NTT - Nusa Tenggara Timur in a week

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After getting my Indonesian visa I got my speed travel on and made it all the way to Lombok in a week. I caught a slightly more expensive but comfortable and organised bus all the way from Dili to Kupang in West Timor including all border crossing crap. Apart from waiting in a line of traffic watching a digging machine driving round on the top of the cliff pushing huge amounts of dirt and boulders onto the only access road for about half an hour, everything went smoothly. I was the only traveller and no-one, not even the bus driver spoke a word of english. Kupang is not exactly the direction I wanted to go in but this is the only place you can catch boats to other parts of Indonesia from Timor. On the bus it started to rain, wet season style. Poples front gardens were so flooded little kids were swimming in them! I got dropped off at the homestay I'd booked which was lucky since it was 9:30 by the time we got there and my lonely planet map of Kupang wouldn't have been much help.

I got up really early the next day. Partly because I wasn't sure when or even if there was a ferry leaving for Flores, and also because I didn't realise there was a 1 hour time difference between East and West Timor.
I caught an ojek to the ferry terminal doing the turtle with my massive pack but miraculously didn't fall off. From what I could get out of some young people at the terminal who spoke a little bit of English, the ferry had been cancelled, which is pretty typical for this time of year, but they told me to go to the pelni dock. Pelni ships only come every 2 weeks and go all ver Indonesia but the schedules are a bit sketchy. I went there anyway, and sure enough there was a boat leaving at 10am so I got a ticket and boarded. I sat on the deck with an old man who wanted to practice his English. Apparently the boat was meant to have gone the day before but was delayed due to bad weather so I was really lucky. He also told me that he would never take the ferry (the one I had planned on taking) since it's meant for river crossings, not the open ocean and it's really dangerous. It was pretty rough and stormy and even the big pelni ship was swaying alot so I'm really glad that ferry was cancelled! 10 hours later we arrive in Larantuka on the eastern end of Flores after dark. I shared a bemo with the man I'd been sitting with to a cheap hotel and got up early the next morning to catch the bus to Moni so I didn't see much of the town.

This bus ride was amazing an horrible at the same time. Flores is a beautiful mountainous island and the views from the bus are always great. Unfortunately Indonesia is a nation of very motion sick people who are constantly throwing up into plastic bags then throwing them out the window. I'm not prone to car sickness but I felt pretty aweful after 9 hours on a smelly hot squishy bus breathing in the equivalent of 20 packets of cigarrettes and listening to people vomit. The public buses here don't like to lose money so they never say no to an extra passenger. Every seat is taken, there are peole sitting on top of each other and in the isles, up to 10 guys on the roof, and up to 5 guys hanging out each of the 2 side doors and all the men smoke at least 1 cigarrette every 15 minutes! I got in to Moni at around 5pm and saw my first tourists in 3 days.
I met a dutch couple (and I'm not going to attempt to spell their names) and a Frech Canadian girl, Natalie who were all staying at the same place. It turns out their bus rides there were just as bad as mine and I found out that all bus rides in south-east Asia tend to be a bit of a vomit party so thats something to look forward to. Moni is a tiny village spread out along the trans-Flores highway and the only reason there are hotels there is because it's close to Mount Kelimutu, a volcano with 3 lakes that change colour. There's a road that goes almost the whole way up so people get a lift up while its still dark, walk the last 20 minutes or so to the lookout and watch the sunrise.

It was a bit too cloudy for a good sunrise the morning we went but the view was still pretty amazing. I went with the dutch couple and Natalie then we walked from half way down back into town. This goes past lots of little villages where people get so excited to see tourists, and alot of rice terraces. We also almost got attacked by a cow whose rope was so long it could make it across the road so it charged at us when we got close. The cow was a nervous wreck and doing that loud blowing thing through its nose like an angry bull so it took us a while to get past it. I knew I've always had a good reason to be scared of cows! After Kelimutu we still had the whole day so we walked to one of the other villages, had lunch together, and enjoyed not being on a bus.

The 4 of us were all heading to Bajawa the next day so we hired a car and driver since it wasn't too expensive when split by 4. This meant we could stop wherever we wanted so we got lots of photos (more rice terraces, waterfalls, volcanos, etc). We also stopped at Wologai traditional village, a few markets along the way, the blue stone beach, and Wogo traditional village. I preffered Wologai since it was smaller and more remote so it was obvious they got far less tourists. They have electricity and satellite dishes though so its maybe not quite so traditional anymore. In Wologai there was music coming out of one of the houses - it was Aquas 'I'm a barbie girl'. I'm sorry but Indonesians have terrible taste in music.

Bajawa is quite a bit bigger than Moni and at about my theshold. Any bigger and I don't want to be there. It was also cold, being up in the mountains and I got to crack out the sleeping bag which was pretty exciting. The further west you go, the more tourists you see but they are still rare enough to make me point and stare just as much as the locals. I shared a room with Natalie which made accomodation nice and cheap and the next day we all walked up to Wawo Muda, known as a 'mini kelimutu' since it also has a few lakes. We tried to hire motor bikes but failed. With our limited Indonesian and the locals complete lack of English we eventually managed to get some for a good price but they were all manual. I'm worried enough about trying to drive an automatic so we took ojeks to the closest village and walked from there. It was a nice walk and we met alot of locals who live up in the hills. Later that day, after an epic cave man Indonesian discussion with bemo drivers, we chartered a bemo to Bena, another traditional village with views to the ocean and one of the volcanoes. I bought an ikat sarong here. I'm pretty sure I got ripped off but it's more likely to be hand woven buying it here and the people living here looked alot unhealthier than those in other villages we visited so I'm ok with it. Apparenlty that village gets bus loads of tourists visiting in the dry season and everyone has to give at least a 10 000 Rp donation so I'm not really sure where all that money goes because it doesn't look like the people are benefiting much from it.

That night we said goodbye to the Dutch couple as they were stopping in Ruteng the next day and we were going the whole way to Labuanbajo - another 10 hour bus ride which turned into a painfully slow 13 hours. The bus driver seemed incapable of going past 2nd gear and kept stopping to chat to random people along the way until we were conspiring to push him out the door and drive ourselves. On the up side, he was driving too slow to make anyone sick. The scenery was still great but after 10 hours on a bus you no longer care about the endless rice paddies or cute villages full of people wearing the traditional Flores clothes and carrying all sorts of things on their heads and shoulders. The bus driver also thought it would be nice to drop everyone at their house which meant an extra hours worth of detours out of town and arriving in the dark again. Natalie was going to fly to Denpassar but none of the ATMs were working and I decided against going to Komodo since I'm not really that interested in giant lizards so we both booked a package ferry and bus trip to Mataram in Lombok with a Swedish girl we bumped into who we also met in Moni.

The next morning was the start of a 26 hour trip but much more comfortable that previous shorter ones. It started with a 9 hour ferry ride to Sape in Sumbawa which was very rough. Actually it wasn't that bad, there were hardly white caps but the poor litte ferry was not coping! I've become addicted to Natalie's motion sickness pills which knock you out for a few hours (helps the time go by) then make you feel so great you even want to eat. From there it was the usual small smokey public bus to Bima where we got a standard padang meal included in the price of the trip before getting on luxury buses with soft reclining chairs, but best of all, NO SMOKING! We stopped for 'breakfast' at 2am. Who the hell wants to eat rice at 2am?? We then had a very calm ferry ride over to Lombok, followed by another bus ride to the other side of the island, to its capital, Mataram. The Swedish girl continued to Sengiggi, Natalie caught a plane to Denpassar, and I stayed here. Its a big city with KFC and McDonalds and after a few hours I'm ready to leave...the only question is where to?

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Photos

Sunrise at Kelimutu
sort of...

the lakes of kelimutu
It was really cold and windy!

Kids in Moni
The kids here go crazy over getting their photo taken!

Labuanbajo harbour
The view from our room

Comments

[Penny]

Hi Madeleine
Thank you so much for writing all this down. Makes for a great read. Loving it. See you in Karlskrona. Love Penny xx