The Long Walk

The megaliths we saw were among the best of the bunch, and trekking round the whole valley to find them all is a long and difficult process, only suited to those who live, breathe and eat megalith mythology. We could have seen more, but the rest of the walk beckoned, and after this many megaliths; we'd seen plenty. To be honest, it was a thrill just to find them, especially under our own steam. L. was just exhausted by the amount of talking and walking and "seeking" that she gave up finally to even talk about megalith towards the end of the journey. Oh well, can I blame her?

The rest of the three-day walk was fairly uneventful, despite the fact the path cut through tropical forest, following the huge Lariang River north towards the town of Gimpu (the Lariang is Sulawesi's longest river at 225km). We camped one night in the forest, just for the jungle experience, walking in the dark until we found a suitable spot to drop everything, set up the mossy nets and sleep; the other nights we spent in losmen along the way, an interesting experience as most of them simply used the local river as a bathroom, toilet, clothes washer and water source.

The last half a day of walking was, unfortunately, just depressing. After the archaeologically interesting Bada Valley and the tropical rainforest along the Lariang, the stretch to Gimpu had been pretty much destroyed by man, with plenty of logging, farming and environmental destruction. The rain didn't help either, and as we arrived in Gimpu after the three-day slog, the tropical sky exploded in a torrent of rain that soaked us to the skin and made the little losmen down the road look doubly inviting. We greedily launched into supper, drank loads of tea, and settled into a good night's sleep, extremely happy to have discovered the elusive megaliths of the Bada Valley.