Advertisement
Published: September 9th 2008
The boat to Serayu left at 1.30.pm and took about an hour. As we got about 150 metres from shore we pulled up alongside a tiny little boat that looked like more like a hollowed out log, it had 6 inches of water in the bottom, this was our transport to the shore.
The boatman bailed out the water and put down a few planks then loaded 4 backpacks on plus Stan and myself, leaving the other four passengers behind. He then began to paddle with his hands then he spotted my flip flops and said “Marm?” took them off my feet and began to use them to paddle us into shore!
The accommodation was just as basic the bathroom had no roof, a toilet with no flush or seat, no shower just a cold water tap and a bucket. The power and water was only on for 4 hours a day 6pm-10pm. If you were lucky!
After settling into our hut we swam out to the drop off, the coral was even better than we'd read about and so was the marine life.
Around 5.30pm everyone walked up to the hill behind the resort to
watch the sunset. From there we had a 360 degree view all around the island, looking down to the sea we could see big black shoals of fish suddenly dart thru’ the water probably chased by a shark or other big preditor.
The food in the restaurant was good which is just as well as it was the only one on the island. We spent the next two days just lazing in the sun, snorkelling in the sea, strolling 100 yards to the restaurant and drinking Bintang beer. It’s a hard life!
Next stop of interest -the Island of Rinca, land of the komodo Dragon!
Before Rinca though we needed to go back to the mainland to sort out the trip and also arrange our way off Flores, flying back to Bali wasn't an option as flights were always booked out days in advance and we wanted to go to Lombok anyway to return to the Gili Islands.
We had hoped to stay in the only decent hotel in Lubuanbajo, The Gardena but unfortunately our message to reserve a room hadn't been passed on by the boatman and it was completely full when we arrived.
Instead we stayed in a rodent infested, smelly homestay down the road. It overlooked the waterfront where the fishing boats came in, beneath us fish were laid out to dry in the sun on rickety bamboo structures.
Oh well, once again we got to experience the real Indonesia!
Advertisement
Tot: 0.047s; Tpl: 0.012s; cc: 10; qc: 26; dbt: 0.0265s; 1; m:domysql w:travelblog (10.17.0.13); sld: 1;
; mem: 1.1mb
