Sumbawa, Week 9&10

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Week 9 & 10– Sumbawa

Day 56, December 7th, we woke up a bit sore from the trek. My legs were comparable to marathon sore since we had to keep our leg muscles engaged the entire trek due to the slipperiness of the path. We had a nice breakfast in the Bali. A guy we had met on the ferry from Bali came to visit and told us about a friends place in Sumbawa. We are realizing very quickly that many people want to do business with us and have land they want to sell. We are excited about the potential but cautious about the partnerships. We are on our way to Sumbawa today. The ferry is two hours from Tetubatu. We arrived in Sumbawa late evening. The ferry ride was quick thankfully since the boat was gross. Dirty bathrooms and mini cock roaches. We had an hour and a half drive to Sumbawa Besar (Literally mean Big city of the island). We didn’t know where we were staying or if anything would be open when we arrived around 10:30pm. We looked at a place just before town someone from Lombok recommended but it ended up having gross bathrooms. The next place we arrived at was, the Cendra Wasi Hotel, at the beginning of town. Very lack lusture basic clean rooms with A/C for US $18/night. We had a good night’s sleep.

Day 57, December 8th, we woke up around 8am. Today we had to do a few responsible things. We had to finish selecting wedding photos to get a list to our planner and find WiFi (pronounced Wee Fee in Indonesia) to send her the list. Also we had to get our mounting laundry cleaned. Two things that would have been simple in Bali but now we were quite a bit off the beaten path. Our afternoon expedition was to find WiFi. We stopped at a few places and soon realized no one really speaks or understands much English here. They don’t seem to get many tourists. Finally we ended up at a computer store and they understood and told us where the only WiFi in town was located. They said it was it was just across from the Airport and showed John on Google Earth. The map we had did not really indicate where the airport was exactly so we spent about an hour driving around to find the Internet place just 5 minutes from the computer shop. After Wee Fee we went to the local market area. Imagine a series of outdoor stales filled with beautiful fruit, food items and a mix of cheap clothing, plastic goods, stickers and pirated DVDs. I was excited to buy some fruit and new DVDs since we had seen all of the movies in our repetuar. We hit the jackpot with the DVD. Each DVD is a funky medley of 9 different movies linked by some bizarre theme for only $1 US each (awesome). One movie combo called Super Battlefield Action 4 features, The Hurt Locker, Shutter Island, Alice and Wonderland, Green Zone, The Job, The Final, the Crazies, Lucky Luke and Avatar all on one DVD. Also in the 5 DVD collection we bought Al Pacino vs. Robert De Niro ranging from the Godfater series to Meet the Parents. We ate at this understated locals restaurant, Ikan Bakar 99. At this place you order off a paper just like a sushi menu. We ordered grilled fish, shrimp , squid and what we thought was vegetables. When the food came they first brought a large plate of delicious crab. We thought it was a mistake until we asked how to say “crab” in Bahasa Indonesia and found out that we did not order vegetables but crab instead. Oops, it turned out to be a great mistake because the crab was amazing as was everything else we ordered. It was a seafood feast with a huge amount of food. I tried asking for dua “two” plates to eat from since they only brought the platters. Then they brought dua plates of grilled squid since I showed them that plate as an example when saying “dua”. We had so much food we gave the extra squid to the staff to eat. The best part was when the bill came for our feast it was only $20US even with the extra $5US I spent on the extra orders of squid.

Day 58, December 9th, we started our journey for Lakey Peak in the town of Hu’u. It is a six hour drive from Sumbawa Besar so we had ourselves a road trip. Sumbawa is a long island with a peninusula connecting the two large sides. They are considered separate islands of Sumbawa Besar and Bima. As we traveled the views changed from emerald rice fields and farmland to spectacular ocean and jungle on the peninsula. There were many lovely villages in between with friendly locals smiling and waving. We did not see any other tourists the entire trek. We came to Dompu, the last major town before the small village of Hu’u. We stopped to buy some fruit and veggies at the local market before we headed off the main road. We arrived in Lakey Peak at sunset. It is a magical place with mountainous jungle and expansive white sand beaches. It is also home to five world-class surf breaks, which makes it even more appealing to us. We checked into hotel Aman Gati. We choose to stay in one of the surf houses with ocean front views. We selected “the blue house” which we negotiated for $75US/night. We had a perfect view of the Lakey Peak surf break. We ended our day having cocktails from our porch and watching sunset.

Day 59, December 10th, we woke up early. We spent the morning exploring the villages of Hu’u. We visited the several amazing white sand beaches we visited. The surf was small but clean out front so we went and surfed for a few hours. We surfed again in the afternoon until sunset.
Day 60, Dec 11th, we spent the entire day at the resort. The weather was overcast with looming rain clouds. We had a fun surf out front at Lakey Peak in the morning. After a few hours we paddled in and had lunch before relaxing in our room. We came in for a nice lunch then relaxed watching a movie in our surf house. It had a living room and TV so it was a pretty comfortable place. They even had limited cable so that unfortunately sucked us in a few times. After a nice rest we surfed again in the afternoon until sunset. We ventured down the beach to try another restaurant for dinner. We went to the Lakey Peak Inn since it was the most crowded. The restaurant was a very basic open air bamboo stucture with plastic outdoor chairs and wooden tables. There was a bar with a DJ (of some sorts). The other entertainment was a TV playing surf movies and a busy pool table. Most of the patrons we feral surf dudes that were in Sumbawa for months at a time. The locals are really cool and friendly. John and I talked with Jamica, a boat captain (of sorts), to set up a boat ride for the next day. On the way back to the hotel we saw another bar playing the Golden State Warriors game so we stopped to watch over a beer.

Day 61 , December 12th, we woke up to a stormy morning. Since it was raining we postponed our boat trip and slept in. We woke up late and had a nice breakfast. We surfed Lakey Peak again. It was kind of windy so the waves were not the best but it was good to get some exercise. We went to dinner at Fatma’s, which turned out to be the best food in Hu’u. Not to mention the great service of her friendly kids who are the servers. The restaurant set up is almost identical to that of Lakey Peak. One reason may be due to the fact Fatma, a local woman, and the owner of Lakey Peak Inn, a bizarre French guy, where once married. It is funny they work next door to each other competing for the same patrons. I think Fatma’s definitely got him beat on the food but Lakey Peak Inn is more of a bar scene (well as much as they have here in this sleepy village).

Day 62, December 13th, we woke up early for our boat trip. The boat was big and wooden and kind of slow. We visited a couple nearby surf spots and did some snorkeling. We found a great wave at the end and had a nice surf before it started to storm. We made it back to the hotel and back to Fatma’s for dinner where we watched a terential downpour while we dined.

Day 63, December 14th, we left Lakey and started heading for Yoyo’s (a twelve hour drive on some horrible roads). We set out early morning and as we just made it off the two hour stretch of flooded pothole road, we noticed a strange sound as we arrived back on solid pavement. It turned out our back tire was completely blown. Within seconds people were stopping to help us. I made a caution sign out of large leafy branches sticking in the bad tire and placed it near the busy road (a common method for makeshift hazard signs around Indonesia). We put on the spare but had to get it fixed in the next big town, which was Sumbawa Besar. Once a local guy escorted us to the tire shop the people we very helpful and had the tire fixed before I could walk through the produce market across the street. With our set backs we didn’t arrive at Yoyo’s until 1:30am. We stayed the night at Yoyo’s hotel which was just alright.

Day 64, December 15th, we started exploring mid morning after catching up on some sleep. The surrounding area and beaches are beautiful. We found a new place to stay called Tropical. It is set right on a white beach with a fun surf wave and great snorkeling/diving. We surfed first and had the wave to ourselves before the only other surfing patron joined us. He was a cool guy from Australia who currently lived in Bangkok, Thailand. We had him join us for dinner since he was there on his own. The dive master speared us fresh fish earlier that day that he prepared for our dinner. It was awesome.

Day 65, December 16th, we surfed the uncrowded peak most of the morning. Then later in the day went snorkeling. John borrowed a spear from the dive master. We saw tons of beautiful coral and lots of fish including a large reef shark. We surfed again at sunset. It was so great to have such athletic days but by the evening we were pretty exhausted.

Day 66-68, December 17th-19th, we spent the days at Tropical surfing, snorkeling and eating fresh fish. We did get out for a bit of exploring, including a trip to a “secret surf spot” which turned out to be a big hallow wave for John to surf. We really loved the area as one of our favorite places during our Indonesia travels. We would definitely go back.

Day 68-72, December 19th-23rd, we drove straight through Lombok and made our way back to Uluwatu by the 20th with a quick stop in Padangbai. We went back to our favored Gobleg. The family was excited to see us and said we could not stay in the $12/night room for our honeymoon so they upgraded us to the master villa where we spent our final days in Indonesia. It rained most of the time except the afternoon of our last day. I checked our ticket to see our flight was at 8:45pm to Taipei. We had time for one final surf and headed to Gerger beach. We had a great final surf and were heading back. I called my mom to let her know we were ready to start our travels home to the states. She asked it we were at the airport and I told her we had just finished a surf and were going to grab dinner before getting to the airport at 6:30. She panicked and told me she thought our flight was at 3:25 (the same one they left on after the wedding). Oh no she was right! I read the ticket print our incorrectly and thought we were leaving to Taipei at 8:45, not arriving there at that time. Luckily China airlines was very understanding and did not charge us to change to the redeye leaving at 2:30am. We arrived in LA in time to celebrate my god daughter’s birthday and get back to Phoenix late evening of December 23rd as planned. We arrived just in time to celebrate Christmas with the family and our New Year’s Wedding celebration in the states. It was a long and amazing trip with so many special memories and adventures we will always cherish. Thanks to everyone who followed us and supported us through this first leg of our journey. Stay tuned for our adventures in Africa.

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