Tangkoko National Park

Tangkoko covers about eighty-eight square kilometres on the north-eastern tip of Sulawesi and is one of the more reliable places in Indonesia to see genuinely wild primates. The Sulawesi black crested macaque - jet black with a crest and pink rump, critically endangered and hunted for bushmeat elsewhere on the island - lives here in habituated groups that researchers have followed for decades, and walking with them is routine rather than lucky. The spectral tarsier, one of the smallest primates in the world with enormous eyes, roosts in strangler fig hollows and emerges at dusk, which guides know the location of. There are also cuscus, hornbills and maleo, a megapode that buries its eggs in warm volcanic sand. Guides are compulsory and come from Batuputih.

What you actually see

• Black crested macaques - habituated wild groups, walked with rather than glimpsed.
• Spectral tarsiers at dusk - emerging from strangler fig roosts guides know.
• Hornbills and cuscus - the other reliable sightings in the forest.
• Volcanic black-sand coast - the shore below the forest at Batuputih.

When to go

May to October; dusk for tarsiers, morning for macaques. Two days.

Honest expectations

Guides are compulsory and the walks are hot and humid. Tarsier viewing is at dusk with flash photography banned - respect that. Macaques are wild; do not feed or approach closely.

Nearby

Bitung and the Lembeh Strait are close; Manado is an hour away.