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.