Exploring Indonesia's national parks

Living in Seminyak can get like living in any other part of the world. You start to think of the 10 block area around your house as the whole world. Getting out of that area and into the mountains of a completely different part fo Bali brings home to me, that there is so much more out there. I just found out that Indonesia has over 5,000,000 hectares of national parks and think it would be awesome to get out check those out.

Bali has the Bali Barat Nasional Park in the west of the island. So far hiking routes ahve not really been developed. There are a couple of hour long wlaks but nothing substantial. My friend Mike has developed a trekking route out in Seram, north of Ambon and I want to get out there sometime. Also to the west there are National Parks in East Java. Back in 1993 I hiked around Mt. Bromo, the spectacular volcano situated in a wide caldera.
Here’s a line that jumped out at me from a wildlife site ‘There are also the Sumatran tiger (Panthera Tigris Sumatrenesis) and the almost-extinct Java tiger (Panthera Tigris sondaica).’ Even if the tiger is extinct, there is talk of black panthers and leopards. Imagine running into leopard on a mountain hike!
With the deforestation that occurs as well as other habitat destruction, one had better hurry up before all the big game is extinct. Maybe I can go somewhere for 2-3 days and hunt down a leopard (with my camera of course).