A botanical safari in Bogor!

Laurie, Dale, and Junizir pose with an amazing tree.

Yesterday we caravaned with most of Nana's family up to the Bogor Botanical Gardens outside of Jakarta. The trip was planned to give us a sense of the natural world around us after the first few days were centered in sprawling Jakarta.

The trip started with the ever present heavy traffic of the city but gave way to mostly open toll roads before long. We warned everyone that we can be quite boring when it comes to nature study and this is especially true with the wide range of interests in the group. Everyone was very supportive of us seeing all there is to see in this large and very interesting grounds which apparently includes a summer home for the vice president.

Luckily we arrived on a Monday with very light visitation which allows for car travel on the grounds. We quickly mounted up in safari mode and were soon doing something I hadn't imagined before. We slowly drove across the grounds using our tiny visitor map and made frequent stops to check out everything from flying foxes to pungent members of the corpse flower family. We have much more to learn about the area and have a nice publication to start with. More here too: www.bogorbotanicgardens.org/

The park is very well maintained by mostly hand labor and it appears there is some research underway and it may be possible to stay in guest quarters which we will try to do later when we are back in the area. Nana's father, Junizir or "Bapak" as he is more commonly called, had never been there before but quickly warmed to the role of model for the many photos we took.

This was a wonderful family experience and only one of several we managed to pack into this single very special day of the trip. More on the others soon.