Losing two days of fishing when you’re as far away as Borneo is a major bummer. But when you originally scheduled nine days it’s not so bad. The two days spent lounging here in Jakarta wasn’t the end of the world. My body clock adjusted to the 12-hour time difference. I rested. I worked. And last night I got to meet our host and guide, Fajar Setyawan and some of his buddies. They provided a little tour of Jakarta with dinner and a few beers.
I haven’t really mentioned much about my travel buddy on this trip, Austin Kane. Granny and I met Austin in Baja in about 2018. We’ve stayed in touch and two weeks ago when I spoke to the Atlanta Fly Fishers Club we fished together. It was Austin that invited me on this wild adventure for the Red Kaloi and Austin is one of the few people on the planet that has caught one on the fly. Austin caught his last March. Only one in a week of fishing – just to give you an idea what a challenging species this is.
Yesterday Austin, Fajar and I caught late afternoon flights from Jakarta to Balikpapan Borneo. Our original plan was to fly from Balikpapan on Friday for an inner city called Melak. Unfortunately that flight only flies Fridays and Mondays’ so of course we missed it. Long story short, we got off the plane in Balikpapan and drove all night to Melak. It was a rough one and took us 10 hours.
But were here in Melak. We are resting up at some hotel for two hours while Fajar and his camp crew shop for food and supplies. At 2 pm we take a 4 x 4 four hours into the Borneo rainforest wilderness. Tonight we’ll meet the Dayak Chief for the village we spend the night at. This is customary when you do off the grid trips here and it works similarly in the Amazon. Then tomorrow we’ll fish our way upstream all day to our camp which will be camp for the week. We’ll have at least six days fishing to try and accomplish this Red Kaloi mission.
I’m exhausted and rolling with the flow on this one. This is not a normal cozy kick back fly fishing lodge trip. While we’ll have plenty of food and water, and even electricity from what I understand, it will be basic. And this is the last you will hear from me until I get out on December 5th. This should be a good one. Fasten those seatbelts!
Gotta believe!