Flores

We sailed on from the rustic little harbour town of Lomblen harbour on Lembata Island on Friday 17 August. This is a remote part of Indonesia that gets few outside visitors. It’s poor, noisy and squalid and the litter is just awful, but it is also quaint and very exotic.

Most of the traffic and cargo is still carried in these ancient traditional Indonesian ships, called Pinisi.

Re-provisioned, we went back to Kroko Atoll for some more snorkelling.

From the surface Kroko Atoll is just a sandbar, with a few tiny islands a bit further away.

After a bit more snorkelling in the morning we moved on to Teluk Sagu on the small island of Adonara. We saw Anjea, one the the other yachts on the Sail Indonesia Rally, anchored in the far protected corner of this pretty bay.

We went ashore, unfortunately without the camera, and walked about the village. It was neat and tidy and litter-free, a very pleasant surprise.

 After an early start and a long day we arrived at Tangung Belabatung, our first stop on Flores, one of the biggest of the Indonesian Islands. We spent two nights anchored in the dead-calm of this uninhabited little bay, walking on the beach and of course, snorkelling.

A few fisherman visited and didn’t catch anything.

Later that night we saw lots of big fish jumping about and so I went out in the Kayak to try my luck with the rod, but I didn’t catch anything either.

Next up was a gathering of the rally yachts at the Sea World resort near the the town of Maumere.

A bunch of us filled up a minibus and went on an all day tour. First stop was a cafe for a doughnut based breakfast. Notice the cigarette advert with the slogan “Never Quit”!

We drove on winding roads through the jungle …

… past lush rice paddies and vegetable gardens …

… and bamboo houses.

Part of the tour was a visit to a village where some old lady told some highly unlikely stories about her ancestors and their traditions.

Cocoa beans (for chocolate) being dried:

The highlight of the tour was the Kelimutu Volcano. On top are three crater-lakes, all slightly different colours, steaming far below …

Sailing on, we passed volcanic hills of north Flores and anchored at Batu Boga in clear water on white sand in front of a small fishing and farming settlement.

Two other boats from the rally were with us: Patrick and Edith, a Swiss couple on Allure and Margie and Jeremy, Australians on Moonshadow.  After a swim all six of us went ashore for a beach walk but were immediately invited to sit with the local family and given coffee and coconuts.

This is Petrus: proud farmer, fisherman and family man.

Then we headed on to Tangung Karterbileh (near Kaburia), another uninhabited little bay with a small sandy beach and a super little reef.

  As always seems to happen in these places, fishing boats appear out of the blue.

It’s sad and pathetic but there really are very few decent sized fish left on these reefs and this was all that this poor man had been able to catch:

We left the next day, yet another day of no wind and so our noisy but trusty little Yanmar engine had to do all the work. Again.

Then we arrived in Riung, a little town on the edge of the tourist zone. Tied up on the town Jetty are a few local launches that have been converted to basic dive charter boats.

Its quiet a pleasant little place with a couple of restaurants and hostels aimed at foreign backpackers and adventurous divers. We stocked up with fresh fruit and vegetables from the local market and had a couple of our diesel Jerry cans refilled.

We then had two long windless days of motoring along the Flores north coast.

At the end of the first day we anchored at Lingeh Bay, a little village notorious for excessive begging. And sure enough we had a stream of kids and their parents coming past in dugouts demanding stuff. Those of us who’ve been to the Eastern Cape can deal with this: treats for the first boat and then “sorry none left” for the rest. On the next day we arrived in Gili Bodo, a little tropical paradise of clear water and a super reef. I didn’t take any pictures, but anyone still reading this has seen enough of my underwater coral reef shots. It’s more of the same here, only a bit better.

We then arrived in Labuan Bajo, the easternmost town on Flores and the base for all the tourist action for seeing Komodo Dragons and some of the worlds best scuba diving. The harbour is crammed with dive charter boats. Most of them are rather beautiful traditional Indonesian Pinisi ships, refitted for tourists. 

Labuan Bajo was a chance for us to get fresh produce and more fuel. And as we were anchored off from a beach resort it was also a chance for us to refuel ourselves with cheap Indonesian Bintang beer and a decent restaurant meal.

And then it was Saturday, September 1^st, Marcelle’s birthday. We thought we’d better do something a bit special, so we went to Rinca Island which is adjacent to and slightly smaller than Komodo Island to see the Komodo Dragons. These giant lizards weigh-in at up to 100 kg! They’re carnivorous, poisonous and fearless.

Park rules are that you have to be accompanied by a park ranger, who is armed with a big stick.

According to the park ranger the dragons prey on water buffalo, wild pigs, monkeys and even people if they get the chance. Most of the one’s that we saw were hanging about the back of the staff quarters and evidence on the ground and on their ugly faces suggests that they actually subsist on kitchen scraps.

Nevertheless the Park insists that these are wild animals in the native habitat and it is not a zoo and they don’t feed the animals. One of the biggest dragons, waving it’s long forked tongue about sampling the tastes of the air flaying about made a determined swagger towards a group of tourists, among them was a young pretty Spannish woman. The park ranger turned to her asked quite bluntly “Are you menstruating?” She was squirming with embarrassment and while the oblivious ranger continued “Period bleeding, yes? Dragon very sensitive to smelling blood”. The poor girl almost wilted into her shoes. I doubt the ranger got much of a tip from that group!

Rinca is surprisingly dry.

The walk around the park was short and a bit disappointing. We only saw two more dragons.

When we got back to our dinghy we found it had been overtaken by monkeys!

We departed from Rinca at 11am and headed north and before we had decided which of the many nearby and apparently superb snorkelling sites we would like to spend the rest of Marcelle’s birthday at, the gearbox failed. This is an area of lots of little islands and submerged reefs and hopelessly inaccurate charts and strong currents and fickle winds and one the the last places I’d choose to be in a boat without an engine. It was a tense moment and not quite the birthday surprise that Marcelle would have liked!  A passing dive boat gave us a short tow away from a reef that was uncomfortably close. And then we had to sail properly and really use the sails efficiently to get back to Labuan Bajo. But it turned into a fun evening back in town with some of the other yachties and because it's Indonesia, line-dancing!

With so many boats in this port there must be boat repair facilities.

 

Luckily my gearbox is light and easily removed. Early on Monday morning I packed the gearbox in a large backpack took a taxi to the harbour-side address of a promising sounding marine workshop.

The workshop was a reminder that despite the extravagance of many of the large luxury tourist boats, Indonesia is a poor third world country. No safety regulations here!

They didn’t have the replacement parts to do a proper repair and so they made a plan and with a bit of welding and skilled metalwork they set about patching it up.

While the gearbox was being repaired we hired a scooter for the day and headed off to the into mountainous interior of Flores.

Eventually the gearbox was ready. We’ll be leaving here with our fingers crossed and the engine revs way down.