ANA AND ANDY FLORES, INDONESIA. 9 JULY 2014

Trip to flores...

We were up at 4.30am as our pick up for our rescheduled flight was 5am (second time lucky, hopefully!).  So up early doors and we caught the last part of the Germany vs Brazil world cup game which woke us and our fellow passengers up a little!  To the airport and safely on the plane for our short hop to Flores.  

Our stumpy little plane on the tarmac in Labuan Bajo

Phew, our bags are in there - Andy's is the orange one hanging off the side!

We arrived at Komodo airport and hopped onto the tarmac and into the terminal which was still being built.  We’d booked a really nice place to stay in Labuan Bajo (the town we stayed in on Flores Island) and they included a pick up so we hopped into the tuk tuk style pickup truck (called bemos here) and were whisked to Villa Seirama Alam.

Wide boi style in Flores, this ride was certainly 'pimped'!

We’d really struck lucky with this place, a beautiful house which was split into different rooms with views across the harbour.  Owned by a German guy – Volker and managed by a local Indonesian lady – Kristina.  They ran a tight ship, the place was immaculate the breakfasts were great and Volker was helpful for local things to-do and even bought us some cheesecake from the local bakery (cheers Volker!).

View from our room

The gardens at our villa

We sat and enjoyed the views for a bit, got chatting to Volker and Kristina and then headed into town for an explore.  Labuan Bajo town is a dusty and ramshackle street with restaurants, travel agencies and shops all aimed at tourists who come to dive, sail, trek and snorkel in the Komodo National Park.  

We looked around these places as we wanted to head into the park to see the Komodo dragon and do some diving/snorkelling.  After dropping by 6 or 7 different places we needed a place to sit and go over what was on offer to us, so we stopped for lunch at one of the several Italian eateries in town (apparently a lot of Italians have migrated here and set up businesses doing what Italians do best - food!).  We ate lunch and decided to book a day tour with a local company recommended by Volker - Hans Komodo Expeditions, who would take us into Komodo National Park  (Rinca Island specifically) and then drop us off at a snorkelling site (Kelor) on the way back.  Andy had decided to go diving on a separate trip the following day.

Lunchtime view

Backstreets of Labuan Bajo

The mosque was the most impressive building in town, and the noisiest :)

We headed to a local bar to catch sunset and visited the local fish market for dinner after.  Dinner was a bargain and we had a whole grilled fish served with salad and rice for less than 2 quid each.  Dinner with the locals over it was time to head back and enjoy our luxury accommodation.

Sunset from the bar

We chose one of these, think they looked a little shocked

Seaside dining

Up early the next day for our trip to Rinca and Kristina had cooked our breakfast the night before so we could scoff it down before our walk to the harbour to meet the boat.  We got to the office and met up with our fellow passengers – a couple of Spanish girls and a French couple – Fernando and Sabine.  We walked to the harbour where our ‘guide’ (a young lad who was employed to follow us around for the day) tried to figure out who would be our skipper across to Rinca island.  Aboard we sat and enjoyed cruising across the islands within the Komodo National Park.  

Right, so which one's ours?

Views across the bay

Crystal clear water

Enjoying the early morning boat trip

We finally made it to Rinca just over and hour and half after leaving Labuan Bajo and headed into the Park.  We were met by the lads who would be our ‘rangers’ (young boys with big sticks) for the trek on Rinca and would protect us from the Komodo dragons.  Fees paid and guide introduced we set off as a gang of 6 plus 2 guides around Rinca.  As soon as we set off we saw a dragon hanging by the entrance and it was a young one who was soaking up the sun.  As we moved on a little further then we saw a big dragon who was enjoying the shade and didn't move an inch.  After that we walked around in the sun for an hour with no more dragons but spectacular views and time to realise that the Spanish girls we were stuck on the tour with were really annoying (Andy: maybe we're getting a bit old?).  We got chatting with Fernando and Sabine, they were good company, a French couple who were on an endless travel adventure with their little van – Caracolito (little snail) and sense of adventure.  

Finally at the park on Rinca Island

I think this one looks hungry!

Little one scurrying around

Our group, Fernando, Sabine and the Spanish girls

We headed back on the boat, ate our lunch and then headed to the snorkelling site.  During which time one of the Spanish girls sunbathed on the front of the boat and the guide started to take sneaky shots of her on his mobile phone!!  We caught his eye and laughed and he realised he’d been caught!  We snorkelled for an hour or so and then headed back to shore and back to our guesthouse.

Ah ha, a biggun!

This dragon is going nowhere fast

Great views

'So you just use this stick to fend off any man eating dragons'

For dinner we headed out to an Italian (Made in Italy), and we were not disappointed!  We had pizzas as good as we would’ve had in Italy right in the little harbour town of Labuan Bajo, Indonesia! 

Humm... interesting choice for an amuse-bouche! Certainly amused mine - see what I did there :)

Best pizza and beer in a long time!

Next day we’d decided to relax and appreciate our accommodation and also .  So we had a lazy start, tasty pancake and fruit breakfast cooked by Kristina and sat and watched the world go by.  Later in the day we headed into town for a coffee and Andy explored the dive shops to see who would take him out the next day.  We had another fish market dinner and got ourselves back to the guesthouse to set up Skype ready for the Mientkiewicz wedding.  We were invited to the intimate occasion and didn’t want to miss out so Miss Smith enabled us to Skype into the registry office in Lymington, New Forest. 

We got a pretty good reception into the wedding and loved being able to still be part of it, although we had sent face masks across to Sarah (Emma’s sister) for the guests to wear so we could appear in some of the photos J 

Our roomie!

Andy was chuffed to have some new company

This is us in the mirror watching the wedding on the laptop - yes we took a picture of ourselves watching a laptop

Next day Andy went off early to dive in Komodo National Park and I spent the day exploring on foot and bumping into the locals. 

And this is his account of the dive:

After a lot of asking at dive shops up and down the main street, I finally settled on a dive outfit that I was happy to go out with ‘Wicked Diving’ it took a lot of discussion as all of the companies were taking different trips to different sites and I was keen to go to some of the better sites, however some of the dive sites also had pretty intense currents and I was keen to ensure I understood what I was letting myself in for! It ended up with a very small group of us meeting around 7:30 the next morning, 5 in all heading out to 2 dive sites in Komodo National Park. 

The first was a shallower ‘try dive’ at Sabayur Kecil to ensure we were all still proficient and weren’t going to struggle at the next site. The reef was truly stunning and we saw some new fish for me, the leaf trigger scorpion fish and quite a spectacular lionfish too! Next we headed on to another site Tatawa Besar, one of the most unspoilt portions of the Komodo Park reef systems, this was a deeper drift dive in quite a strong current but we just went with it and the boat would pick us up at the other end. From start to finish for about 45 mins we just cruised over an unbroken carpet of vibrant coloured coral with amazing sealife including my first turtle. I was pretty chuffed with myself as I was the one to spot it and point it out to the group. It was hard work staying with it swimming quite hard into the current just to stay still but it was worth the effort as we stayed with it for 5 mins or so as it tore up pieces of the reef to chew on the growth underneath. The water was pretty warm and the visibility was excellent, again certainly the most amazing dive to date, I would certainly recommend wicked to anyone in the area thinking of diving! 

We met up with Fernando and Sabine in the evening for drinks at the sunset bar and also bumped into another lad (a Dane called Peter) that we’d met when our flight was initially cancelled.  We’d told Fernando and Sabine about the Italian restaurant and they’d decided to head there and after finishing our drinks we also decided to head back along too with Peter, we should be getting a discount for all of this additional custom!

   

Up early the next day for our 8am ferry from Labuan Bajo with an end destination of Gili Islands off of Lombok.  So our journey looked a little like this:

8am Ferry to Sape (takes 9 hours) – bus from Sape to Bima (takes 1 hour) – bus from Bima to Mataram (takes 12 hours including a ferry journey) – taxi from Mataram to the Gili port (took 1 hour) and boat to Gili Air (takes 45mins)

The first leg of our journey from Flores to Lombok, cleverly disguised as the IOW ferry - it's not!

Eugh… But we hadn’t budgeted for a flight back towards Bali so overland transport was our budgeted option.  This time we’d only booked the first bit of the journey and then booked and paid for the journey as it took place.

Unsure if the tales of the journey would work well in written form but the boat was tiresome, smokey and showed 1970’s Indonesian slapstick comedy movies, think Carry On but with people laughing in all the wrong places.....  The first bus squeezed more people on it than it should’ve done, the last bus was quite luxurious and the taxi from Mataram took quite a bit of haggling.  The last boat was like being in a Viking ship crossing the pacific rammed full of locals and their produce to sell on the islands which Andy put his bag on top of and got told off by an old local lady!  Oh and we picked up a fellow traveller – Michael who we’d hang out with for the next couple of days.

ANDY AND ANA, BROMO AND KUTA, INDONESIA 5 JULY 2014

Bromo and a little stint in Kuta, twice.

Back on the train, this time to Probolinggo.  This is a small town which is the gateway to catch a local bus up to Mount Bromo (volcano which you can visit).  We’d heard allsorts about the local bus and had decided to stay the night in town to give us plenty of time to figure out what to do and next.  We stayed at a local hotel and tried to look for something entertaining to do in town and decided that eating was the best thing and that wasn't great!  So we headed across to the ‘bus-stop’ the next day and were told we just needed to wait for more passengers, standard Asian way of travelling so that’s fine.  We bumped into a Russian couple – Ilya and Irin- who’d also been told the same thing.  Only problem was that it was a mini bus that seated 10 and they wouldn't budge until there were 15 of us in it! 

The bus that wouldn't move, until it was filled with grumpy Western travellers sat on top of one another

So the wait began… We got chatting to Ilya and Irin and they were great company so time passed pretty easily.  After the first hour 2 others showed up for the bus, after another hour another 2 showed up for the bus.  So after 2 hours we were only an 8 man strong team and the bus wanted 15, people weren’t keen on paying any extra so we had to wait.  After 3 hours very few people came, we even lost one person in the battle of wills to get this bus up to the volcano. 

After much haggling and trying to reason with the driver we managed to depart with 11 of us in the bus after a 3hr30min wait and only paying an extra few pence extra each… Ouch!  There genuinely was no other way up to the volcano unless we hired our own car or got on a motorbike (and this is one journey not to make on the back of a local bike!).
 

Up at the volcano the next job was to find somewhere to stay.  There were few options that you could book in advance and the ones that you could were either full or the price of a mid-range hotel in a big city.  So we had a look around and chose the first place we came across, random empty house in the middle of a town which is built around the volcano tourism.  We were there with another couple and am sure a few others joined in later, a bit of a random wander but this is a tiny town so anywhere is fair game to charge tourists to stay. 

We’d arranged to meet with Ilya and Irin a bit later on to head up to the viewpoint which we wanted to go to for sunrise the next morning.  So after a short walk through town and some food we met up with them and headed up for a sunset/evening view of the volcano.  Back to town for dinner at the place every one eats (and people happy to be ripped stay there too! Cafe Lava) and then off to bed as we were planning to get up at 4am for the sunrise the next morning. 

Ready Rotton...

Standing to unnecessary attention - head torch in pocket!

Up early and head torches on, we met up with Ilya and Irin to start the walk up to the sunrise point.  We knew the way but it was still very dark with lots of strange noises around us… Anywho we made it to the first point to see why it was worth the early start.  I won’t dribble on here as the photos say it all.

First stop and the sun is starting to make an appearance

So is the lady who is selling tea!

Ilya and Irin, a very friendly couple travelling from Russia

We walked up from the valley below the clouds!

Not a bad backdrop, eh!

More is revealed as the sun rises

After walking between different viewpoints, it was time to head back down and onto the bus back into town.  We’d been promised that a bus would leave at 9am to take us back into town but this time were worried that there would be too many people to fit in, so made a hasty retreat and piled into the rapidly filling bus. Back in town and we had quite a long wait for our next journey.

As you can guess, we took a lot of photos

Mount Bromo in the foreground

I'm on top of the world... not really just on a ledge at a view point

We’d booked a night bus from Probolinggo to Bali, which involved an overnight ferry crossing between Java and Bali. So we headed back to the hotel we’d stayed at the day before and used their wifi and ate for what seemed like 12 hours, actually thinking about it, it was 12 hours! We headed across to the bus station to wait and found out the bus was delayed, then somehow cancelled, mechanical issues of course!  So we were left around 10pm in the evening with the guy who sold us our ticket driving us around town to find the bus (or any bus I think to post us on to).  After another hour a bus arrived, not quite what we’d booked considering what we paid but after hurrying another guy out of his seat to sit on the luggage two seats appeared. Prime position right next to some sort of hot exhaust leak and next to the toilets.

One is not amused

We had a meal break stop where everyone gets treated to a mid journey meal and drink before heading back onto the bus to try and sleep.  We crossed on the ferry whilst we dozed/tried to sleep through the bus fumes and arrived in Bali early doors the next day.  We took the bus as far as we could towards Kuta and then hopped off the bus to find a taxi for the final leg of the journey.

We only needed to stay in Kuta for the evening as our flight to Flores was booked for early the next day, so we had booked into a hotel near to the airport which was pretty swish by our standards J  We hailed a cab and got about half way when the driver decided that he’d got an alternative appointment which was more important and therefore couldn't take us all the way.  So he stopped on a road somewhere and negotiated with another cabbie to take us into Kuta.  At this point (sleep deprived and also after a very long day…) Andy had a little tantrum and told the guy that this was NOT OK!  So we paid him what we owed (actually quite a bit less than on the meter due to the inconvenience!) and jumped into cab number 2 all the way to Kuta.

Our own spa room at the hotel, I'm now wondering how Andy behaves when he's having a massage in private...

Tuna for dinner, yum yum

We arrived a little early to the hotel and our room wasn’t ready. We’d not been able to shower up at the volcano or the night before so were starting to smell of eau de body odour so asked to use showers.  The only free ones were up in the Spa!  So we had the Spa room to ourselves so we could have a wash (actually had a bath, shower and general preen and made the most of the smellies knocking around but drew the line at lighting the scented candles!) and feel a little more human before heading out to Kuta town for food and a mooch.

Balinese temple

Outside the temple, you can't go into that many of them here...

Still needing to top up Andy’s missing supplies, we headed to the malls (shopping centres to us lot) to search for a few items and have a well-deserved coffee.  Back to the hotel and it was time to relax and head to bed ready for our flight the next day.  We’d got up early to go and have breakfast out and found a nice place where they served Andy eggs on top of a massive plate of cheesy potatoes with ham in them, one happy lad.  

Happy breakfast

The hotel dropped us at the airport and we checked ourselves in.  After an hour we received the tannoy announcement that our flight was cancelled…apparently this happens a lot with the domestic flights between Indonesian islands. We retrieved our luggage again (Andy: it hadn't got lost - hurrah!) and headed to the customer service desk to see what was going to happen next.  To our surprise the deal was we could fly the next morning and be put up for the night or get a refund, easy (they clearly do this a lot!).  

Temple offerings... Some had cigarettes, drinks and food in them too!

Mitch Buchanan aka Andy Rotton running into the surf

Final Kuta dinner, ribs n soup a plenty

The banquet - you'll need to tilt your head as it's taken me an age to get this photo here!

So we said yes please to the next day travel and waited for our transfer back into Kuta for another short stop.  We spent the day heading to the beach, exploring temples and heading into the busy part where ‘all the tourists’ – aka us and every other person who says that – go.  One more Kuta dinner allowed for us to find a small local restaurant serving the best ribs and broth we’ve had - ever, meaty goodness and a funky little business by some local lads.

Next stop Flores...Fingers crossed!