Getting on the bus in Mataram/Sweta, Lombok's sprawling city, it quickly becomes obvious that for most western travellers, Indonesia ends in Lombok. We're suddenly the centre of attention, drawing students interested in trying out their English, hawkers trying to sell us the only book they have in English (a Bahasa Indonesia/English dictionary), and constant smiling domestic tourists asking “darimana?” (where do you come from?) and “kemana?” (where are you going?). As we were to find out, these latter two questions seem to be almost the cultural equivalent of saying “how are you?”, or else Indonesians are really interested in tracing our journey.
Suddenly, the travellers with us aren't backpackers trying to find the best beach or cheapest accommodation, but rather students or soldiers heading home to their villages, as well as Indonesians seeing a bit more of their country. Goodbye tourist trail, hello Indonesia (and Holland, but more on that later). We didn't have to wait long for our first rather amusing “only in Indonesia” moment. On the ferry between Lombok and Sumbawa, the night trans-Sumbawa buses all drive on to the ferry together (there's about 6 to 8 coaches), and all the passengers make their way to the open-air passenger deck. So far so normal, but as soon as the ferry pulls away, suddenly two chaps at the front open up a nearby cabinet full of pirated DVDs and start an auction-style infomercial with all sorts of random stuff, from belts to toys to sandals to food.
The classic moment though was when the auctioneer started selling some sort of facemask. His assistant modelled it, and not having a clue what was being said, it really looked like the assistant was ready to rob the ferry. Next on the block was a child's toy bubble gun, and leaving the facemask on, the assistant showed us how the bubble gun worked.
Hundreds of kemanas and darimanas later, two buses across Sumbawa (including a stop in Sumbawa Besar for dinner), and a 7-hr ferry ride across to Flores, we finally arrived in Labuan Bajo. By the end, it was becoming so rare to see other travellers of European descent that meeting someone was an event itself. However, Labuan Bajo itself is more of a tourist spot (most fly in from Bali on a daily flight that seems to be always booked out a week in advance or take those tourist boats that skip Sumbawa). Despite the fact that it's a tiny fishing village, the National Park around Rinca and Komodo island to the west is worth the gruelling trip.
Diving was supurb, we hit the three “must-do” sites of Karang Makassar (often called Manta Point), Castle Rock and Batu Bolong (Hole in the Rock). At Karang Makassar we were lucky to experience a 4 to 5 metre wide manta ray glide past and even luckier to see our first octopus of the trip! Octopi are Becca's favourite sea creature, hence the name of the blog. Castle Rock was an underwater pinnacle covered in fish, we sat on the bottom while giant trevallies chased groups of fusiliers. Tunas and 1.5m long barracudas glided past as well. Batu bolong was also covered in fish, but was surprisingly different, with less big fish and more neon-coloured corals.
On land, we hired a rickety boat for a day and took off to Rinca island (pronounced “rincha”). Almost immediately, we came across a sleeping Komodo dragon, the biggest of all lizards. The dragons we saw on a 1 hr walk around were mostly 3 to 4 metres long (and sleeping). Komodo dragons have a lifestyle of eating every 2 to 3 weeks, but when they eat, they eat big stuff. Common food for them are wild deer, pigs, monkeys and water buffalo that roam the island – guides also like to point out that they've killed the odd human as well. Small animals, like monkeys, are killed immediately, but big animals, like the buffaloes, are killed after a single dragon bite with bacteria-laden saliva kills the buffalo through infection.
Back in Labuan Bajo, it was time to move on, and our plans to head inland for a few days and then fly back to Bali from the eastern town of Maumere was seemingly quashed by the bizarre (and still inexpliciable) occurance of all flights being “full” at least a week in advance. Luckily, in Indonesia, there is a bizarre rule of thumb that seemingly hopeless situations seem to work out. And it's not a case of finding the right person to slip 100,000 rupiah, but rather a case of waiting around or finding the right person to ask.
One problem was the flight, the other was the high cost of transport across Flores with its notoriously winding motion-sickness inducing road (the 300 km between Labuan Bajo and Ende takes approximately 10 to 14 hours to drive despite having a good surface). So the “cost” appeared to us as a trade-off between hours of vomiting in a public bus or a wallet-sucking 1 million rupiah (approx US$110) per day to hire a private car with driver. We started down the latter path, by trying to find other travellers to share the cost, but failed in that regard, though we did get some good contacts for drivers that spoke good English. One of these was Stefan, who came to visit us and demanded too much to drive us to Bajawa (8 hours away), Bargaining was not successful, so we began to consider other options.
An hour later that Indonesian rule of thumb kicked in, and Stefan rang to tell us that we could get a ride with his friend who was heading back to Maumere and would drive us and another two people that he had found to Bajawa. So it was back to plan A. Meanwhile, the flight situation appeared to be working out, as a few phone calls resulted in availability on a flight between Ende and Kupang (West Timor) around the time we wanted to leave Flores. Of course, the drama doesn't stop until the last minute – the airline office had lost power so it could not issue our tickets to Kupang – we had to stop at their office in Ruteng (halfway between Labuan Bajo and Bajawa) by 2pm (and hope they had power there). Again, everything works out, and we made it to Ruteng with plenty of time to spare.
As you might expect from the unpleasant means of going inland, heading east from Labuan Bajo means ditching the faint tourist trail once again. Besides kemana and darimana, were were often asked whether we were Dutch. Perhaps because the Dutch East Indies company was responsible for stiching together the archipelago as a single country, the Dutch have a stronger inclination to travel off the Bali-Lombok tourist trail. Indeed, the only couple we saw on the trans-Sumbawa journey was Dutch, and the other couple that Stefan found to share the car with us was also Dutch. For such a small country, the Netherlands is certainly overrepresented in Flores.
Pictures: Top - sunset over Labuan Bajo harbour. Middle - Trumpetfish in the fan coral at Crystal Rock (the fourth dive site we went to). Bottom - Female Komodo Dragon guarding her nest.
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