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Trans Flores

We stayed in Lubuan Bajo for a few days after the cruise. I am not really sure why. Eric began to hate the place. I didn't understand why. It is a small port town and that means that it must be a little gritty, dirty and smelly but I enjoyed it there. Our last night was a saturday and that means live music at the Paradise Bar, the only place in town that is open late at night. It is a bit outside of town up on a ridge overlooking the ocean and when walking there you do start wondering if the road leads anywhere until you hear the music. We went there on foot the night before the cruise but this night we sat on the back of a couple of guys motorcycles. Paradise bar is mostly a watering hole for tourists and people who work with tourists. This annoyed Eric quite a bit, but it sort of makes sense. A beer is around 30.000 rupiah (about 20 DKR, US$ 4) so it is prohibitively expensive for most locals. The band consists of guys from the town and the leadsinger, Frans, is in charge of the diveshop we used. Pretty good actually.

In other words, we had a bit of a hangover and got up late next morning when we wanted to start make our way east on Flores. It didn't take long to find some transportation though. A swanky looking 4x4 that promised to be more comfortable than anything else we had been riding in so far. I have been fooled like this every single time. The busses, cars, ferries etc. look really nice at first. Not too many people and plenty of space but that changes very quickly. There is usually at least one co-driver employed to make sure that ride will somehow become quite uncomfortable. In this case his strategy was two-fold. Soon after we left he cranked up the entertainment system. On this car it meant a dvd player with a screen suspended from the roof with comically bad music but it was also absolutely neccesary to crank up the volume so that the speakers distorted as much as possible. We went for a couple of hours like this until the co-driver took over the drivers seat. He was in his early twenties but drove like an eighteen-year-old on acid. Every single turn and bend had to be done more quickly than possible with screaming tires (I had just noticed during a fuel stop that the tires had absolutely no patterns on them anymore). It seemed to amuse him when I quite forcefully tried to get him to slow down a bit, but it did have a bit of an effect. There were two Indonesian guys in the seat behind us and they looked like corpses. After a while one of them called out for "plastic" with tears in his eyes and when he got a couple of small plastic bags he immediately puked in both of them. He looked like he was about to die, but this did not make the suicidal driver stop for a while or even slow down.

Fortunately we needed to change bus in Ruteng and that only took about five minutes. This bus also started out very comfortable as well. Half empty there was plenty of space for our absurdly long legs, but it didn't take long for the co-drivers to fill it up well beyound its seat capacity and we spent most of the ride to Bajawa being four people in three seats. Getting around Indonesia is a bit of a challenge but we had seen nothing yet.

You do however only have to look out the windows to remind yourself why you are doing it. Flores is extremely pretty. The dry season this year has been very wet and everything is impossibly green. The Trans Flores Highway (a tiny road) winds it way across the island by climbing up from the coast around massive looming volcanoes, across plateaus covered with ricefields before plummeting down towards the ocean again. This pattern repeats itself over and over again and the views are spectacular. Eric and I were both wondering whether this actually was prettier than Sumatra and well, I actually think it is. Even though we weren't really lucky with the weather it was still monumentally inspiring.

We spent two nights in Bajawa. The town itself is a bit wild-west like with a buzzling market and shops that cater to everything the area needs, but nothing really interesting happened there. The surrounding area is however dotted with tiny villages that have not yet been tin-roofed, but retain their original style and charm. The Ngada people are supposedly all christians but their houses are themselves representing the traditional believes. Some are male, others are female and stones and tiny mock-up houses still represent ancient clan relations. All of this is set on the slopes of a couple of towering vulcanoes and it is wonderfully intrigueing to wander around in these places that so far has not kept their character just for the tourists (although that of course plays a significant role). We went around on motorcycles with a rather sketchy guide that I could have done without, but at least we had no trouble finding our way. In the last village, Wogo, a girl called Maria, with brilliant English that she has picked up from just talking with tourists like us, invited us in for tea. The houses are extremely basic. A front patio is used for chilling out, the next room is used to entertain visitors and such and the last room is used for sleeping and rituals. Apart from this she only had a very simple kitchen where we were seated and served tea and bananas fried in a sort of cheese dough. I enjoyed every second.

Our next goal was Moni and the ride there proved to be the most taxing so far. The bus had 17 passenger seats but we were well over 30 when the co-drivers that normally hang out on the roof had to go inside the bus itself as we drove through Ende. The lady next to me had a chicken in a box on her lap and didn't waste any oppotunity to scoop it over into my lap. The floor was jammed with all kinds of luggage so there wasn't really any room for legs and mine cramped up quite quickly. It was however the music again made the difference between a tough ride and one that was almost unbearable. The music taste of virtually all Indonesians is worse than can be imagined. The occasional Bryan Adams song is a big relief. Think DanskTop music with added techno rythms and then you are on the right track. As mentioned they turn it up so high that the distortion itself is quite agonizing but this particular bus had something up its sleeve. I have seen enough superhero movies to know that supervillains often try to make an earthquake-device. Such a thing was placed right underneath our seats in the shape of a subwoofer of insane proportions and whenever the driver hit the HELL-button this thing kicked in and quite often it didn't even seem to be synchronized with the music. There was a screen as well up front and most of the videos had karaokee subtitles and this does provide for a bit of commical relief. Like the song that is very popular right now in Indonesia that starts with one very puzzling sentence in English: "What am I going to do, but I can't do anything".

Again it was the landscape that saved the day. The road from Ende to Maumere is abolutely, incredibly, otherworldly stunning. It climbs up from the dull-looking town of Ende through a canyon with waterfalls and vertical drops that even beat what I saw in Bhutan. I guess the deciding factor is the volcanoes that do make it even more dramatic. When we finally reached the top of the canyon it was a short ride from there to Moni halfway to Maumere.

Memorable Moni

Moni is a destination for travellers for on primary reason. The Kelimutu vulcano and its three colored lakes. We went up there the following morning and saw the insides of a cloud but we decided to stay another night and later in the day it was "clear" enough to at least see the lakes. They change color frequently due to the minerals that the vulcano spits out and when this day one of them was pitch black, the second one was sort of rust-brownish and the last one was a screaming teal/turqoise color with golden specks on it. I did have to become absolutely soaked to the bone to get to see this and that detracted from the enjoyment, but hopefully I will get clear blue skies next time I visit Flores.

It was however not the lakes that provided the biggest experience during our visit to Moni. When we arrived the owner of the guesthouse, Brian, asked us if we wanted to go to a wedding party that night. "Absolutely!!". So around 7 o'clock Eric and I pulled out our finest clothes from the backpacks (yours truly found a clean shiny shirt) and found Brian and we headed down the road. There was a Bintang and Arak stop along the way. Bintang (star) is the leading brand of beer in Indonesia, but Arak is the locally made palm-sap liqour and it is quite nasty and pretty strong. As mentioned beer is pretty expensive so the tourists supplied that while the locals took care of the Arak. We did however know that we were going up Kelimutu at four in the morning so we were very conservative.

The party itself was a bit further down the road. The music started as we entered the "tent". A long line formed leading to the newlyweds where we congratulated the couple and made a donation to the cardboard box in front of them. The couple and the parents standing beside them looked like someone had died. Not the slightest hint that this was a happy occasion. The bride was wearing a hell of a lot of skin-whitener on her face and I had to concentrate hard not to laugh at the absurdity of how women from my part of the world work sooo hard to get a tan for their weddings.

Anyway, we got seated towards the back of it all among a group of younger men and a group of Spanish girls that only fifteen minutes before had been walking down the road and now found themselves in local party dress and they looked amazing. This triggered a hormonal rush among the local men and a French-Canadian guy, Chris, that unfortunately was following Eric and I like a horny stray dog, and the conversation more or less fully focused on how someone could get to fuck one of the Spanish girls. Chris was heavilly engaged in this and since he had already earlier this day revealed how he had learned that it was just fine to pay for sex in Thailand he became another name on my personal list of idiot Qebuecois that until this point had no exceptions. It was a bit funny when Brian, our "hotel" owner, revealed his master plan for getting a girl in the sack. "You get the drunk and take them to the hotsprings". He told us this as if he was the first man on earth to ever figure out that putting alcohol into a girl makes them put down their guard. While all of this is taking place an old toothless guy in an icehockey shirt who is clearly completely out of his wits has more or less permanently placed his bony hand on my inner thigh. I am not exactly comfortable with any of this but it is all quite incredibly entertaining.

When we went for something to eat we were standing in line behind a couple of nuns. A few local girls tried to get me out of the line and on to the dancefloor where the Spanish girls were dancing with kids. They still looked stunning though and the bride and groom looked like they are about to commit suicide. The food was pretty bad. Chris told us that he had been travelling with the Spanish girls for weeks and that they were snobs. Since he was a complete idiot I deducted that they must have had just a little bit of taste.

At this point the music had deteriorated into techno versions of late nineties Scandinavian bubble-gum pop. As "Doctor Jones" was playing we entered the dance floor. Women seemed to be grouped on the left and us men on the right. Indonesians are terrible, terrible dancers. One guy in a shiny shirt was extremely flamboyant and he immediately took a suspicious liking in me. He could not hit a beat if his life was on the line. Old-Toothless-Guy was there as well but danced like he was suffering from some sort of seizure. One guy with a giant afro was doing pretty well and he later proved to be Christo, my driver up the mountain. The guy that took the prize however was some sixty years old. He managed to dance to this techno inferno using only his index fingers. That was quite impressive!!! My biggest accomplishment was to get a few of the dancing men to do the "Colbert Move" from the Charlene song. Most of you have no idea what that is. Those of you that do will know how absolutely fantastic that moment was. Great night!!!

One more memory from Moni. The following night we went out for dinner with our new German neighbour Frank. I may actually travel with him later on but we will see how things work out. Anyway, Idiot Chris had fortunately left for Maumere so it was just the three of us. We found a place futher down the road and within minutes the host put on German Schlager music. I seriously didn't think that it could get any worse but "Die Rote Rosen" and other horrible tunes filled the night. Everyone in the restaurant was German except for Eric and I and they grew increasingly embarrased. The reastuarant owner was in fact trying to sing along. I love things like that. It is so surreal to be in a tiny village in the mountains on Flores and hear a local try to mimic those cheesy German lyrics.

Last leg on Flores

We headed further east from Moni and even beyond Maumere which for most travelers is the last stop on Flores. Eric and I were however on a mission that will be revealed in the next entry.

The landscape changed quite dramatically after Maumere. Eastern Flores is much drier, the coast is lined with mangrove forest and the volcanoes looks more menacing for some reason. It is definitely worth going there for the drive but our final destination, Larantuka, was a dull boring town and Eric and I had a very frustrating night in an Internet cafe (plane tickets and visa worries). It was around 9 o'clock when we finally left and all we really wanted was a cold beer, but that was nowhere to be found.

It didn't matter much though. We were about to embark on Project Sperm and I was trembling with expectations.

All the best
Jens

The next entry will follow soon.

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Photos

Flores Rice
The valleys and on the plateaus on Flores are covered with rice paddies. These terraces are near Moni.

Bena lookout
There are plenty of stunning views across the island. This is the view from Bena towards the ocean.

Ngada housewarming
The Ngada people living in the area around Bajawa have intricate rituals when a new house has been finished. The number of buffalo horns and pigs jawbones outside the house are memories of how elaborate the celebration was.

Totem pole
In the Ngada villages the totem poles get smeared in the blood from the offerings and get this lovely color.

Bena
Bena was the most spectacular of the Ngada villages that we visited. Volcanoes in the backyard and views to the ocean set the perfect scene.

Maria's home
This is the kitchen in Maria's home and her mother frying bananas.

Timber
Everybody helps when a new Ngada house is being built. They did have a few power-tools but most of the work was done using their bloody big knives.

Dual color
Two of the lakes on the Kelimutu volcano. The black one was behind me. I bet the colors are even more spectacular in sunlight.

Flores umbrella
Banana leaves are a very decent substitute if you left home without an umbrella.

Before the party
Sunset before we went to the wedding party in Moni.

Village view
Just a flowerpot in a Ngada village.

Coffee grinder
The coffee in Indonesia is excellent. Sumatra, Java and Flores have all been competing in serving us the best cup. When you are used to filtered coffee it does however take a while before you get used to the coffee grinds floating around in it. They grind it as finely as they can, but the first few slurps are a bit nasty.

Eastern Flores
Volcanoes on the eastern coast of Flores.

Comments

[Christian Spliid]

Awesome post
Oh the adventure! keep'em coming. fantastic reading.

[Heidi]

Hold da op Jens, du får dig da en på opleveren. Bryllup hvor brud og gom ser ud til ikke at nyde det hmmmm og "fede" teknorytmer i biler og busser LOL Stakkels dig. Men dejligt at høre at udsigten er super. Fedt at du gider skrive om dine oplevelser. Fortsat god rejse. Knus og kram

[rebeccah]

Hey Jens, another BRILLIANT entry. I thought chickens in crazy overcrowded buses was something from the movies! Gold. And those volcano lakes are awesome. Hard to imagine that amazing world is not so far away from here.

[Lyne]

You have a gift
You convey the sights surroundings you poetically. Beautiful!