Yesterday afternoon, after sitting in traffic breathing the suffocating air for hours, I confidently stood in front of the reception desk at the airport transit hotel again. It’s a different receptionist this time, he looked up and down the reservation table, and shook his head, “No, I can’t find your reservation.” “That’s not possible. I was here yesterday, and you told me that I have a reservation for tonight”. He searched more carefully again, “Ah, found it. It’s canceled!” But this time, he was able to reach my local agent on phone.

The agent thought I was to arrive on Monday, so canceled my reservation after he couldn’t find me at the airport in the afternoon. Then he said, “Anyway, there’s some changes. We are not flying tomorrow, thus we will stay in downtown tonight. Dave (the guide) will explain everything when he arrives tonight”. That doesn’t sound good.

It’s almost 11pm when the guide Dave and two other climbers from the UK arrived at the hotel. While I was on my flight to Indonesia, a riot erupted in Timika of Indonesia Papua due to conflicts between local tribes and the police. Quoting from one news report, “normally such fights stop when the death toll on both sides become equal or one tribe pays a hefty fee”

So here I am stuck in Jakarta for an extra day. A couple of other teams who were one or two days ahead of us are still stuck in Timika.

Today’s latest update seems not bad. The local police, who we paid a hefty fee to in order to obtain permits, guaranteed full responsibility for our safety. So we are flying to Timika early tomorrow morning, and then we plan to head into the jungle directly.