20th Dec 2011, Sasqavia Guest House
With Ternate and Tidore checked off the list, we decided to attempt a day trip to the mainland of Halmahera. Halmahera is the K-shaped island, largest and most undeveloped in North Maluku. There are many points of disembarkation at the mainland, and we decided to head for Jailolo, since that was the location of one of the old kingdoms (before it got swallowed up by Ternate sultanate).
Other landing points were at Sidangoli, and Sofifi. The latter was selected to be the capital of the North Maluku province back in 2007, with much of the government offices shifting there from Ternate. The selection of backwater town Sofifi as the capital was expectedly met with furore by the Ternate locals.
The boat from Ternate to Jailolo leaves when full. It leaves from the sirpet jetty in Dufa-Dufa, just north of Kota Ternate. The trip takes around an hour and costs 50k Rp. There is a ferry that leaves Ternate for Sidangoli at 2pm and departs Sidangoli the next day at 11am. I have no idea how big a city Sidangoli is (It’s the transit point to get to Tobelo in the northern end of Halmahera), but here’s what we found out about Jailolo.
The waters off Jailolo, West Halmahera
Jailolo is not much more than a large cluster of houses. There is one main street with sundry, electronics and clothes ships that had surprisingly mall-like exteriors. And that was all there was. There were no old Sultan’s keratons, no old colonial forts. Nothing. And it was drizzling. Beyond Jailolo, the road goes inland into the Jurassic Park like untouched green interior.
But we made it to Halmahera. After the obligatory location check-in on Facebook, Twitter, Foursquare, it was time to look for “tempat wisata” or tourist locations. I asked for Marimbati, the beach 12km away recommended by LP. But the road was hilly and wasn’t good, and the converted ojeks that seat two passengers in front, will not be able to climb. The normal ojeks probably could manage the route, but I wasn’t going to pillion ride for 1 hour in the rain, along a hilly, non- tarmacked road. The helpful Jailolo local offered Sahu beaches instead, but it was a case of trying to find objects of interest when there were none. Scraping the bottom of the barrel, I thought to myself, but it gives an excuse to head towards somewhere. However, there really was nothing much to see there, we did a loop around town. There were a couple of monuments, a pair of men and women statues, overlooking the road. In the end, we ended up in a Warnet, the Internet kiosk. So if anyone asks us what we did in Halmahera, the truthful reply would be that we surfed the Internet.
On the boat back, we did come across a lady (probably from Jakarta) wearing a “I dived in West Halmahera” T-shirt, so if anyone reading this knows exactly where the diving is, let me know.
Back in Ternate, just down the street from the jetty was Benteng Tolukko, a 1512 CE Portuguese fort. We paid 5k Rp each and stood at the top of the restored fort. We could see Halmahera from left to right on the entire horizon, Tidore and Maitara on the foreground. Down below were the houses of Ternate, and behind us was majestic Mount Gamalama.
Back in town, we had dinner at the roadside warungs again à this Makassarese dishes: Sop Saudara, Sop Konrod, and Coto Makassar were really lip-smackingly good. Oh and on the way back, we passed by the grand mosque again. It was already dark, but there was a crowd headed for the mosque. It seemed the entire city was dressed in white bajus and covered in religious garb. There were even traffic police controlling the crowd. I asked one guy and he told me that a religious holy man from Jakarta was in town and he was leading some recitations (zikir). It was apparently an event that took place monthly. It struck me how Muslim Ternate was, probably more than some parts of Indonesia. Compare that to what I will experience tomorrow, in the Minahasan city of Manado.