PPLH Puntondo, Takalar, South Sulawesi

“Nothing is impossible, if we really want it.”

That’s what I said to myself when we need to go from Malino Hill, to Puntondo in Takalar. Why so? It’s all because I just falling down from the motorbike in Takala waterfall in Malino and caused my butt so hurt, because the tail bones hit the stone in the road. But it won’t stop our decision to continue our trip. Our last destination for South Sulawesi trip is in Takalar. We wanna see a cool place called PPLH Puntondo. PPLH stands for Pusat Penyuluhan Lingkungan Hidup, in short of, it’s a place to educated locals and public about keeping the environment good. I was wonder about the place and a friend also recommend me to go there instead to spend our last trip in Samalona beach near the city of Makassar.

 

From our guest house in Malino, we take a ride with Kijang car. It’s pretty common there, if you wanna go from Malino to Makassar for 3 hours drive with the Kijang car, you can pay for Rp. 30.000,-/person. But remember about our last journey from Makassar to Tanjung Bira, which we need to share the car with another 9 person (so total 11 person inside the car), with such hurt on my butt, we thought it wasn’t nice if we have to share all the seats to another passenger. But renting the whole car will be so expensive. So we find a solution, we pay for Rp. 200.000,- to the driver, to make him go driving us directly to Makassar (FYI, public car can spend so much time waiting for passengers in terminal) and he can bring any passengers he meet along the way, but we won’t stop waiting for the passengers. That was a good deal. Another passenger who also join with us to Makassar only an old lady who always so curious with how I sit, since I need to take care of my butt very well. Oh don’t ask about how it feels, I still can remember how bad is it, especially when the car move in a rough bumpy roads.

The village of Takalar, I just knew they have their own way to lock their goat..

 

But finally we arrived in Malengkeri terminal. From there we need to take pete-pete, a local public car, which is you can guess, full with lots of people. I brace myself to hold the pain and go inside the car, while my boyfriend take care of our heavy bags, so I don’t need to lift anything in weight. After another 30 minutes journey, we arrived in Karebosi Mall. It was such a relieve for my boyfriend who craving western food, we go to the fast food restaurant, Wendys, only to fill his longing for a nice western burger, I let him eat it while I laughed on him because he was eating it very fast such a hungry hulk.

 

The journey to Takalar still not finished yet. We need to take another pete-pete to Takalar. This time only 1 pete-pete, no need to change another pete-pete. But the journey take around 2 hours before we finally arrived in Takalar. Wahh, that’s far. And we only pay Rp. 10.000,-/person for the pete-pete. From Takalar, we need to take Ojek (a motorcycle ride) to PPLH Puntondo, it was a 30 minutes journey again, yes, that far – around 15 km from the road. And guess what, my butt wasn’t very happy with that situation, even I can say, the surrounding view of their village really beautiful and nice to see. But I was so focus on holding my own weight and position, so when the motor meet broken roads, it won’t be feel very hurt. My boyfriend so stressed to think about my pain and often he needs to look at me and asked with his body gesture whether I am ok or not. True, we both are crazy travelers.

The village is humble but so wealthy with their natural resources…

 

And voila!

Those total 6 hours journey really not disappointed us! We fall in love with the place directly, just when we arrive there. Their workers are very friendly to accept us as their guest. The price of the guesthouse? Oh man.. It’s so cheap! It’s only Rp. 48.000,-/person! 1 Bungalow actually can handle around 6 person or more, depended on the type of Bungalow. We can’t believe it!

The price list of their facilities.

Bungalow No. 4.

The bed room, no worry for the mosquito while you sleep.

The back terrace.

 

Just want to dance with the happy song of Pharrel Williams when we saw the guest house. We take the standard one (Bungalow #4) because it’s already pretty good! And what make it more special, how they have an outdoor bathroom – yeah really, they put everything in detail to make you feel you are a part of mother earth.

If you googling about the place, you will read many of them talk about the unusual stairs. So here is it what they mean 🙂

Aaaaand… *drumroll* here is the outdoor bathroom!! So nice, ya!? 🙂

 

They have a restaurant, which you can order your breakfast, lunch and dinner. To help them, better you order your food in advance, so they can cook it first and when you arrive in the restaurant, the food already ready to served for you. It’s like what we do, we order breakfast when we eat our dinner, and we order lunch when we eat our breakfast. Otherwise, it will be take so much time to wait the meals ready to served.

Way to restaurant…

The restaurant.

 

Honestly to say, in our point of view, the restaurant really have a cozy place. In general, we are really love all the interior in PPLH Puntondo, it’s really environment friendly. They have special lagoon just behind the area where you can play the water and take a look at the fishing net. But the food in restaurant, even so cheap and served really good, but a bit tasteless. I already put my comment in their comment card, perhaps they can improve the taste. But talk about cheap, so true, this area is really cheap option for you who want to have a nice holiday. Maybe because it’s created for students or locals to educated them about keeping earth and environment good, or government give subsidy for their operational maintenance, I don’t know.

Fried Banana (Pisang Goreng) with brown sugar plus hot tea! Lekker!!

One of our dinner.

The restaurant becomes so beautiful with some light in the dark night.

 

But we didn’t take the snorkels part, for us, the price of boat renting is quiet expensive, Rp. 250.000,-/hour, last time in Bira, we spent 3 hours snorkels, so we may need to pay Rp. 750.000,- only for the boat. Not such a good idea. Maybe if we are go together with other people, we can share the cost – but at that moment, we were only the guest who want to snorkels. So we cancel it.

We just spend the day enjoying the area and our time there.

Inside of the PPLH Puntondo…

The private lagoon behind the restaurant.

 

Village Near-By

In a peaceful noon, you can take a walk to the village near-by just like what we did. We feel so curious why so many cows and goats everywhere. For me, it’s really such a good feeling. After daily facing the monotonous of Jakarta and the fake skyscraper, walking around in such of nature while take attention to what local daily activities such as drying the sea-weeds, separated the good ones to sell it later, shepherding their cows and goats, such an interesting things to see. My western boyfriend also attracted many attentions from the locals, especially the kids. As usual, they laugh and smile and follow us around. While the adult say Hi and waving their hands to my boyfriend with loud shouting, “Hey Mister, Mister,” then again, he will waving back and throw a smile. He get used to it, hihihi.

Yeah, the kids following us! Look at their expression, hahaha, priceless!

PPLH Puntondo also taught the local to keep their garbage in separated bin, so they know which one organic, which not.

May I introduce you to this happy and lazy cows family?

and their neighbor? The goats family…

 

We can feel the village is a happy village. I don’t know why, but we feel it, how between them and their area such have a good connection in harmony. People here love to smile, not so want to know what we wanna do (later on, we know from a local woman, that many westerns also ever worked and stays months in PPLH Puntondo, so maybe that’s one of the reason why for them, “bule” – or western is not such a strange creature anymore), and their animals are fat. Yes, you can see the happiness from a village from how they treat their animals, because for them, animals are their investment and saving for the future. In the other side, the animals themselves, not so care too much about our existence. They just enjoying the peaceful afternoon no matter how close we are with them.

Yes, so peaceful like this.. They don’t care with our existence 🙂

 

I can’t believe, just 3 hours journey away, there is a fully crowd and noise city called Makassar, from this quiet and peaceful place.

And it was really a perfect place to enjoy our last trip in South Sulawesi. We were having a good time 🙂

 

 

Tips :

• Make sure to book the guest house first to avoid no room for you.

• Weekend also still good to visit the place, but you will get maximum enjoyment if stay there on weekdays since weekend many students come to the place.

• Use the mosquito repellent if you are worry the bite you, for me I don’t need it, but true, they kind of annoying animals.

• On your way back from Puntondo to Makassar, if you rent a car, ask the driver to go by the roads near the beach. Less traffic and village view, more fascinating than traffic jam for sure.

 

Cheers,

Dea