BootsnAll Travel Network



Days 62-68: Bladders of Steel

Sorry for the delay in blog posts. We actually stopped in two towns “with internet access” on Flores. The first had been broken for over a year, and the second was at least 3 months in disrepair. Flores is a bit remote – only 2-3 towns with banks, and not a single franchise (no McDonalds, and of course they don’t need Starbucks). It took us 22.5 hours on buses/cars to travel the 423km from Maumere to Labuanbajo. That’s averaging about 13 mph…..

Speaking of buses, our introduction to the public bus system on Flores was a 7 hour trip on a tiny bus that was jam-packed with children, chickens, and produce. There were 6 people to a row with only four seats. Your butt cheeks get pretty tired of sitting on a foot stool in the aisle for that long. Marcus’ knees were too long to even fit on a seat when it became available (about 6 hours into the trip).

They say the human body is 75% water, but it turns out that Indonesians (and some other travellers) have no water in their bodies. During that entire 7 hour journey, we were the only two people to get off the bus (to use the bathroom). And we even had to ask for the bus to pull over to do it. The Indonesians do, however, have quite a bit of vomit in their systems and seemed to be unused to these windy bus trips even though it is the only way to get around. One poor kid next to Kelly must have vomitted every twenty minutes. [Kelly had half a motion sickness patch on and did ok.]

We stopped in the town of Moni for a couple of days and rented the hotel owner’s personal moped for one of them. We got to see some of the nice countryside and stopped by a market in Wolowatu to pick up some toothpaste.
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The town of Nggela is renowned for its ikat (ee-kat) weaving. The garments are made from hand-spun and naturally-dyed fibers and woven on a loom. When we rode into town, a bazaar materialized along the road within minutes and every able-bodied woman in town came out to show off their handiwork to the two of us.
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Even in the most remote places, you can still find some modern amenities like satellite TV.
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How many western tourists can you cram into a small mini-bus for a ride up to the top of a volcano to watch the sunrise? The answer according to enterprising Indonesians is about 20. This meant that people had to get out of the bus and walk to make it up the steep parts. The Kelimutu volcanic crater houses three lakes of different colors (currently turquoise, chocolate, and black) and has a nice view of the surrounding hills. The blue lake really lit up when the sunlight spilled into the crater.
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Rather than suffocate in the mini-bus again, we opted to walk down the volcano and were rewarded with gorgeous rice fields and Kel got a piggy back ride from Marcus to ford a stream with a bunch of laughing teenagers looking on.

In an 85% Catholic island, the 7th day (the day of “rest”) seems to mean that everyone should get up before 6am – or at least that’s what the guy ringing the church bells thought. The cold-water showers are REALLY cold up in the mountains. We even had to wear our jackets in the evening – good thing we didn’t toss them in Australia.

Really cool rhino beatle guarding our hotel room.
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We moved on to Bajawa where the problem of finding small money continued. ATMs only distribute 50,000Rp notes, but just try and spend one! Nobody ever seems to have change. There is a black hole that sucks all the 1,000Rp notes never to be found again. We even went to the bank in Bajawa and cleaned them out of small money.

We got another moped in Bajawa to try and find Wawu Muda – a Kelimutu-esque volcano crater – and Kelly had to jump off more than once because the road was virtually non-existent at times.
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Flores is covered with Marcus’ favorite plant. Of course the light is bad: it’s shade-grown coffee!
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Rode down to the traditional animist village of Bena and were fortunate to not be there during a buffalo sacrifice (of which there were many judging by the number of skulls).
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A couple random notes: Avocado is treated as a fruit here, showing up in fruit salads and smoothies. The orange juice here is different from the states in taste… one fellow had to apologize for the delay in getting us our juice because he had to go climb a tree to get the oranges. They seem to be big on Tom & Jerry cartoons, the ones they don’t show in the states any more because they aren’t PC.

Kel versus the Volcano (Inerie).
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One Response to “Days 62-68: Bladders of Steel”

  1. Momj Says:

    So glad to hear that you are alive and well…..

    Hugs xoxox

  2. Posted from United States United States