Biawak Island

What the heck is Biawak? Yeah… I feel your confusion and perhaps a pinch of worry? hehehe…

I don’t know whether I am lucky or not, but I live in a country that has various wildlife. When I said various, I really meant it. Sumatran Tiger and Elephant, Orang utan, Siamang, Paradise Bird are just few to mention. Others are more exotic, such as Anaconda, Komodo Dragon and … Biawak.

Biawak.

Just by glancing at it, we can tell that it is a reptile. And of course, it is a reptile. In fact, just in case there’s a scientist-to-be reading this writing, its scientific classification is; animal-kingdom, chordata-phylum, sauropsida-class, squamata-order, varanidae-family, varanus-genus and albigularis-species (as one example).

Biawak comes from the same family of Komodo Dragon (Varanus Komodoensis). But they are from different species. While v. komodoensis grows up to 3 meter length, v. albigularis  is just around 1 – 1.5 m length. They  consume almost everything. But they tend to be tame, hmm… or at least they are tame in the island I stayed.

Snorkeling!!

My school is really special. We celebrated Children’s Day on October 1st. And me, for sure would not miss to use it to run from a hectic Jakarta. Me and some friends arranged a trip to do snorkeling at Tidung Island. It is one of the Thousand islands range of islands in the northern part of Jakarta. We arranged to meet up in Muara Angke dock to get a ferry to got to Big Tidung Island.

Big Tidung Island from a distance...what a gateway!

After a very long and smoky (of insensitive smoking people of Jakarta) two and a half hours trip, we finally arrived at the Big Tidung Island. The man with whom we partnered this trip, Pak Ajie, was waiting for us there. He took us to his “home-stay” with a Bentor, a ride which you can only find (i guess) in Indonesia.

After around 5 minutes, we can finally relax at the Charlie’s Home Stay, Charlie is taken from his youngest son’s name. The house is in medium size, neat, tidy and colorful. It’s so nice to see how he tried to make a different look at his home stay. He served us with a cold sea weed drinks. Too much sea weed for me, I guess. But all my friends were enjoying the drinks. It was actually releasing us from the sea headache. Directly after the welcoming drinks, he served us more with lunch….yumm, my fave, chicken with vegetables. It was actually not meal time yet, but hey, it was holiday, so no regular time eat 😉

Our yummy lunch.. nyamm...

As you might also guess, we fell asleep after eating. wow, what a good start of the long weekend, don’t you think? we woke up around 2PM and got ready to go islands hopping and snorkeling. yay!!

Pak Ajie was actually providing us with a bicycle for each of us to ride around the island. Unfortunately, we were lacking of skill and courage to use the bicycles. (we will try to ride it next time we visit this island! and that’s a promise) So we just took a walk to go to the shore and get ready with the snorkeling gear. Ehm.. It’s kinda tricky to put on the flippers, snorkeling and life vest. Especially if you are on my size, you really want to have the right size of life jacket, don’t you? *wink* The islands were Big Payung Island and Small Payung Island. We stopped on the shallow water nearby and dunk in and enjoy the underwater scenery.

ME!! Snorkeling 🙂

It was my first experience in snorkeling. Hence I wasn’t completely ready. Be reminded, myself, that for next snorkeling trip (i hope there will be some more), it’s a must to put on soft lens, a must! hehe… Even though I’m minus 3, I still can witness the underwater beauty, now can you imagine the beauty i’ll see if i had put on my lens. The coral reef and beautiful fish, they are just so beautiful. I was swimming with the fish in the middle of the sea!! Can you imagine how cool that could be 🙂

Frankly speaking, I was a bit afraid, but I had already gone so far, why not just be nuts. ;p So I jumped in slowly, feeling the warm water around me. Pak Awai was our snorkeling guide. He can stand on dead coral reef. He guided us to parts where the fish were swimming. He taught us how to give bread, that can make the fish swim even closer to us… 😀

As I felt the water, I became naturally connected with this snorkeling activities. I searched the rainbow fish and touched the living coral reef… it just feels great. YOU, my friend, just got to try this!

on the boat..minutes before we jumped in ^^

in the water

After a very fun snorkeling. We stopped by at The Big Payung Island and took some more pictures there. By the way, all of the pictures shown here were taken from Lydia and Larsen Facebook album. I thank God for having friends with such photographic skills. We, then rode the boat back to The Bridge. The Bridge is a bridge that connect The Big Tidung Island with The Small Tidung Island. Some people there were doing free jumping to the water…us? we dare not. 🙂

On the bridge of the Tidung Islands

Relaxin' and enjoyin'

Those afternoon the bridge was so crowded with local tourist. They were all like us, enjoying the sunset that was so rarely to be seen in Jakarta. We were also enjoying the breeze and open water view. The view hypnotized us. It made us calm and forgot all live’s problem, even just for a while. We sat there, laughing and taking pictures. Wow. What a blessing to have the tenses relaxed for a while.

The Sunset

We then set our camera ready (my friends more precisely) and headed back to the main dock of the big Tidung Island. We had a very exciting night ride on the boat with big waves tossing our boat. It was kinda scary at first but then fun 😀 The roaring sea and night view were also something that we will never forget. Larsen also successfully took some beautiful sunset view. This is one of her best shots. Wow, isn’t it beautiful. God the almighty and all of His creation. No men should deny His presence in this world!

And as for you islands, till we meet again! Cheers!

PS: Contact this kind heart man if you want to visit the island 🙂
Pak. A. Mujiman (Ajie) 081574756061, 085781106159