When we arrived in Balikpapan,Kalimantan our luggage hadn't been put in the plane in Makassar so we had a 24 hour nervous wait to see if it would arrived, which to our relief it did the next day. From there we made our way North up the coast to Kutai National Park in the hope of seeing orang-utans. We had three days in a remote wooden lodge that only had electricity for three hours in the evening. As usual our bad luck with seeing wildlife prevailed and we only managed to see a couple of male orangutans high up in the trees. They were pretty cool to watch but not long after we found them it started raining and they sloped off to shelter and that was the end of that. The only other ones we saw were on the boat trip back to the car - typical!!!

From Kutai we had the worst journey of the trip further north to Berau. It started with a 10 hour wait for a bus that eventually showed up full, so we had to stay in the town the night and managed to charter a car in the morning for the supposed 8 hour journey. It ended up taking 17 hours and on the worst road i have ever seen. The roads were full of landslides, big holes full of muddy water and lorries and cars strewn all over the place. The only thing it was good for was testing 4 WD and even then only in some places. We also had a few hour waits in some places where the road was blocked due to a stuck vehicle. We had to get out so many times either to push our car or reduce the weight so it could get through a particuarly bad section of road. To begin with we were worried about getting there before dark but in the end we were just worried whether we could make it at all! The only positive was that everyone helped each other out of sticky (literally) situations. We finally arrived at 1 am absolutely covered in clay mud and exhausted and then to add insult to injury had to stay in the most expensive hotel in town as there was no room anywhere else! The next day was a much more pleasant journey, 2 hours on a smooth new road and then a speedboat to Paulau Derewan for yet more diving.

Derewan is a small pretty island which had a real Carribean feel about it. Colorful wooden huts lined the one street and lots of the huts were on stilts jutting out in the sea. Around our pier were at least 7 turtles most of the day just hanging out and eating. They were so lovely to watch and you could even swim right next to them. Unfortunately the diving was quite expensive so we only did two dives, which were pretty good. Fred and I also did our first night dive which was amazing and saw so many different things you just dont see in the day.

We also did a couple of day trips to other islands where we snorkled with manta rays which were incredible and huge. We also swan in a unique lake in the middle of an island with salt water that was filled with hundred of thousand of non-stinging jelly fish. It was quite an erie experience as they were literally all around you brushing past your skin ;0)

We had 9 days on Derewan and from there we left Chris and Charlotte, who had more time on their visa, and headed south to catch our planne to NZ. This was done via four flights over four days but we made it into the arms of proper red meat and a lovely bottle of red.....heaven.... :0)