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.