What To Do In Indonesia: Mentawai Islands

What To Do In Indonesia: Mentawai Islands

Although the gap between the terra firma and therefore the Mentawai Islands isn't nice, nature contrived to stay this island chain isolated. Robust winds, unpredictable currents and razor-sharp corals unsuccessful navigation and trade with the terra firma.

Mentawai

As a result, the Mentawai folks had little or no contact with the skin world and remained one in every of the ‘purest’ endemic societies in Republic of Indonesia till the nineteenth and twentieth centuries.
Siberut is that the largest island within the chain and is home to the bulk of the Mentawai population. it's conjointly the foremost closely studied and guarded island within the solid ground. concerning hour of Siberut continues to be lined with tropical forest and shelters an expensive biological community that has attained it a designation as a UNESCO part reserve. The western 1/2 the island is protected because the Siberut park.

The solid ground is assumed to own broken aloof from the remainder of Sumatra concerning five hundred thousand years past, and therefore the separation resulted in distinctive flora and fauna. Mentawai is hierarchical  aboard Madagascar in terms of endemic primate population, with hour of terrestrial mammals recorded as endemic. Four species of primate show a spread of primitive characteristics, creating them notably necessary within the study of the species’ evolution. Of explicit interest is lesser ape kerdil, a rare species of black-and-yellow monkey typically referred to as simpai Mentawai by the locals.

Surfing at Mentawai

Change has are available in a rush to Mentawai. Tourism, logging, transmigrasi (government-sponsored theme to encourage settlers to maneuver from overcrowded regions to sparsely inhabited ones) and different government-backed makes an attempt to thought the culture have separated the folks from the jungle and whittled the jungle into profit. It isn’t what it accustomed be, however it's a protracted means from being like everyplace else. which keeps trekkers with happiness confronting mud and bugs to go to the remaining ancient communities. Surfers comprise the opposite Mentawai-bound pilgrims, several of whom rank Mentawai right aboard Nias as a Sumatran sweet spot. Slowly however certainly additional and additional land resorts area unit claiming very little items of beach paradise for lazing underneath the coconut trees and savoring sunsets in Mentawai islands.