Blogs from Togean Islands, Sulawesi, Indonesia, Asia - page 3

After leaving Tentena at eleven its was a very windy road to Poso. We stayed in Hotel Kartika a very nice hotel in a not very interesting town. So Lara and myself tried to venture out to the town but got that much hassle it didn't last long. We had to wait for the boys to come back from Lindu NP so we would be spending two nights here. Thank God for the nice hotel! With very poor internet access the day generally involved reading and looking over plans and not much else. The hotel put a buffet on for just us for breakfast and dinner which was so nice of them as we really didn't want to go out! But we did manage to book the minibus to Ampana for 9am ish and accommodation, ... read more

Kaddidiri is the island we stayed on last time and we wanted to go back here for familiarity then move to Bomba where there is a more basic place to stay. At this point though we just didn't want to stay in Ampana for more than one night. They told us that we could go with the owner on her speedboat straight to Kaddidiri and it would take 1 hour instead of 5, but we would have to stay at their resort Paradise and pay up front on card as we didn't have enough cash to cover the full cost. We didn't like the idea of this as we were stuck staying there if we paid up front and last time we had looked at the rooms there they weren't as nice as Black Marlins. Again ... read more

This all started in Gorantalo when I wanted to withdraw a few million Rupiahs for my journey through the Togeans. The ATM would only dispense me 1.25million and for some unknown reason I thought that was my limit for the day. I would later learn that I could have reinserted my card and done that same transaction several times. The next day I completed the same transaction and by my calculations, I would have enough just for my stay. By the third last day on the Islands I still had 420 000rp left, I decided that I would like to see the Bajo Village. I had read about the people they call the Sea Gypsies and to date I hadn’t met anyone else interested in going with me to share the costs of hiring a boat ... read more

By the fourth day on Kadidiri I had unpacked my backpack, fell into the routine of island life and completely lost all track of time and dates. Whilst on Kadidiri I found myself reunited with an old friend, the sea. Never one to stray too far from the ocean in my life, I have relished the time here to be up close and personal with the shores on the Island. I am reminded of a time as a child when I would spend the entire school holidays without shoes and be permanently salty and very tan from life by the sea. My time here on Kadidiri has made me realise just how privileged I have been in my life to have always had the ocean so close to me. I have relished yet again, days without ... read more

The Togean are a group of equatorial islands in the Maluku Sea. They are embraced by the northern arms of Sulawesi, which itself is just one of the 17,000 islands that together make up the worlds largest archipelago, Indonesia. In a land of islands, where the sea is a constant in many of its inhabitant’s lives, the Togean remain a beautiful example of how this relationship must have started. Whereas somewhere like Jakarta is representative of the dirty, industrialised apotheosis of a seafaring nation's relationship with the sea, the sparsely populated Togeans are indicative of a humbler, less overtly materialistic interpretation of this symbiosis. The Togean are almost entirely populated by indigenous Togeans and the Bajo, a race of seafarers whose existence has always been linked inextricably with the sea. The thread that binds the Bajo ... read more