Pilamo Hotel. Dinner, drinks and breakfast in the hotel were not included. The service was extraordinarily, they cooked the best food we had during this trip, we can surely recommend Jonas and his team!


Jamil Minto (Nimbokrang)

E-mail: jamilbirdingnimbokrang@yahoo.com

Mobile: (+62) 852-54332796

We had no e-mail address or mobile number in advance and had to contact him when we arrived in Jayapura. Edison Meliala (see below) knows Jamil, so it took only minutes to arrange transport to Nimbokrang and to inform Jamil about our visit. Fortunately, Jamil was not yet booked during our stay and could accompany us the entire period. Birders will visiting Nimbokrang more frequently (especially from May to September) so booking in advance might become necessary in the future! When we arrived Jamil and his family already transformed his front garden into a nice and covered camping site. We paid in total 5400000 IDR for 4 persons for three and a half days. This price included all food, accommodation, guiding fees for Jamil and Dante, the jeep for visiting the forest at km 8, the motorbikes for visiting Jalan Korea and an entrance fee for the two land owners of the visited the swamp forest near Jamil's place.


Edison Meliala (Jayapura)

E-mail: putrapapua@yahoo.com

Website: www.putrapapuatours.com

Mobile: (+62) 813-44145427
Phone: (+62) 969-31540 or (+62) 969-34804
Fax: (+62) 969-31900


Putra Papua Tours & Travel
Jln. Hom-hom No. 5
Wamena (Baliem Valley) - West Papua
License: 503/1459/SET


Edison is the general manager of Putra Papua Tours & Travel and is a good alternative for contacting Jamil because there is no internet connection at Nimbokrang and Jamil checks his e-mails only once or twice a month. The same goes for Jonas Wenda if he is already fully booked for the lake Habbema Trek. Edison contacted us himself and gave us a price for the Lake Habbema Trek similar to the price of Jonas but on that moment we had already confirmed with the latter.


Zeth Wonggor (Arfak Mountains)

E-mail:

Again, we had no e-mail or mobile number in advance. We just popped up at his home place Siyoubri (Mokwam) in the Arfak Mountains. Zeth's brother Asser Wonggor (mobile (+62) 813-40143647), who lives with his family in Manokwari near the Wosi market remained out of reach. The Wosi market is also the place where you can charter jeeps to Siyoubri. At the Arfaks we were very unlucky that an American team of the Cornell University with a camera team for filming some specific BoP's, arrived on the same day as we did. They stayed for one month and had booked everything in advance through Papuan Bird Club. All bird guides were busy searching for nests of BoP's for the American team. None of the guides with birding skills was available during our stay. Zeth who was very helpful and friendly assigned three guides/porters for the whole period: Lucas, Justinus and Josam. Besides some stake-outs for BoP's and Owlet-Nightjars they didn't know much about birds and spoke some very basic English only. Nevertheless we found most goodies ourselves. We were rather lucky to bump into Zeth one morning at Camp Jepang when we were both searching for Arfak Astrapia and within one hour we all had great views of this target. Without his help we probably would have missed this stunner!

The service was great. In total we paid 7960000 IDR for 4 persons for 1 week. This included cooking our self bought food, extra food we didn't bring, accommodation in Siyoubri's Guest House (still under construction), Garden House and Camp Ciraubri, guide fee and porter fee. When bringing your own food in from Manokwari, it is important to buy enough provision ! It is considered common that porters and cooks consume it as well…


Yoris Wanggai (Sorong - Batanta - Salawati)

E-mail: yoris_tours@yahoo.com

Mobile: (+62) 813-44751664

Yoris is a freelance guide for the Sorong area, he speaks Dutch and English fluently and is based in Manokwari. He is not a birdwatcher but understands very well the service birders expect on a trip. The price we had to pay for this 5-days trip was 43000000 IDR for 4 persons. Yoris his service is really good but it must be possible to find a cheaper solution for the boat as this cost is extremely expensive. Because the sea can be quite rough sometimes, Yoris always opts for two speed boats: one for the passengers and one for the luggage. For safety reasons, he refused to make the crossing by one boat. Also the cost for the porters can be reduced easily to our humble opinion. The most of his clients are divers and they probably handle other prices… Anyway, the price details we had negotiated were:

Speed boat Sorong to Batanta - Salawati- Sorong 4 days	20000000 IDR
Accommodation in Batanta - entrance fee + donation landowner	3000000 IDR
Porters to carry logistic, backpack during the hiking time	5000000 IDR
Full board meals for the guests + crew boat during the trip	6000000 IDR
Local assistant guide for preparing + ground handling in Sorong + transfer for next destination to Manokwari	4000000 IDR
Extra 5th day - hotel in Sorong + reduction	5000000 IDR

We transferred the total amount to the Mandiri Biak Bank:

Account No: 154-0004561795
Att: Yoris R. Wanggai
MANDIRI BANK BRANCH MANOKWARI
Jl. Wasidori Sowi IV, RT 01 /RW VII Manokwari
Papua Barat - INDONESIA
Swift code: BMRiiDJA

Electricity

Electric appliances operate on an alternating current, continental Europe-styled two-pin plugs - 220 volts, 60 cycles (Hertz) are most common. This means that most travellers need to bring an adaptor for laptops, cameras, etc. We also had some external power packs to charge our gear during the camping.

Health and safety

Travellers need to be particularly cautious with respect to what they eat and drink and to insect bites. Hepatitis A and Typhoid Fever are the two most common diseases transmitted through food and water. Yellow Fever and Malaria are the most common diseases transmitted by insects. The CDC provides an overview of these and other medical considerations for those travelling in Indonesia. Health is always an issue of concern for people travelling abroad. Most travellers stay healthy throughout their journeys and return home as fit as ever. You have little to worry about if you educate yourself and take sensible precautions.

West Papua is considered one of the safer islands in Indonesia, though Indonesia's urban centres, especially Jakarta is like any large city in the world, generally more dangerous than the countryside.

Food and drink

In the bigger towns you will find a good variety of restaurants and supermarkets. Meals are generally fine and inexpensive. We paid for dinner mostly around 50000 to 70000 IDR per person including drinks. Vegetarian meals are only available upon request and require persistence to explain what you don't eat. Food-stalls in the street are also quite cheap, but hygiene is often questionable, and you may quickly surpass your intestinal limits. A good rule to follow is the "locals rule" - if the place is frequented by many locals, the food probably merits joining the crowd. For the sake of your intestinal happiness, drink only bottled or boiled water, not water from the tap. Distilled waters are available throughout the country and are of good quality. Remember that tap water is frequently used in ice, so request your beverages without ice in restaurants. We never encountered problems even though we did not always follow these guidelines.

Language

Bahasa Indonesia is the official language of Indonesia. Almost all Indonesian citizens are fluent in the Indonesian language while there are actually over 365 different languages and dialects actively spoken across the Indonesian archipelago! Even the smaller islands have at least one language that is uniquely their own. In such a diverse multi-lingual environment, it is easy to see the vital need for a unifying language. Bahasa Indonesia is that language. English is little understood and rarely spoken in West Papua, except for those who work in hotels or at the airports.

Weather

As you may well know, world weather patterns are becoming increasingly difficult to peg with accuracy. But it is generally acknowledged that this region has no pronounced rainy season, although the chances of rain are slightly higher from November to February. Away from that theory, we only had three days without rain the first three weeks but we had beautiful weather most of our time in the Arfak Mountains during our last week. The climate is tropical in the lowlands, especially Nimbokrang was very hot and humid. The islands are warm too but the humidity was much lower and gave us a more pleasant feeling. The Snow Mountains were extremely wet during our stay. In combination with high altitude camping it guaranteed for freezing nights and mornings, but it warmed up quickly by 9:00 am. Due the bad weather the trail from Pondok Tiga to Wamena via Yabohema and Milipaga became very hard to take and our porters advised us to take the main track and to overnight halfway down along the roadside reducing our chances for some species drastically. Fortunately, the weather in the Arfak Mountains was very pleasant: dry and not too warm during day-time and comfortable at night.

Time zone

Indonesia has 3 time zones: Sumatra, Java and West & Central Kalimantan are 7 hours ahead of Greenwich Mean Time (GMT+7)
Bali, Nusa Tenggara, South & East Kalimantan and Sulawesi are 8 hours ahead of Greenwich Mean Time (GMT+8)
West Papua and the Moluccas are 9 hours ahead of Greenwich Mean Time (GMT+9)

Accommodation

Accommodation is easy to find at most towns but is rather expensive for Indonesian standards. Where possible try to book your hotels in advance because they are regular full booked. Listed below are all visited hotels (and their prices, incl. taxes per night) we stayed in during this trip.

Biak	Intsia Beach Hotel	300000 IDR for a double room with AC
Wamena	Baliem Pilamo Hotel	300000 IDR for a double room with AC
Jayapura	New Ratna Indah Hotel	300000 IDR for a double room with AC
Sorong	Hotel Waigo	300000 IDR for a double room with AC
Manokwar	Hotel Mokwam	170000 IDR for a double room with AC

References

Bird sounds

BOCA - Field guide to Australian bird sounds.
Jelle Scharringa - Birds of Tropical Asia.
Simpson & Day - Birds of Australia.
S. Connop - Papua New Guinea Bird sounds.
A collection of various bird sounds from different sources like www.xeno-canto.org/asia/browse.php , www.xeno-canto.org/australasia and some private records.


Trip Reports

Birdquest - West Papua by Mark Van Beirs (1 till 29 July 2006)
Birdquest - West Papua by Mark Van Beirs (7 July - 4 August 2007)
Birdquest - West Papua by Mark Van Beirs (13 May - 10 June 2008)
Charles Davies - Vogelkop, West Papua; Arfak Mountains, Biak and Numfor, 23rd June -25th July 2002v
Charles Davies - Papua, Indonesia: Mount Trikora ("Snow Mountains"), 2-17 July 2007v
Daniel Bengtsson - West Papua 31st of July - 27th of August 2007
Dave Hanford - Irian Jaya 2001
David Gibbs - Irian Jaya 1991 and 1992 (travelling guide, not available on the internet)
David Milton - West Papua & Sulawesi October - 2008
Donald Rehn - West Papua: Numfor Island and Arfak Mountains - August 27- September 07 2007
Frank Rheindt - West Papua 2008
Jim McAllister - Irian Jaya (West Papua), Birding Trip Report, July 15th to August 8, 2002
Jon Hornbuckle - Trekking Indonesia
Michiel De Boer - West Papua 2008; Biak; Nimbokrang; Baliem; Arfak; Batanta; Salawati
Nick Brickle - Papua - March 2008 - Raja Ampat, Arfak & Biak
Roger Ahlman - Irian Jaya June - July 1996
Sicklebill Safaris - Birding in Irian Jaya, January 2006
Susan Myers - Irian Jaya 1995
Susan Myers - West Papua October - November 2003
Worldbirders - West Papua; July 14th till August 10th 2008



General web sites

Bird Links to the World
Travellingbirder
Papua Bird Club
Papua Expeditions
Surfbirds
Worldtwitch



Books

Beehler, Pratt & Zimmerman's - Birds of New Guinea (1986).
Birdlife International - Endemic Birds Areas of the World (1998).
Birdlife International -Threatened Birds of the World (2000).
Brian J. Coates and William S. Peckover. Birds of New Guinea and the Bismarck Archipelago: A Photographic Guide (2001).
James F. Clements - Birds of the World. A check list, (6th edition, June 2007).
Josep del Hoyo, Andrew Elliott and Jordi Sargatal - Handbook of the Birds of the World. Volume 1 till 13 (1992 - 2008).
Nigel Wheately - Where to watch birds in Australasia & Oceania (2001).