Bajawa, Flores

We'd spent the previous evening utilising limited internet to research accommodation and attractions at our next stop heading back east, the town of Bajawa.  This was, frankly, less than fruitful, but we had managed to have far better results with face to face communications; we had a semi-private minibus fully booked to pick us up and take us directly there!

We had just enough time to pack and eat before our driver bounded in to greet us!  I forgot his name as soon as he'd told us, both Bex and I were, instead, preoccupied with gauging the effect on depth perception, and therefore the ability to safely drive the hazardous mountain roads with a single working eye...

Unfazed(?), we loaded our bags on board and jumped in.  We spent 30mins picking up various packages around town and also another three passengers, and then we were finally off, journey time estimated at 4-5 hours.

Our driver spent a scary amount of time using his one good eye to operate his MP3 player, loading up one odd and horrific track after another... Well to our ears anyway.  A cheery rotund lady helping Bex with her Indonesian, would break out into tune quite often, the fella day behind me knew, and happily sang along with every track!!

An hour in and all was going swimmingly, that is, of course when the bus shuddered to a halt.  Just overheating was the diagnosis, so we waited 10mins for it to cool down and set off again.  An hour after that, the same again.  A dread fear set in at this point, but amazingly the bus didn't falter again, the other 3 passengers were dropped at various points, packages were collected and dropped regularly and soon Bajawa was upon us.

The driver dropped us at our hotel, "Jonny's" (chosen at random en route), we grabbed lunch and resolved to grab a scooter and for a trip out and about before dinner.  Obviously, as we had previously learned, this was a little optimistic and, after visiting pretty much every hotel in town, the best we could muster was collecting an automatic model from the other side of town the next morning.

This process took a fair few hours and most of the afternoon was gone anyway.  Dinner was much the same, and equally as excellent, as lunch.  We visited what we would from then on refer to as "proper" warungs; true open house restaurants, where the food is cooked in the morning and customers come and go any time of day, usually alone, as is the normal Indonesian way of life.  Upon entry we would get a few odd looks, but once Bex pulled out a bit of basic and broken Indonesian, they would smile broadly, correct our pronunciations and make us extremely welcome.

We had the internet but, in regards to central Flores, this wasn't much use for travel research, luckily, for the rare occurrence when tourists might pass through, the hotel had a (very) roughly drawn map with local sights marked out, even journey times too!!  Thus it was we trotted off early next morning, grabbed our granny scooter and cruised out for a day of adventure.

The scooter proffered for this task was a lot newer and nicer than any we had ridden previously, a shame it was then (and rather guiltily later) that the first trip we took it on turned out to be up a mountain.  Off road.

The destination was a crater lake north of Bajawa, the route, we were assured traversable by scooter.  Once we had passed through a small village, it became little more than a walking track which headed up hill steeply.  We soon came to sections I'd tackle alone while Bex followed on foot.  After grounding it twice and hilariously (apparently) pretty much crashing it into a ditch, we gave up on the scooter, heading ever upwards on foot.

We were soon rewarded with a completed summit, which we had not envisaged, and an entirely dry and empty crater lake... oh well, the views of the mountain range and back over to Bajawa weren't a bad substitute, and there was still plenty to see, it's was only 10am!

Slightly mental locals met along the way...

Dried up lake. "epic"

We fought the scooter back down to the roads and headed on to our second destination, some epic 30m falls to the west.  After a few wrong turns we eventually reached destination, and disappointment, number two of the day.  Both online and in person the directions had stated "next to the new hydro electric plant", neither happened to mention "ALL water from the falls diverted to the hydro electric plant".  Mega sigh.

Roadside rest time; never a dull view in Flores!

We mounted up again and headed to the final destination with our hopes flagging a little.  It was a fairly long journey through the mountains south, dropping deep into the shadow of a colossal volcano, then finally arriving at the traditional village of Bena.

There are a few traditional villages scattered about and this was rumoured to be the best, I visited no others but it was pretty spectacular!  Nestled on a huge outcrop, overseeing the grandest of valleys and still within the shadow of the aforementioned volcano, the site itself took some beating, the views from the chapel at its furthest reach are some of the finest, and most breathtaking, I've yet encountered.

The village itself should not be dismissed either.  The traditional villages are not tourist attractions, maintained for financial gain, they are true examples of Indonesian history and culture, who's people willingly and lovingly continue about their ancient ways to preserve that heritage.  Tourism will, I'm sure, eventually pollute this.  A couple of shops have already sprung up at the front of the village, and we were skeptical of both the recipient of, and need for a donation box for the working, self sufficient village... Nevertheless, it was both an interesting and visually stunning location which easily remedied the day's disappointments!

Ende, Flores

Ende is Labuan Bajo's equivalent in the east; a major trade town with large port and equally shoddy airport.

After an utterly unexplained delay at Labuan Bajo airport, we competed our 45min flight to Ende 3 hours later than scheduled and arrived at dusk.  We walked to our hotel and then straight into our first, certainly not unexpected nor last, language barrier.

We'd bravely flown in without booking ahead, but still with the foreknowledge that English was rarely spoken outside Labuan Bajo.  It took us a good 10mins to organise a room and pay, we then gave up on trying to organise a scooter, choosing to wait until morning when the manager was due to be on site.  Ordering dinner at the hotel also seemed beyond our abilities, we headed to a nearby warung where we pointed at pictures on the menu to order food.

Our appetites satiated, we headed to our room where I completely rewired the cable TV like a pro, watched some incomprehensible foreign news and retired for the night.

We breezed through breakfast without incident, but soon after battle was resumed in the quest for obtaining a scooter. Ende's primary trade is not tourism, in fact tourism doesn't exist there. As such, and quite the opposite to Bali and Lombok etc, automatic scooters are somewhat of a rarity.  The hotel had none at all. Somehow, eventually, we made the break through; the guy attempting to outfit us disappeared on one of the offered manual scooters and returned with an automatic!  Result.  Without further delay we mounted up and sped off, feeling somewhat guilty for relieving either his little sister or grandmother of their primary transportation for the day...

Our big destination for the day was the tri-coloured lakes of mount Kelimutu.  Situated in a high, remote national park, the three large volcanic lakes regularly change between blue, green and, astonishingly, red in colour.  This phenomenon is determined by concoctions of minerals stirred up by ongoing volcanic activity within the range.  To my delight, an easy summit was there for the bagging too, excellent!

The easy summit was, naturally, made easy by another mental scooter ride.  We headed out of Ende and onto the infamous Flores Highway, heading even further east, skirting round but then up high in to the mountains.

An hour or so later, an outrageously large carpark soon housed the grand total of 2 scooters.  On foot and heading ever further up, the national park continued to be very well maintained and looked after. A terrible shame therefore, that it's so far from anything at all, and that rarely do visitors, tourist nor indigenous alike, actually visit!  Doubly so when you finally see what would clearly be a huge tourist site elsewhere, the lakes are breathtaking.

They knocked or socks off at first sight, as you ascend higher to the mountain's summit the views just get better and better, all three lakes, and a whole expanse of Flores viewable from the actual summit!

We spent a good hour marvelling at the views and taking way too many photos, then we heading down out of the mountains for a spot of lunch in the small town of Moni.

Soon we were zooming back to Ende.  We merely managed to get lost in an attempt to find Ende's blue stone beaches before retiring early to our room, preparations needing to be made for our continuing Flores adventures.

Labuan Bajo, Flores - Scooter adventures!!!!

We quickly researched as much as we possibly could about Flores:

- We would not be able to hire a car; the option just does not exist
- Private cars and drivers replace the above in Flores and will cost a LOT
- Buses would be very slow but were cheap and available via many towns
- There were a couple of airports over to the Eastern end of the island
- Finding your own way around on a scooter (short distances around towns) would be the only cheap option for getting out and about.

We thought it best to head further afield and then head back instead of heading further east and potentially getting stranded, so here was the plan:

We booked a flight to Ende in the east and would then use the local buses to travel from town to town until we were back to Labuan Bajo in time for a flight back to Bali at the end.  Perfect.

After booking these flights we had one more full day left in Labuan Bajo, plenty to do near by and absolutely no experience of riding scooters between us.  Not even as passengers...

So, the day we handed over a discounted hire fee (due to only having a single wing mirror and no lights), filled out barely any paperwork and asked the man politely to show us how every part of the scooter might work.

That done, Bex and I warily climbed aboard and we jolted very vigorously into action, Bex holding onto me for dear life as we very gingerly and slowly rode out of town and on to the "Flores highway"...

It was taking a while for me to get the hang of the machine.  I'd recount how slow we were going but it turned out the speedo didn't function either.  I was just getting up to speed when we found out more about the Flores highway.

First up, roadworks, the "re-laying the entire road surface" kind.  This is very common place on the highway apparently.  Slow down, take it easy and you'll pass through in no time.  Back on course.

Second, single carriageway. Ok, so not the end of the world, the road is actually very quiet by English standards.  I soon got used to all the other scooter and occasional car traffic passing us (we were passing no one ourselves at this point).

The third thing we learnt was probably the biggest challenge; Flores is a huge volcanic mountain range.  Ok, so I had actually learnt that in my research, but it hadn't occurred to me what that would mean in regards to the roads... I'd read "Flores highway" and just thought, "nice and simple".

Both the scooter and I were soon struggling up endless switchbacks and utterly blind bends, the dockside (and sea level) a distant memory.  This fully explained the proposed outrageously long bus journeys.  It was like "Worlds most dangerous roads"... But two-up on a broken scooter.  Bex was surprisingly relaxed and reassuring, clearly the safety dad approach I was erring towards was the way to go.  Well for the most part it was anyway...

Our proposed destination for the day was a huge volcanic crater lake.  After (literally) summiting a couple of mountains on the scooter we checked the watch and GPS and realised we probably couldn't make it out and back before dusk... You'll recall we had no lights, balls.

We quickly readjusted our destination to a waterfall which should also be worth seeing.  This was actually back a distance from where we had already traveled too and then off quite a long looking side road.  Turns out it was quite long.  Also, it was mentally steep, rocky and generally not where you'd take anything aside from a 4x4 or dirt bike.

I was warming to the challenges by now and we made out down to a nearby village without incident.  From here it was a race against time.  A local guide rushed us through the forests to the falls we took a look around and before you knew it we were heading back to the village, up the mental track and onto the highway.

By now I was getting well accustomed to the scooter and we rocked up back to the hire place in half the time we had estimated.  Safety dad was soon getting berated for not allowing more time to enjoy the falls as it appeared there was probably a fair few hours of light left, oops.  No loss, the day's travel had been a great adventure in itself, I'd got to grips with the scooter (without incident!) and I'd already fallen in love with some of the epic landscapes that made up Flores!

Flores!!! Wait, where!?!

We alighted from our sea adventure on the very large island of Flores.  So huge you'd think someone might mention or know of it.  Lonely Planet's South East Asia on a shoestring hardly helps you plot your course here either.

What we quickly learnt was we should have been learning more of Indonesian language along our travels and that I should have learnt to ride a scooter at some point.  Both these were, apparently, essential here.

Actually, we also learnt that Flores is staggeringly beautiful, more or less untouched by tourism and that we (meaning myself of course) shouldn't judge all of Indonesian culture, attitude and people on the modern day mess that is Bali.

Labuan Bajo is on the far western end of the island.  It has the port and an airport and access to the Komodo islands, thus its all that most visitors see of Flores.  We were determined to see much more than that though.  We had 10 days before we had to leave Indonesia again via Bali, so we dumped our bags in the first reasonable accommodation we could find and set about making plans for the time we had available...

In search of dragons...

So, I've decided to skip "Gili Air - Part 2"; it was great for us but not much of a read for anyone else...

In a nutshell; we returned after Rinjani, eventually decided on our next trip, booked it and then mooched around Air for 5 nights till we were due to set sail.  We did pop over to Gili Trawangan but there's not much to report; bigger, brasher and full of party tourists, we realised quickly we were right to stay on Air.  The end.

As hinted above, the next trip would be by sea.  We'd always intended (before leaving England) to head to Komodo to see the dragons, we duly booked a four day boat trip with various stops,  Komodo islands and national park inclusive, ending in Flores.  Perfect.

We zipped over to the Lombok mainland where we noted 2 boats of dubious quality docked.  There have been a few trips where the boats have sunk in recent years so they now travel in tandem; that's what I would refer to in IT as dealing with the "issue" not the "problem", but hey, whatever, you only live once, right?

Once we, our luggage and our booze were loaded aboard we set off on fine waters and in fine weather for our sea bound adventure.

The crew of 5 were a friendly and helpful bunch and the other 20ish passengers turned out to be a pretty great and varied bunch too.  This really was good news as we would be in each others faces for the entire trip.  It was pretty cramped, there were no showers, we'd all eat in a circle on deck and we would all sleep in a long line next to one another on the covered upper deck.  We knew this before boarding so no problem.  What we were pleased about was that the the boat wasn't fully booked out to a full capacity of 35 passengers, this really would have been interesting.

We had two cracking days island hopping, snorkelling, chilling, chatting and drinking.  We twice engaged in epically long Texas hold um sessions; both times I was chip leader going into heads up, both times I finished second... Both times were winner takes all.  Balls.

The final two days were all about the dragons.  First, the island of Komodo itself and then the island of Rinca on the final morning before arriving in Flores.  We were apprehensive about how wild the dragons would be, our guides assured us it was the oppressive day time heat that made them seem so subdued.  Regardless, I knew they had to be seen in real life to be appreciated and I wasn't let down!

On Komodo we saw outrageously large lizards, in Rinca they were smaller but clearly, and alarmingly, territorial and aggressive!  In both cases the islands themselves were also stunning to behold; dry, craggy and covered in odd plant and tree life, they are quite otherworldly.

Laden with great photos and videos of the worlds largest lizards, not to mention a swathe of new Facebook friends, we headed on to Flores and absolutely no idea what we would be doing next!!