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I slept well although the call to prayer did wake me at about 4.30am, Ruth went to breakfast while I walked for a few kilometres up the road to a bank with an ATM, by the time I finally got back my breakfast was cold. Augustin arrived a short time later with our new driver they tried to up the price which resulted in an unpleasant exchange, but I managed to push them down a bit and it cost us $259 for a car and driver for four days. By 9am we were on our way, as with many Asian countries the main highways are often lined with villages and businesses and Flores is no different, the landscape is tropical lush and green, with numerous fruit trees growing wild. The roads are narrow and often dangerous but our driver Edele is skilled having driven large trucks on these roads for many years.

After about three hours of driving we stopped to take a look at some rice terraces, we were assigned a small dirty girl child as a guide and scrambled up some hills to a shed where we were encouraged to pay a small donation (about a dollar) before clambering higher up the hill to a look out point where we could see spider web shaped rice fields in the valley below, Ruth was in some high grass patting a water buffallo. From here it was only a short drive to Ruteng where we would spend the night in a Catholic Convent.

Kongregasi Santa Maria Berdukacita is my first ever convent and was impeccably clean and very modern, a bargain at $20 a night. We chose a large room near the courtyard and after dropping our packs I went to check out the chapel which was very attractive and far more modern in appearance than I expected. There is a curfew here so we must be back by 9pm or risk being locked out for the night. After check in Edele took us to a good restaurant where we indulged in local foods before driving about half an hour out into the surrounding country side to a limestone cave at Liang Bua where the bones of the child sized Homo Floresiensis were discovered in September 2003, there wasnt much there to see but the trip out and back were very enjoyable and the people very friendly.

On arrival back in Ruteng I asked Edele to drop us at the market so we could look for local souvenirs, it was a noisy smelly place and we found nothing of interest to us, as we returned to our vehicle a couple of European backpackers tried to force their way into the car, they apparently wanted a free ride to the rice fields outside of town, Ruth told them to go away. We then visited an Internet Cafe not far from our accomodation, Edele would pick us up about 7pm for dinner. As we waited for our driver the weather set in again and we experienced a couple of power outages our friendly nun/hostess Sister Orphelia provided us with a lantern which was nice. Dinner again was very good and we had the pleasure of listening to the the beautiful voices of the nuns singing Ave Maria as we went to sleep.

It is saturday morning and the storm raged all of last night, we were woken by the nuns singing Hallelujah which is pretty neat. Had a very simple but hardy breakfast before our driver arrived at 8am and we set of for the traditional village of Compang Ruteng which is located about three kilometres from where we are staying. There were only a couple of traditional houses or rumah adat here and an ancestor alter composed of a raised burial platform. This place is lived in and is not a tourist village as such and I didnt feel like intruding in peoples homes so we headed back to the vehicle for the long trip to Bajawa.

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