This is the arc of islands extending east from Bali towards northern Australia. The islands are from west to east: Lombok, Sumbaya, Komodo, Rinca, Sumba, Flores, the four tiny Pulaus: Solor, Adonara, Lembuta, Panta, and ending on the large island of Timor, now divided into Indonesian West Timor and the separate country of Timor-Leste.
Bali is used as the gateway to the area. The Gili Islands off Lombok see the bulk of tourism, it gets more adventuresome as you head east to Flores to explore Komodo, and from there the crowds and creature comforts are thin on the ground.
LOMBOK
GILES
It was a fast trip from Kuta – an easy one hour bus and then a 1½ hour fast boat to Gili Twawangan, the most western, largest and most hedonistic of the three Gili Islands – next is Gili Meno (mellow, up-scale resorts) and then Gili Air. We had planned on going to Gili Meno but a private boat was 350,000Rp and the public boat leaves at 9 and 4. The islands are laced with roads, shops, bars, restaurants and small hotels. Besides coming for the party, a main draw are the surrounding coral reefs providing good diving and snorkeling. Apparently sharks, rays and turtles abound and there is lots of little stuff. Around full moon (now), bumphead parrotfish congregate to mate. Another draw is the complete lack of motorized traffic which is more than made up for by the “thousands” of car tire equipped carts drawn by little horses. They are much more dangerous than scooters and all have poop-bags so horse shit is not a problem in the muddy lanes. Back to Islam and the five-times-a-day call to prayer from the nearby mosque. For a religion that does not allow heathens to enter the premises, they certainly have no problem waking you up at 4:15am. I thought it would be time to catch up on my reading and relaxation.
Gili Trawangan was not so bad a place and we decided to stay. Our guesthouse was on a quiet side street so there was no noise at night and our next-door neighbors were quiet. There is a great selection of restaurants and eating is pleasant. A snorkel trip took us to three sites. Coral was variable from all dead to mediocre and the fish received the same verdict. With no sharks, mantas or any big fish when snorkelling, the variety was dull. It was more entertaining watching the Indonesians snorkel. All the women had fully covering bathing suits and waterproof headscarves. I wondered how the men deal with all the bikini-clad Westerners and don’t go into a sexual frenzy. They opt for the bright orange snorkel vests that keep them too high in the water and so they dog paddle around and don’t look into the water much. But for $10 including gear rental and a meal, it was still a great deal. I have decided to not dive and save my money for elsewhere in Indonesia. We climbed the hill on the southwest corner for good sunset views over Bali and its huge volcanoes.
I always thought that the North American English accent was the easiest to understand as we enunciate words completely with no clipping. But everyone understands Gala much better than me. Her English is OK but she has grammatical problems, a limited vocabulary and a Ukrainian/Russian accent that mispronunciates like the Indonesians. There goes another myth. I do best by putting on an accent that I think sounds Indonesian. Indonesia is also interesting in that there are virtually no English signs, brands, store names or announcements on trains or buses in English. English knowledge is better here than anywhere else I have been this winter (except maybe Hong Kong) but is still limited.
Moving onward to Flores became a huge problem. Our first choice was a 4-day boat trip but it was monsoon season, the seas are rough, and all boats stopped running until April! Overland involves 3 short ferries and 19 hours of buses on rough roads with interminable views of jungle. Booking a plane drove me crazy. The web sites for Indonesian domestic planes are terminally slow, constantly kick you off, and just when the booking is almost complete, I run out of time. Lion Air does not accept credit cards less than 48hrs before the flight, but I did not realize this and kept repeating the booking process for 2hrs. Finally we booked a flight on Garuda (the Indonesian national airline) for 3,047,000 or US$122 each. Later in the trip, I discovered nusatrip.com that lists all Indonesian airlines, is fast and convenient to use. In order to make the flight we took the boat from the Gilis to Lombok at 08:00, then a minivan to Kuta on the south shore of Lombok for the night.
KUTA, Lombok
On the south-central shore of Lumbok, Kuta is a small piece of paradise. It is surrounded by low deforested mountains. On the drive in, some viewpoints gave panoramic views of the town, beaches, headlands and big surf breaking off the reefs far out from shore. This is a surfers heaven and the town was full of tourists on scooters with surfboard racks. Most of the good surf breaks require a boat ride to reach. But it is still a great place to come for the nonsurfer who wants a respite from the craziness of Kuta, Bali and the Gilis. The town itself has a big golden sand beach. We rented a scooter and drove east to Tanjung Aan, a large horseshoe shaped bay with big headlands on each end, a perfect hard-packed white sand beach (zero garbage) and sublime swimming. Just past it is Gerupak, a small fishing village fronting a bay full of ?shellfish farms but no fish and no foreigners. We then went over the mountain and road west to Mawi, a big surf spot and Mawan, another nice swimming beach. With plentiful cheap accommodation and good restaurants, this would be a wonderful place to come to chill out for a few days or weeks. Our nice hotel had a pool and restaurant with a good free breakfast for 150,000 ($15). I even had a pretty descent burger for dinner.
The next morning we were off at 07:30 to take a taxi to the Lombok airport 30 minutes away. The flight stopped over back at Bali. I had 4 hours to go into Kuta, Bali to buy a new charger for my Macbook that I had foolishly left in the Gilis. It was then a 1 hour flight to Labuan Bajo on the eastern end of Flores Island.
FLORES
The biggest island in the chain, it offers beaches, bay islands, exceptional diving and snorkelling near Labuan Bajo, an interior of perfectly shaped volcanoes, jungle, rice fields and the only access to Komodo National Park and its famous Komodo dragons. The Portuguese named it “Flowers” when they colonized it in the 16th century. Then name stuck as did Catholicism.
LABUAN BAJO (pop 15,000)
This town has a particularly unattractive one-way main street separated from the harbor by shacks and a container port. The narrow strip of pavement is flanked by a strips of muddy dirt, an open sewer on one side, piles of dirt, ramshackle guesthouses, restaurants, shops and 32 dive shops.
Fees for visits to Komodo NP: 150,000Rp per visit, Dive permit 225,000Rp per visit, Rinca permit 50,000Rp per visit.
On our first day we took a tour that involved two dives and a visit to Rinca (cost 1,150,000Rp or US$93), one of the two main islands that form KOMODO NATIONAL PARK. The first dive was average but the second on a slope of coral debris leading down to dull brown soft corals was a mecca for “small things”: cuttlefish, a flying gunnard, tiny striped pipefish, lionfish, and the sweetest harlequin sweetlips (a tiny white fish with brown spots and lobed fins fluttering in a small coral patch). Rinca is the best place to see komodo dragons as 20 or so animals congregate in the small national park headquarters. The rangers carry a forked stick they can use to fend off an attack from the scary-as-hell small dinosaurs. We saw dragons from baby 18 inch ones to monster 2m long ones. It was then a 1 hour walk past a nest and up a hill for panoramic views of the island. There are two and three-hour walks but I see little need for more than what we did. The rangers are a treasure-trove of information.
On day 2, we rented a scooter and visited an large, inactive limestone cave ten minutes from town (bats and large hopping spiders) and then one of the many waterfalls outside of town. It was a fun one hour drive on new pavement that twisted and switchbacked into the mountains, down a dodgy gravel road that ended in a village with a church and then a 30-minute hike through the jungle down to a river. After swimming across the river, we scramble over the rocks for a view of the nice waterfall at the end of a canyon. Jason, an American guy climbed down the cliff into the canyon, checked the depth of the water and I jumped off the cliff into the warm green water for a swim down the canyon. Gorgeous.
On day 3, we had two dives again in the park and saw many giant mantas.
It was a short 40 minute flight to Ende. There were six of us, three going back west to Bajawa and three were going east to Moni and Mount Kelimutu to see its three, deep volcanic lakes. In the airport, all six decided to go to Bajawa. The five-hour bus ride was hot and sweaty over the slow, twisty Trans-Flores Highway.
BAJAWA
At 1,200m, Bajawa has a cool, temperate climate, a real relief from the sea level sweatboxes I have been getting used to. Tourists come here to explore some of the dozens of traditional villages of the Ngada people. Over 60,000 Ngada inhabit the upland Bajawa plateau and the slopes around the perfect cone of Gunung Inerie. Older animistic beliefs remain strong and most Ngada practice a fusion of animism (basically nature and ancestor worship) and Roman Catholicism. They worship Gae Dewa, a god who unites the heavens and the earth. They don’t believe in hell but that the soul resides below the ground.
The most evident symbols of Ngada tradition are pairs of ngadhu (a 3-4m tall parasol shaped, thatched structure with a central carved pole representing the ‘male’) and bhaga (a miniature thatched roof house representing the ‘female’. Each pair is associated with a particular family group (clan) within a village. There are only three villages left that look like they did over a hundred years ago.
In my hotel I met a young tour guide named Benie who said that the biggest festival of the year was being held the next day in his home village of Landa. I didn’t argue the price and he picked me up at my hotel at 7:30am on his motorcycle. Benie lives in Bajawa with his wife and two children but we stopped at his family home in Landa, traditionally shaped but with a corrugated metal roof rather than thatch. Three raised graves were in the corners of the front yard. The most characteristic part of the house was a tall four-sided roof that rises above a central raised room, the most important part of the house. The front “foyer” was furnished only with a plastic chair, TV and stereo/speaker system. To enter the 14’x14’ central room, one must bow down to pass through the 4’ doorway. Just above the lower walls made of 7 hardwood planks to the side (7 is a lucky number to them), is a board carved with water buffalo horns, chickens and geometric designs. One corner had a fire pit and opposite the door was a simple altar with a small Christ statue, a gourd with palm wine and two baskets (one male and the other female) with momentos of dead ancestors. Center motifs were smeared with dried blood from sacrificing chickens. We drove 19km south to the village of Luba. we passed great views of Gunung Inerie just as the cloud and mist cleared to reveal the whole volcano. The muted green slopes were cut by jagged water courses and old lava flows.
The tiny village of Luba sits on 5 terraces with its 13 houses surrounding an open central area with four pairs of ngadhu and bhaga. We sat on the front porch of a house on the top terrace while Benie explained their culture and belief systems. On the top terrace was a burial monument where the “important” people of the village are buried. It is a stone walled platform with many large stones projecting from the top. Every time the thatch on the roof is redone, or improvements made to the ngadhu and bhaga, sacrifices of a water buffalo or pigs must be made. Because of the expense, the roofs were in pretty bad shape. The central pole of the ngadhu are trees carefully gathered and must be very stout as the sacrificial water buffalo is tied to it before his throat is slit. The pole is black from all the blood smeared over it through the decades. The terrace is laced with graves – tiny elevated rectangles with a border of stones. Plates the dead person used lay on top.
We then went to Bena, the largest and most iconic village. Similar to Luba it is built on a slope so two large terraces are flanked by more than 20 thatched houses. Overlapping bamboo roofed the large front porches. Each house has rows of water buffalo horns and jaw bones and pig bones hanging from the outside rafters from all the animals sacrificed during the construction, remodelling and feasts held at the house. It was banking day so two guys on laptops were looking after 7 women (women are the best ones to look after the finances of the family) with yellow bankbooks listing their deposits and loans in this micro-financing system. All the women were chewing betel and the deep red staining of their teeth and lips takes some getting used to. Betel is universal in these poor countries as it acts as a stimulant, appetite suppressant and warmer. Betel spits covered the stone walks. Two women were producing the waft of a weaving. A joint effort, they were knotting the thin thread on each passing. At another home, a woman with a back-strap loop was producing the final product. I bought a lovely weaving that must have taken a week to produce for $18. Graves are everywhere in the central terrace and one needs to tread carefully. The large burial platform had huge jagged rocks covered in lichen sticking up all over. Dragging these rocks is all human powered and must entail great effort. Both villages had groups of little kids playing simple games in the dirt. One entailed an elaborate foot kick of small plastic oil can caps filled with half and avocado pit for weight. Who got the farthest or hit a target won. The kids at Bena in their European football jerseys, spun cone shaped blocks of wood hitting targets. They played for hours with these simple games. Free-range children with no screens. I entered one of the simple homes all constructed alike with the central raised special room and designs. Furnishings were spartan and austere. From a high viewpoint at the end of Bena, one could see nontraditional villages with corrugated metal roofs dotting the slopes below. Benie was very careful to explain the culture and etiquette expected of visitors. He showed some disdain for tourists who came independently on their scooters and didn’t use a guide to explain their traditions.
We then returned to Landa for the festival celebrating the New Year, their ancestors and gods. I rented a black cloth wrap-around cloth that was necessary to show respect for the festival. It was early afternoon and most of the morning had been spent taking communion. Everyone was sitting on plastic chairs as teenagers served lunch in woven baskets. We were invited into a house by one of Benie’s friends, ate and drank aruk, the potent palm “wine” (really whiskey). After a few small glasses, I had a few more and got a little drunk. Through the frequent rain showers, large crowds danced in circles in a basic step and chant. I joined in and the locals appreciated the effort. We eventually were invited to a nurse’s home for more socializing and didn’t get back to the hotel till 9pm. I had long discussions with the nurse who was amazed at our liberal views and complete acceptance of abortion, homosexuality, gay marriage, marijuana, the failure of the Catholic church, and salaries paid in North America. She had very conservative, misinformed views.
It was a spectacular day. Benie was very conscientious about explaining everything and attentive throughout the day. I was quite happy to have made the detour to Bajawa.
I joined three young Swedes going to Ende then on two hours to KELIMUTU NATIONAL PARK in a car with a driver – luxury. Kelimutu is famous for three deep, volcanic lakes, each a different, striking shade of colour. Minerals in the water account for the colour schemes, although the turquoise lake never changes. The others fluctuate between yellow, orange and red.
Most visitors leave nearby Moni at 4am to see sunrise filtering through mist. But afternoon can be just as nice. We arrived in the late afternoon to heavy cloud with almost zero visibility and no possibility of seeing anything. So we waited for an hour at the gate rather than paying the 150,000 fee and having no view. Unfortunately the cloud did not change, so we left and drove 3 hours northeast to Maumere on the north coast of Flores.
Maumere. Shithole, armpit of the world. I’m not sure what best describes this depressing place. The driver dropped us off at the Gardena Hotel. At 100,000Rp, very cheap but with no wi-fi, sink nor A/C. We couldn’t stand staying in Maumere any longer than necessary so needed wi-fi to book flights out as soon as possible. We walked all over town finding no restaurants that we wanted to eat at but also none had wifi so eventually walked all the way to the Sylvia Hotel, to eat and use their wi-fi. There were no flights to Bali the next day from Maumere, so we hired another driver and, drove five hours back to Ende for a flight back to Bali. What a mess.
In these few days on Flores, I have seen more jungle, deforestation, twisting mountain roads, impoverished villages and towns and simple very poor people than I ever want to again. I am getting a little of tired of virtually everybody you pass, especially as you get farther off the tourist trail, says “Hello” or “Hi Misteer” from little kids to adults passing by on motorcycles. They seem enthralled with us.
So back in Kuta, Bali, the party capital of Indonesia. I actually went out and tested the nightclub scene and ended up not going to bed at all, getting back to the hostel at 7am. I went to 5 bars with live music and ended up at Pyramid. With a door charge of $8 it is the highest end nightclub in town. It was nonstop techno and loud, but that is another epic story. It was then a mad rush to get breakfast, check out and get a taxi for the 9:55 flight to Timor Oeste.