This national park is after Komodo national park probably
the most famous tourist attraction as the three differently coloured lakes of
the Kelimutu volcano apparently are a sight to behold. For us Kelimutu was a
sort of back-up for species we missed on the “standard” Flores birding circuit.
Besides it is known to be a good spot to see Flores Green-pigeon. Next to the
pigeon I only missed Five-coloured Munia, so we thought that it should definitely
be possible to clean up at this site. Furthermore we hoped to get some (better)
looks at species that we only heard or had seen rather briefly like Wallace’s
Scops-owl and White-rumped Kingfisher. How wrong we were…
We based ourselves, just like all other tourists who want to
visit the National Park, in Moni. The first day we walked a bit around in the
area and managed to find some Five-coloured Munia between some Black-faced
Munias in the rice fields and a Green Junglefowl calling from some scrub, but
nothing else worth mentioning. We tried to meet up with Mark Schellekens (a
Dutch birder who lives in Woloara, the next town), but he was currently in the
Netherlands and therefore could not provide some inside information on the
birds. The next morning we headed up the volcano with a private car (300.000
IDR) at 04:00 to see the sunset above the volcano as well as to try for
Wallace’s Scops-owl. Unfortunately as soon as we got to the office of the
national park it turned out that the entrance fees had been changed in
September. Instead of 20.000 IDR foreigners had to pay 150.000 IDR on weekdays
and 225.000 IDR on Sundays! Obviously we were unlucky enough to be there on a
Sunday and on top of that we did not have enough money with us to pay these
high fees. We tried to talk our way in, but this was of little use as the
national park guards were already annoyed, as all car drivers stood there
screaming that they were going to die, for they saw their businesses collapsing
with these new high fees. We went back down the volcano and made a couple of
stops here and there at the ridiculously tiny patches of scrubby forest that
remain outside of the national park to try for Wallace’s Scops-owl. None was
found obviously. Defeated we returned to our hotel and went to bed.
We cannot say if the new high fees are worth it, as we never
entered the national park. Furthermore we heard that these new fees are going
to apply for all national parks in the country. If the money (or at least a
part of it) truly goes towards the national park and the maintenance of it, it
wouldn’t be such a bad thing to pay more, in my opinion…
No comments:
Post a Comment