Flores Road Trip 2

Hello again! Picking up where I left off, we left the not-so-salubrious Hotel Happy Happy and headed east again. Connor was a little better. We stopped briefly at another traditional village. It was very similar to the previous ones and the kids were very cute again.

There was even a big kid here!

This friendly lady was carrying a bag of rice on her head. She had betelnut-stained teeth.

We travelled for a few hours, stopping for a yummy lunch at a beach. John had fish soup with tamarind, a specialty of this area. It was delicious! Connor and I just had mee goreng - it was just made with 2-minute noodles but it was very good. It cost $2.50 for each serve!

The beach was dotted with blue and green stones. There was an eroding wall nearby where the coloured stones were coming from. Locals sell the stones sadly.

We followed along a river and had fun checking out one of the swing bridges.

Some of the timbers weren't nailed down properly or were missing completely.

At one place we stopped for Yance to have a coffee. He found a candlenut tree and showed us how to crack them open and eat them.

The views were beautiful.

At another traditional village there were more of those enormous fig-type trees.

We arrived at our accommodation in Moni village and it was great! The bungalows were set in gorgeous gardens and overlooked rice paddies.

We awoke the next day to light rain which soon became quite heavy. Misty clouds rolled in. As our destination that day was the top of a nearby hill, we had no choice but to stay in. At least we were in a really nice place and it gave us an excuse to catch up on a few things.

Finally, just before lunch, the rain stopped. We began our drive up to Kelimutu, a volcano where there are three lakes. The colour of each of the lakes changes depending on weather and volcanic activity.

On the way up we had our first close views of monkeys. They were way too friendly for my liking. Monkeys can carry rabies and can get nasty. These ones were living on food scraps left in bins from tourists. This mother and baby were pretty cute though.

There were many local tourists at this place and Connor had his turn to be a rock star when a group of men asked to take their photo with him.

This is the black lake. Locals believe that spirits of people who die live in these lakes. The black lake is where the souls of old people go.

This is the lake where the souls of the young people go. The colour was stunning.

You can see how the lakes have formed in the crater of a volcano.

The third lake is where the souls of the bad people go. A few years ago, this lake was bright red!

Connor was keen to buy a woven scarf but had been stuck in his room with a cold when we visited the village that sold ikat so Yance took us to another weaving village. It was getting late when we got there, as we'd had a late start, but there were still some women out selling their wares.

All the women in this village wove. Producing the cloth was a team effort. Firstly, this old lady hand spun the cotton which was picked from nearby trees.

Then this lady tied grasses to the fibre and dyed it with naural dyes from grasses and leaves.

Then this lady wove the final cloth. It was she who made the scarf that Connor finally selected. It takes about two months to make a scarf!

I must say, Connor looked quite suave in his new scarf!

Back in Moni, we ate at a resaurant owned by an Aussie/Indonesian couple. The food was great! We enjoyed listening to a local band over dinner.

The next day we headed off again and the views were beautiful.

We saw so much gear tied to the back of local buses. There's a motorbike and pushbike here, but we also saw enormous bags of something (maybe cotton) and even a chicken tied upside down by the legs to a rack on the back of one bus! There were often people sitting on top of the roof or hanging off the sides.

At another coffee break we sat at another lovely beach. This simple restaurant apparently makes great fish soup but we were too early for lunch.

Yance found a tamarind tree and we tasted the tamarind straight out of the pod. It was so sour!

Driving along we saw this family planting out rice fields. We just pulled up alongside, asked if we could take a photo and they all responded enthusiastically. Amazing!

Connor was amazed at the large names they write across windscreens of public vehicles. How is the driver supposed to see anything?

We arrived at Maumere, our final road trip destination, and said a sad goodbye to Yance. He had been such a helpful person and made our trip really special.

Expect more blog posts soon. We are holed up in one place with good internet for a few days!

Cheers,
Heather, John and Connor.