Advantages
Music of Kebyar
Commoners
Temporal Perspectives
Village Fields
Knowledge
Magnificent
Betutu
Evidences
Tropical
Mahendradatta
Music of Kebyar
Administrative

Celebes

The world's most peculiarly shaped island, Celebes resembles a spastic swastika or an orchid. The population of this multi-racial island is over 9 million. Joseph Conrad wrote novels set here. There are many untouched tribes, boat-shaped Toraja houses, cliff-side, graves, and unequaled carvings. the land: Covered mostly in rainforests and high, uninhabited, unarable wasteland. There are 18003000 m mountains everywhere with unspoiled, pollution-free, spectacular tropical scenery. Monsoons heave big surf onto beaches along beautiful but treacherours coasts with hills rising abruptly up to 500 m. Few areas are more than 40 km from the sea. Lakes are widespread in the center. flora and fauna: This island is the home of unique mammals like the babirusa, a pig-like animal with upward curving tusks, and the anoa, a rare, fierce pygmy buffalo that resembles a sort of goatantelope that lives in the mountains of northcentral Celebes. Also the Black Crested Baboonand the saucer-eyed tarsier live here. Celebes is rich in birdlife with at least 200 known species. On Lokan volcano, North Celebes, maleos (bush-turkeys) dig their nesting holes in ground heated by volcanic steam. The Togian Islands in Teluk Tomini are nesting grounds for giant sea turtles.
history: On the west coast at the lower course of the Karama River a neolithic settlement and prehistoric remains have been discovered. Buddhist images found at Sampaga on the west coast belong to the Indian Amarawati school of art which flourished in the 2nd\Century, indicating that Hinayana Buddhism existed in Celebes prior to the 5th Century A.D. See the famous bronze 'Celebes Buddah' in the Jakarta Museum. It shows many sculptural similarities with India such as the treatment of the open eyes, bare right shoulder, and incised lines on the robe showing the folds. Much later in the 16th Century the Portugese arrived. These seafarers thought that the 4 tentacle-like arms of Celebes were separate islands, thus they called the island Ponto dos Celebres (Cape of the Infamous Ones), their name for the cape north of Minahasa which had caused them so many shipwrecks. For centuries Celebes was a refuge for pirates who hid out in its deserted coastal mangrove swamps.
getting there: Take a ship or boat for Rp6-8000 from Surabaya, Java, to Ujung Pandang, South Celebes. Or fly from Surabaya. The cheapest is Mandala Airlines, about Rp24,000. From Jakarta to Ujung Pandang (via Surabaya), Rp27,500. transport: The only road networks are around Ujung Pandang, Manado, Kendari, Palu, Rantepao, and Malili. In many parts of South and Central Celebes where road surfaces resemble riverbeds, take a truck-bus whose bigger wheels make it a much less jarring ride than buses or jeeps. Always use your student card in Celebes, boats usually give a little slack and knock up to Rp1000 off the price. The airlines give discounts as well; hassle Mandala and possibly even Bouraq. In east-central Celebes you can possibly negotiate with the crews of INCO Mining Co. chartered planes for cheap lifts if they're not full and if you don't advertise to the hierarchy. There are only three imigrasi offices in all of Celebes in which to get your visa extended, Manado, Kendari, and Ujung Pandang.

Connection
Restaurants
Tropical
Traveling
Crystal
Cultivate
Culture
Freighters
Cheques
Capital
Transportation
Legong
Private
Towering
Vegetable
Books
Magnificent
Imigrasi
Swimming
Boats
Vihara
Smugglers
Megalithic
Woodcarvings
Forested
Complexes
Coconut
Tourists
Native
Prahus