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It has been a while since we have updated the old travel blog, the main reason being we stopped traveling for a couple of months therefore there seemed to be no need.
The reason for the suspension of travelling for two months was arriving in Gili Air, an idyllic island off Lombok in Indonesia. I will steal the words of my friend Grace whom we met up with in Indonesia as she is a far greater wordsmith than I;
'Gili Air is the island that time forgot. There are no cars or motorbikes here, if you don't want to get around by foot or bicycle then your only other option is pony and trap. Woodworm ravaged rowing boats line the deserted shore, moth eaten lace parasols sit propped in wooden lamp posts like abandoned remnants of ghost guests. The few local Indonesians who man their beach-side restaurants sit languidly under palm trees strumming buffeted old guitars, weather beaten shacks stuffed with carbonated drinks and chocolate biscuits for the few stranded homesick tourists hide amongst inner island greenery whilst the odd lonely, untethered cow grazes through the thick forest floor. The tide is high, the crystal sea is deep and crowded with schools of hazel-eyed, marble-shelled turtles tranquilly coasting in the ripping currents.'
http://gallivantingandgoodness.blogspot.com
I would also like to add that there is one dog on the island, his name is Toby and he has the head of a Labrador and the body of a poodle. No one knows how he got there...
Anyhow, we ended up staying in Gili Air for so long as the diving there was so beautiful that I decided that I wanted to become a Dive master, and that takes a bit of time. We dived with Blue Marlin dive centre, who were such a great group of people and we spent pretty much every day there, diving, chatting, swimming, sunbathing, reading, 'working' and talking about food. Good times. Anyways, skip to the end, I am now a dive master and we are on the move again.
During our stay we had to do a brief visa run to Kuala Lumpur which went ; boat,bus,boat,cab,plane, sleep in airport, bus, train, get visa, shop, eat, train, bus, plane, cab, got drunk and sang karaoke in Kuta, bus, boat, bus, boat, back.
So travelling started again with a four day boat trip around Indonesia to the islands of Komodo and Flores. We were apprehensive to say the least before we got caught the boat, as we had some warnings that sleeping on the deck when the weather was bad wasn't so great, but we lucked out on the weather and besides the incredible noise from the engine it was pretty plain sailing. We stopped off on a few desert islands on route for some snorkeling and trekking and some of the guys did some spear fishing to catch us some lunch. I steered clear as the headline ‘English man in Indonesian spear fishing horror’ kept going through my head.
On the fourth day we reached Komodo and began our trek at around 8am in search of the infamous dragons. At the beginning of our trek we were told that on the neighboring island of Rinca, one of the tour guides had recently been bitten by a dragon and was in hospital paralysed. They also told us that the more spritely dragons can reach a top speed of 20 km an hour, a worrying fact as I had chosen to wear flip-flops for the trek. We wandered around Komodo for an hour and didn’t come across anything more interesting than a snail until we reached the canteen area at the end of the tour where there were a couple of small dragons sitting in a bush. We took around a thousand photos of these and then got back on the boat to head to the neighboring island of Rinca, where we were told we were more likely to see the bigger dragons as they were more aggressive there and weren’t scared to come near humans…
On arrival to Rinca the heavens opened turning the dirt tracks through the island, into a bog of mud. I continued to wear flip-flops which made progress slow. When we got to the rangers hut to start the trek we were met by eight huge dragons lying there staring at us. Truly terrifying creatures. We started our trek through the forest and after an hour we arrived at a clearing with a ravine running through it which was filled with the horns and spinal columns of recently deceased buffaloes, it was kicking out a right pong. Two huge dragons were in the process of ripping meat of one of the carcasses around 5 metres away from us. If one started coming towards us the guides would go near it and poke it with a stick to shoo it away. If I worked there I would demand at least a high caliber gun. We stayed there for about fifteen minutes whilst the female ate and the larger male gave us the eyeball. When we have better internet connection we will upload the photos as it really was amazing.
We arrived in Labuanbajo Flores later that evening and as there were a few of us on the boat who wanted to dive, we arranged a boat to take us diving in Komodo national park the next day. I won’t babble on too much about the diving but on the way to the dive sites we had dolphins jumping alongside our boat, and on one of the dives we saw 35 manta rays, the biggest about 4 metres across. We saw one at a time at first, and then saw them in twos and threes as they swooped over our heads and got close enough for us to touch. There was a ripping current so we covered about a kilometer of the dive site with Mantas swimming around us, past us and over us. If anyone is planning on diving here I would really recommend Reefseekers who really took care of us and kept bringing us coffee throughout the day. Cant say better than that!
Labuanbajo in Flores is not the most picturesque place but we stayed there to dive, and also for one day of relaxation we spent the day using a 5 star hotel’s swimming pool and sun loungers. As it is low season we were pretty much the only ones there, and as well as a huge fresh water pool they also had a private beach which was a nice touch.
The following day we arranged a bus to take us across Flores to one of the villages. I will not go into the details but the bus never turned up and Katie and I had to have a few words with the bloke who sold us the ticket. Five hours later we were on a different bus taking us to a different town. We stopped overnight in a little town called Ruteng but as we didn’t see it in daylight there isn’t really anything to note.
We then planned to get the public bus for the following day to take us across the island to Moni which is the village that you stay in to visit the crater lakes of Kelimutu. The bus journey took around 9 hours, and was particularly awful as the bus was kitted out with a sound system that would be more at home in Fast and the Furious, and the driver insisted on a full blast playlist of either Celine Dion or Trance with the sub making our seats rumble for the full nine hours.
When we reached Moni we were a little disappointed as the Lonely Planet description of a quaint little village surrounding by rice paddies didn’t quite hit the mark. A better description would have been ‘a few shacks on a road’. Lonely Planet is usually pretty good, but I am not sure if any of their writers have ever been to Indonesia as descriptions and advice are just plain wrong. This being said we were just happy to be off the bus, so we weren’t too downhearted.
We awoke at 4.30 the following morning, got some warm clothes on and got on the back of motorbikes to take us up to the top of Kelimutu for sunrise. Kelimutu is the site of three crater likes at the top of a volcano and the colour of each lake is different and changes at different times of the year. I have made it sound boring but it really is beautiful. Through lack of anything else to do we walked the 13km back down from the lakes, through villages, and past waterfalls. It was really nice and whenever we got lost, or when four scared cows blocked our path, the villagers would come and help us. They were all really lovely and the kids enjoyed pointing at me and saying ‘white tourist, money’.
We are now in Maumere, a charmless town where we are staying until our flight back to Bali tomorrow. It’s not all bad though, we pushed the boat out and have aircon and cable TV. Simple pleasures. We will be in Bali for another week and then the S.E Asia section of the travels will be over after eight months, and we will be campervanning around New Zealand for seven weeks.
We will try not to leave it as long for the next update and we will upload photos when the internet connection is better. Hoping everyone at home is well. Dean and Katie xxx
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