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Published: March 25th 2013
In this post I'll write about two trips: the 4 day boat ride from Lombok to Lubuan Bajo in Flores Island (including Komodo Island) and then a return car ride from Labuan Bajo to Mt. Kelimutu.
I was in Gili Trawangan and I woke up late to get the boat that I had to take in the harbor; but I made it just in time. From what I could tell, this same trip (or very similar) can be booked from Lombok, Gili or Bali. There are different prices for different types of boats and I think the cheapest one is from Gili Trawangan (1.550.000 IDR), whereas there are other options going up to 5.000.000 IDR. I opted for the least luxurious and the cheapest. In Gili, all the agencies sell the same tour, for the same price, on the same boat. The boats leave, weather dependant, every Monday and Thursday.
Everyone doing the trip was taken on a boat to Lombok and then by bus from the port to a town called Senggigi, where we were briefed on the trip and made our order of extra water bottles and beer and then put onboard another
bus for a two hour ride across the island to get to a port called Labuhan Lombok. On the way, we stopped in a small town called Selong, in case anybody wanted to buy anything.
We finally arrived in Labuan Lombok, a small town with a port, a few houses and a mosque (which are everywhere) and embarked in what would be our transport/home for the next 4 days and 4 nights; a dodgy looking boat (the KLM “Nalorina”) with a crew of 5 Indonesians. At this point everyone must’ve been thinking whether they had made the right decision booking this trip.
My other 14 fellow passengers were: Rati, an English guy that had been working in youth centers, his friend Jen, a paramedic from Scotland who works in London, Tom (lawyer) and Bianca (she was doing an internship in Jakarta) who were a father and daughter from Germany, Manuela from Switzerland and her friend Manuela from Germany, Merijn, a Dutch that had been a sailor in the Navy (we had both served in the same time of ship; the “M” Type frigate), Daniel from England (worked with something having to do with properties), Dillon a
welder from Canada, Manuel and Camilo, two Colombian brothers and Camilo’s wife, Elein from Belgium and Louise, an English girl who had been working in a school, quit her job and was now traveling for a year.
We gave our bags to the crew, who put our bags in a compartment under the main deck, along with supplies, a small canoe-looking wooden boat and a small generator. The main deck consists on the bow and the area in front of the bridge. Then everything merges between the bridge, the sleeping area for the crew, kitchen, washing area and a basic toilet that, like in most of Indonesia, has to be flushed by pouring water directly into the toilet using a pot. The toilet also was, as Yoyo said “for Indonesian size", so impossible to stand up straight. The other thing is that the toilet was positioned in a corner in a way that the lid couldn’t stand up. The main characteristics of the boat were: length between 18-20m, width 3,5 – 4,5m. It had two “Yamar” engines of 30HP.
Our "dorm", was an area above the bridge. It was basically a wooden structure about
1 – 1 ½ meters high with a plastic canvas roof; a “refugee camp" looking place with mattresses laid down. I must’ve hit my head about 5 times in different places in the boat during the next days.
Our ticket included 3 meals a day, coffee, tea, 5 bottles of water, a mattress and a pillow and a mask and snorkel.
The friendly Indonesian crew of 5 were Midur (the captain), Yoyo (the cook/tourist guide), Ari, Sanur and Ren Li. Only Midur and Yoyo could speak decent English.
We spent first night anchored in Gili Bola after a pleasant day of navigating along the islands and a spectacular sunset. Everyone seemed to be in a good mood and at around 6pm dinner was served.
For every meal, a blue carpet was laid down in the main deck and the platters of food were put on the floor, as well as the plastic plates and the cutlery. The “buffet lunch” was always rice with something else; vegetables and tofu, chicken, fish, some salad and some kind of fruit. The food wasn’t bad at all. At night, everyone crawled to their own
space up in the “dorm”. After dinner and just joking around, Juancho, one of the Colombian brithers said that he would like to have a UK passport. Somehow it all derived in Jen being the British girl who would agree to an arranged marriage for a sum of money. That gave way to jokes for the rest of the trip (and even after that).
We woke up the second day to arrive in Moyo Island early in the morning, where we went to a waterfall. We had to walk about 25 minutes along the forest to get to the waterfalls, which were quite nice. For the whole trip it was our boat and another one with 15 other people and all the tours were combined.
We may have spent about an hour in the waterfall and then back to the boat to continue our trip to Satonda, which is another island that has a salt water lake just a short 5 minute walk from the beach.
After these stops, we spent the evenings having beers, chatting, listening to music, etc. There was also plenty of time to sleep, sunbathe, read or whatever. We played a
few games of cards which was actually a lot of fun.
The third day we woke up in a place called Gili Laba. It’s a beach that has a short trek up a hill with a great view. Then, there’s the possibility to walk back doing a different path.
After Gili Laba, we went to the “Pink Beach”, which is supposed to be pink, but somehow that day it wasn’t. Maybe because of the time of day, or the time of year. Anyway, there was some really good snorkeling in that beach. I managed to grab a pair of fins from the crew (those were not included) and had a fantastic time.
The last stop that day was Komodo Island – the highlight of the trip. They told us about the possibility that we wouldn’t see any Komodo dragons. There’s about 2800 dragons on the island. During the 1 hour tour we spotted 9 dragons, including the ones we saw in the village. Apparently we were extremely lucky to see so many of them. They’re impressive creatures and dangerous as well. A bite has about 16 different types of bacteria and they also
inject poison (which is not really strong). A victim will die anywhere between 3 days and 2 weeks of being bitten. The way to treat a bite is cleaning the wound with alcohol, stopping the bleeding (a lot of victims will just bleed to death) and then taking antibiotics and antiseptics.
After Komodo Island we spent the night in “Flying Fox Island”. We anchored near an island in which huge bats can be seen at dusk when they fly out to feed. Apparently they can be seen by the hundreds, but that day we may have seen no more than 10. We spent about 17 hours there, so there was plenty of time to play cards, have beer, chill out and fish.
Even though we didn't see many bats, it was a beautiful, clear night and we got to see the moon set. At one point, I grabbed a stick and made figures with it in the water, to show the other the bioluminescent plankton. That gave us a good hour of fun. After a while, 4 of us also jumped in the water to swim among the glowing plankton. We ended that night
Treetop restaurant
Jen, Daniel, Manuela, Marjin, Manuela, Louise and Rati with the Colombians puttin salsa and merengue music and teaching how to dance it to the rest. The whole thing ended with Raeggeton.
The 4th day we started at 5am to get to Rinca Island at 8pm and do another trek for about 1 hour and see more Komodo dragons. This island had been closed for about 2 months, after there were 3 attacks by dragons in less than 2 months, so the park rangers had to clean up part of the island and relocate some of the dragons.
Then it was time for the last stop in Kelor Island. There was pretty good snorkeling – I had a blast. I managed to get the fins they had onbard again and managed to see damselfish, anemonefish, scorpionfish, two puffer fish, etc.
We arrived in Lubuan Bajo at around 3pm. It's an ugly city in general, not what we expected, as it was described in Lonely Planet as "Indonesia's next best thing".
After getting to shore, Rati, Jen, Louise and I decided to take a tour to Mount Kelimutu, a place that has 3 different colored lakes. I knew nothing about them, but
it was a good opportunity to go see the island with a group. The trip included a large portion of the island (Flores) in 3 – 4 days. We ran into Yoyo in town and he introduced us to "Mike", another Indonesian with whom we made the arrangements. We hired a car with a driver for 3.500.000 IDR, split between the 4 of us. Mike introduced us to our driver "Roberto" and we sealed the agreement by paying a 2.000.000 deposit on the spot (no receipts or anything like it). I hadn't thought of doing this trip before and as I knew nothing about it, Rati and Jen did the planning and I pretty much just followed along; it was a nice change for someone to be making the decisions. Rati self appointed himself "dictator" for the duration of the trip, taking "unilateral" decisions.
For accommodation that night, Rati and Jen found a place called Green Hill Hotel and Louise and I spent the last night in the boat (free accommodation). Up to this point, we hadn’t had a shower in 4 days (we had been swimming in the ocean every day though), so we used Jen’s
room for a well-deserved shower.
At around 7pm we went to have a drink at a place called "Treetop", where we met with Merjin, the 2 Manuelas and the Colombian team. At 8 we went to a restaurant called Lounge where we met with Yoyo and later, Dillon and Dan arrived. That was our last "official" event as a group.
The next day, Louise and I were picked up early in the morning (7am) by Roberto. We said goodbye to the crew and we were off to pick up Rati and Jen.
Robert didn’t speak much English, so he wasn’t very informative those 4 days, but he knew the way. With the passing days, somehow he wasn’t in the best of moods, even rude at times, but it didn’t really matter.
The first day we drove a lot of hours and we stopped briefly along the way for a few photos of the landscapes and then stopped for lunch in a small restaurant. The restaurant had a huge painting of the Barcelona Football Club and had a lot of Christian-motive posters as well. Lunch wasn’t that good. As an anecdote, there I
used a squat toilet for the first time. I found a very interesting instructions article on their use:
http://www.wikihow.com/Use-a-Squat-Toilet.
After that stop, we continued our way, going along narrow roads up and down hills, dodging trucks, motorcycles, cars and pedestrians along the way. The sceneries are very green and there are small villages scattered on the sides of the road.
We had a break to see the spiderweb ricefields. Each triangle shaped plantation around the center belongs to a different family. We then had some coffee with local people before continuing. We had one more short stop at a place overlooking a very nice lake.
We spent the night in Bajawa, a small town that only serves as a stop; there's nothing to see there. We stayed at the "Edelweiss" Hotel", which was OK and had good wifi. The staff was very friendly.
In the evening we went out for a walk. There's nothing impressive about it really. One of the curiosities was that there was a mosque and a church in front of each other, just across the street.
Then we looked for a place to have dinner and we
ended in a place called "Dito". There we ran into Tom and Bianca who were also doing a tour in the island. While we were eating, we saw a pig get sacrificed with four machete blows to the head, right outside the restaurant. We found out that the reason for that was that there were some local elections that day and the restaurant was right outside the office of the winning candidate and the people there were going to have a celebration. While the pig was being killed, a local that happened to be there just looked at us and said "welcome to Indonesia".
The second day of the trip we went to the Ngada Tribe villages. They have a very interesting culture that combines their ancestral beliefs and Christian rituals. We went to the Bena and Luba villages.
In these villages live several clans. Clan lines are given by the mother, as well as all land rights, residences and possessions are also passed on by the mothers. Every clan has a shrine to honor their ancestors and there’s a megalithic structure in the village where elders convene and take decisions. For the shrines, they only
"Doti" restaurant in Bajawa
Daniel, Louise, Tom, Rati, Bianca and Jen use a type of tree that is called Hebu and there is a process that takes place before it can be used and taken into the village.
The women sell Ikat, a hand woven fabric that takes a long time to produce. People are extremely friendly and will greet everyone as they pass by.
They live in houses with thatched roofs. Even though the village may seem rather primitive from a distance, taking a closer look there’s electricity, TV’s inside and motorbikes outside the houses.
After our visit to the villages, we stopped by to take photos of a smoking volcano. Then we had Had lunch in Ende (it was OK, but not great) and then continued on to a town called Moni where we stayed in a hostel. Moni is the town which is the entry point to Mt. Kelimutu and it was also our last destination before making our way back.
We asked the driver to take us to Kelimutu to see the lakes that same afternoon (no one goes there at that time, so it was ideal) and we caught the sunset looking at these lakes. The locals believe that when
people die, their souls go to one of the three lakes; children to the usually green one, old people to the blue one and bad people to the black one. The color of the lakes differ according to the concentration of different minerals and according to weather as well (
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kelimutu).
On the way back, Rati and I decided to walk down the hill back to Moni – a 2 ½ hour walk. On the way, we mainly talked about travels and I got some good insight in the Transiberian, which I’m interested in doing later this year.
We got back past 8pm and we went to get the girls to go have something for dinner. There was a restaurant just across the street – The Bintang restaurant. There, again we saw Bianca and Tom and sat down with them for dinner.
Early the next morning we had a start at 4:30 am to see the sunrise in Kelimutu. There were a lot of clouds, but the sunrise was really nice. We were very glad we had been there the previous day. There were people selling some coffee and I tried the ginger one, which wasn’t
that good.
We went back to the hostel, had breakfast and then at 9pm we were out again to make our 530km way back again in two days. Before leaving Moni, we went to check out some hot springs in a small village. These hot springs are recommended, but they're actually disgusting. People there use them as baths (brushing teeth, shampoo, soap and shaving cream included). The place is also full of garbage.
We made our way back to Bajawa. It was a long drive without much stopping along the way and when we arrived, we spent the afternoon in the Edelweiss Hotel again. We had a chilled afternoon and just used the time to relax.
That night we decided to check out a local Indonesian "fast food" restaurant called "Amazy". It mostly had crispy chicken in all its variations. Food wasn't as good as we thought and it was certainly not "fast food" (it took about 20 minutes to get our orders).
The next morning we drove all the way to Labuan Bajo. Just before we got back there, we stopped in some caves before arriving in the city.
Of course we were charged for the entry and our driver wasn't much help on the name or story of the caves. It was still worth seeing them again, even though they were not that impressive.
Jen and Rati both stayed at the same place they had been in before and Louise and I stayed in a cheaper place called "Bajo Beach Hotel", which was quite decent. The 4 of us had one last dinner at a restaurant called "Made in Italy", where the food was excellent.
Previously that evening I was looking for dive shops to do some dives the next day. By chance, I ran into two Chilean girls I had met briefly in Ubud, Bali and they had been diving with a company called "Divine Diving", which they recommended, so I booked with them. Initially I had planned to include the dives in this post, but the diving was so good that they deserve a different post. I also met some very interesting people doing those dives.
And so, that was the end of a great trip in Nusa Tenggara.
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Andres
non-member comment
saludos desde Lonquen
Hola Dani, Muy entretenido tu relato. Miré el link para ver como son los baños que describes y parece que vale la pena saber como funcionan antes de usarlos. Las fotos están preciosas. Acá sin novedades. Un par de resfrios pero nada complicado. que lo sigas disfrutando. un abrazo Andres