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Published: March 18th 2008
"The Guide Who Loved Me..."
Woke up this morning to a text from Patrick. Turns out that now his in love with me, the message was quite sweet, I let him down gently...at least now I know that his not to attack me...think I will still barricade my door though.
Anyhow after some pancakes we set off for Bena. Its one of the most traditional villages left in Flores. The village is only actually 19km away but it took well over an hour to get there. The road if you can call it that was horrendous! sandy, full of holes, really really steep and really slippery!. I was hanging onto that bike for dear life! On the way down we saw this guy walking, he had got off his guides motorbike and was making his way back by foot, it was a bit scary but not that scary! Maybe I just had a guide who could handle his bike better. I mean we only came off once! On the way down Patrick stopped and showed me some different plants, cinammon, vanilla, eucaliptus...all smelled great!
Bena is a really cute village, nothing like I have ever seen before. The
Bena Village
the volcano overlooking the Villagehuts are all crazy tall with thatched roofs. Outside the houses are buffalo horns and pigs feet hanging up over and around the doorways. This represents how wealthy the families are. More there are, more money they have. The pigs feet looked gross, kind of giant teeth!?
All the older women here and across Indonesia chew on this natural plant called Beetlenut. It basically gets them high, takes away all those aches and pains they get as they get older and just passes the time of day. But its not all good, not only does it rot their teeth away but it also stains their teeth, gums and lips bright red. Kind of looks like they have been chewing on a bloody carcass! It honestly looks like they are covered in blood. I tried to get a few pictures of the women with a big red bloody smile but they áll kept their mouths firmly shut. I guess I just didn't buy enough vanilla?
In the village there are ares where there are piles of stones. These are mass grave sites. When someone dies and they are buried a stone is placed over the top of them to
Bena Village
lil lil ole lady... signify that they are buried there. Some of these mass burial sites must have had 40-50 stones!
We walked all the way through the village, at the end you get a great view out over the jungle and of a huge volcano.
This afternoon we went to the hot springs. It was fabulous, my first hot bath in 1 year! There was 3 parts, warm, hot and super hot. Whole villages come down every Sunday to bathe and do their laundry. I took my conditioner with me and some soap....do as the locals do!
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