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Published: November 12th 2007
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After waiting on the side of the road in Moni for about an hour, a rattling minibus finally came lurching up the hill past us. We flagged it down and glanced inside, finding it even more packed full than the bus we'd taken to Moni. We could wait another couple hours for another bus, and hope it would have more space, or we could ride on top of this one. We climbed on top, settling ourselves and our bags into the luggage rack next to the guy in charge of luggage, who had himself squished into a crevice between bags, his hat pulled over his face to block the sun. As the bus pulled away Jeff and I loaded up on sunscreen, then settled back for the ride. Although undoubtedly not as safe as being inside, it was admittedly much more comfortable. The breeze felt great, the views were amazing, we weren't subject to endless too-loud music from busted speakers, and we were actually fairly comfortable lying back on the bags and watching the sky go past. Riding on top also meant we were frequently spotted by little kids playing in the road, who screamed and waved as if we were
celebrities. We kept our heads nice and low to avoid hitting power lines, held on tight, and rode the two hours back to Ende, arriving in the late afternoon.
We took motep taxis into town to Hotel Ikhlas, a friendly place with a wide array of rooms. We took a tiny upstairs room with attached squat toilet but no sink or shower, and a shared balcony with a view of a sea of tin roofs. We wandered downstairs to have dinner, and discovered a communal television in the lobby with international news channels. Delighted, we ate our noodle soup and soaked up information from the outside world. A news banner flashed across the bottom of the screen, announcing that "Mount Kelud in Indonesia is about to erupt." That was it--no details, no indication of the location of this volcano in this enormous country. Indonesia is littered with volcanoes at various stages of activity, and had absolutely no idea how far--or near--Mount Kelud might be from where we were. We asked one of the guys working at the hotel and he shrugged, with no idea. We decided that probably meant it wasn't nearby, and went to bed with our fingers
crossed that we wouldn't wake up with our room flooded with lava.
We didn't. We woke up and "showered" by splashing ourselves with cold water from a bucket in our bathroom, then set out to track down internet to find out the location of Mount Kelud and inform our families that we were still alive. We took moto taxis to the town wartel, but found a room full of empty computer desks. The lady informed us that there was internet a 10 minute walk away, and drew us a shaky map with no street names or landmarks, just lots of left and right turns. We set out walking through town, passing kids in school uniforms and cute houses with potted plant gardens. Ende is probably the most modern town in Flores, and there is some evidence of money: a few fancy new SUVs, some large houses. But in general it's still a pretty sleepy town, with its fair share of wandering goats and barefoot kids chasing each other down the narrow streets. We found ourselves in residential neighborhoods, and were skeptical about finding internet, but we finally came across a little shop with three working computers. By working, I mean they power on and eventually boot up and eventually open Internet Explorer and after about ten more minutes of waiting
might allow you to see a webpage, but very likely not. We spent over an hour struggling to check our email and find the location of Mount Kelud, which we did find out was in Java, far from where we were. We left the internet cafe and stepped blinking into the brilliant midday heat. We wandered towards the ocean, and found a stretch of black-sand beach with foamy surf and a scattering of trash half-buried in the sand. A few kids swam offshore, and a few fishermen cast lines into the waves. We ate lunch at a restaurant near the ocean, although the view was blocked by a high cement wall. The food was a bit of a failure: the glasses of water tasted like garlic, the Sprite was warm, the chicken sate had weird bits of bone and fat in it, and the soup had no flavor. We took moto taxis back to our hotel, and began the process of going crazy.
Going crazy was a bit of a gradual process in Flores, but it began in Ende as a result of the utter lack of anyone else to talk to. Sure, a few of the hotel guys spoke a couple words of English, and we had our Indonesian "thank you" and "one drinking water" and "good evening" polished to perfection. But somehow this did not lead to deep intellectual discussions. We had finished our books long since, and there were certainly no English-language bookshops to be found. There were no other tourists, and we hadn't met any in Moni either, aside from brief "hello's" at the top of Mount Kelud. The TV in the lobby helped slightly, like a cold washcloth helps a headache for the three minutes it stays cold. The internet hurt more than it helped, because the power would cut out just as our email finally opened after twenty minutes of waiting, or the news website would take half an hour to load and then the headline would be about Brittany Spears in rehab. We spent about four days in Ende, mainly because the TV and internet gave us a glimmer of hope, and because it was a pleasant enough town and we had plenty of time. We talked about absolutely everything we could think of to talk about, and then talked about it again. We played gin rummy, the only two-person card game we knew, until our deck of cards was falling apart. We sat on our little shared balcony and listed to the call to prayer and watched the sunset every evening, and then we went back to our cards and our talking about the same things over and over. We made lists of things to do when we got home, and things to do when we had decent internet, and foods we wanted to eat when we got home, and possible places in the world we might live, and what we wanted for Christmas. We listened to our iPods on our little plastic speakers until the speakers died and we felt like we'd heard all the songs. This was our first bout of real homesickness in 9 months, and we still had a month and a half in Indonesia. Finally, after a few days, we shook ourselves out of it and determined to leave Ende and stop thinking about home and enjoy the amazing place we were in. There might not have been anyone else to talk to, but there was plenty to see. We packed up, checked out, and went to the bus station to catch a bus to Bajawa, the next "major" town on the road heading west.
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Claire
non-member comment
Homesick-shmome-sick
Youre not missing too much here missy - just a gray, cold world and lots of schoolwork! I did however make peanut butter balls which is quite exciting. I love making lists of the food Ill eat when I get home whenever Im far away. Its really a great way of passing the time.. I usually do it from A to Z (a - apple crisp, B - buttered popcorn, C - chocolate truffles ... and so on!) ... If youre wondering why my comments are all backwards its because I read your blogs from present to past. Dont ask me why. Im almost caught up.