Blogs from Labuanbajo, Flores, Indonesia, Asia - page 3

Having been on the road for almost 7 months I feel contentment in just stopping. Whilst enjoying the cycling adventure it is nice not to have the pressure of needing to reach the next destination using pedal power! Sorry the blog has been neglected. We had written up daily until our arrival in Laos but just lacked internet access to post it as we went. I will post the entries but please don't feel any obligation to read the numerous back entries. We rose to the challenge of cycling through the hills and mountains in northern Vietnam and Laos and were glad we did. It turned out to be one of our favourite parts of the journey with stunning scenery and quiet roads. We made a last minute decision to fill an empty 10 days before ... read more

Surviving the Komodo Adventure. I flew to Labuan Bajo with the notoriously precarious Maparti Airline. While the staff were pleasant and the flight mostly smooth I couldn’t help feeling faintly anxious throughout much of the journey. This was until my attention was snatched away from their tainted flight record and onto the captivating sight below. As the plane neared its destination I was presented with one of the most glorious views I have ever seen from an aircraft window. Hundreds of lush, volcanic atolls girt by the most magnificent turquoise water. The visibility was so obviously clear I could make out the shapes of coral below, weaving its way around the islands. Like almost all tourists visiting the area I was here to trek around the nearby islands of Komodo and Rinca. Both famous for being ... read more

(M) After bidding a very sad farewell to Lombok, the time had come to enter the very last leg of our epic journey - to Flores, one of the country’s eastern-most islands. In the end we decided to take overland public transport via the island of Sumbawa, which consisted of a gruelling 36-hour bus-ferry-overnight bus-ferry combination. So we gritted our teeth and mentally prepared ourselves for our last uncomfortable journey, backpacker style. The journey itself was pretty uneventful although we did make friends with two awesome couples from Spain and Argentina, and needless to say we had lots to talk about! Their company and deck of Uno cards went along way to passing the time, and the final nine hour ferry journey in the glorious sunshine, cruising past some of the country’s most idyllic scenery, was ... read more

This is it Heading west from Labuan Bajo, Flores September 12th This morning Eric and I woke up with a bit of a hangover and sort of stumbled down to the dock in Labuan Bajo on Flores. Our six day liveaboard cruise around Komodo has been planned for a while and it is hopefully going to be the most expensive thing I will do on this trip. It is possible to do day-trips from Labuan Bajo to the various dive spots around Komodo and that is the cheaper option but since Eric and I have been aiming at this ever since we left Sumatra we wanted it to be perfect. As Eric said a second ago: "This is definetely the right decision. Pretty hard to have any regrets". It is futile to fully describe the setting ... read more

We left Gili Air to travel east to Flores, where the Komodo Dragons are at, via a live aboard boat. The journey started via a ferry transport from Gili Air to Lombok and then a bus across Lombok. A couple really cool things about this bus trip; the first - AIR CON, the second, was we picked up our food for the boat on the way and we picked up 9 live chickens that road in the bus with us! I felt so bad for them knowing they were going to be our dinner, I felt even worse for them when I learned they rode in a cage off the back of the boat. The boat was very basic. The 13 passengers slept on the top deck on very thin mats, while the crew slept below. ... read more