After leaving Flores, our next major destination was Rote, an island off the coast of West Timor. To get there we had to go via Kupang, the capital of West Timor.
We caught our plane from the tiny airport at Maumere. Dad, this photo's for you. I don't know what sort of plane it is but it's quite new.
We usually book guesthouse-type places but this time we found a really cheap flash-looking hotel right on the beach. It was every bit as fancy as the photos looked - it was all smooth tiles and modern wall decorations. Huge designer chairs like this one decorated each floor. Unfortunately, that was as far as the flashness went. The place was almost empty. The restaurant was closed down and there wasn't a lot of English spoken. I feel it was a bankruptcy waiting to happen. That was probably why it was so cheap.
Because our hotel had no breakfast available (it's normal to include bereakfast with any accommodation here) we had to place an order with the hotel and they would source the meal from a local restaurant then deliver it to the room. When our breakfast arrived (an hour late) I was interested to try my avocado milkshake. This is a bit of a thing here. I was suprised to find it included a piece of strawberry and chocolate icecream! Mmmm, taste sensation - not! It was drinkable but I don't need to try it again!
We found a fantastic restaurant nearby. We ate here both nights that we were in Kupang. Watching the sunset from the garden was wonderful!
At low tide, people walk along the huge rocky reef looking for some kind of sea life. We never found out what it was. Sea snails were common on menus so maye that's what they were looking for.
Kupang seemed to suffer even more than many Indonesian places with rubbish. It was everywhere. It was quite windy while we were there so it was all blowing into the sea. It was so sad to see.
We met up with the driver who is going to take us around West Timor in a week and he ran us around getting visas and things. We found a huge flash shopping mall so John sat with a coffee while I went shopping. I hadn't brought many clothes with me as I assumed I would be able to get Indonesian sarongs, dresses etc everywhere, however I hadn't found anything at all at the places we'd been. I scoured every shop in that mall and finally bought one dress that does the job but doesn't fit very well. There was a surf shop that had some nicer dresses but they were all in Aussie sizes 6 and 8. I'm a tad bigger than most Indonesians!
We then flew to Rote, the island where we would be staying for the next six nights. We arrived at dusk and caught the sunset as we were unpacking our bags.
Rote is a surfers' island so it's full of Aussies. There is a famous break just near us and surfers come from all over the world to ride it. I'm not sure why we picked this place - I think we thought we could go boogie-boarding and snorkelling. It turns out that neither of these are that easy to do here.
One thing we are doing though is we are bike riding every day. In a month or so we are doing a big bike ride in PNG so we need to get our bums ready! This has been a great way to explore the island. We get up early each day to ride before the worst of the heat.
All along the beach are thatched-roof huts. Some of these might be lived in but most seem to be used as day shelters by the locals. Many locals harvest a certain type of seaweed which is then exported to Japan.
At every low tide, people are out on the rocky reef, working on their nets and lines that they grown the seaweed on.
They then dry the seaweed in the sun on racks made from palm fronds next to the beach.
It was awesome to see the moon set as the sun rose on our first morning.
Most of the animals here roam free so if you're driving or riding, you need to be careful not to hit them. Dogs, chickens, goats, cows and pigs are everywhere. I became quite fascinated by the pigs. They are ugly things with long, elephant trunk-like snouts. They are quite appealing in an ugly kind of way though! Big, fat mother pigs waddled along, sometimes dragging their teats on the ground. Groups of babies followed mum around.
The biggest pigs are heavily pregnant females. Sorry to say this to our vegetarian kids but there are few large males around - they go into the pot.
As we ride along the roads, piglets run off. I always think of them going 'wee wee wee all the way home!' These guys were having a snooze in the morning sun.
The most common colour is black but there are also pink, spotty and striped ones.
I took this video while we were riding our bikes in the main part of the village. It seemed to be a popular place for the animals to hang out!
It's common here to see pigs on the beach and rocky reef. They scrape algae off the rocks to eat plus they dig things up out of the sand. Cool!
And as the sun sets, mum takes her babies home.....
Rote is about 80 kms long and 20kms wide and has a population of about 60,000 people. Compared to other parts of Indonesia we've seen, it's very rural and very clean. Houses are often just made with bamboo and thatch.
The cart in front of the house above is for transporting goods. On one of our rides we came across two young boys trying to push a cart full of coconuts from a track onto the road. There was a steep ridge and they were having trouble getting up the rough surface. We stopped and helped them and received huge smiles in return. These boys were probabaly about 6 and 9, although it's hard to guess. We've noticed how kids always help out the family happily. When parents are collecting seaweed at low tide, the kids here have makeshift fishing lines and they try to catch smaller fish in the shallows.
The food at our accommodation has been amazing. The woman in charge of the kitchen is an Argentinian chef and it's wonderful what she can do with local ingredients (plus a few imported ones!) One day this fish turned up - it was 22 kgs! We had fish for almost every meal.
Another day we arrived back just as these chocolate muffins were coming out of the oven. We had no hope of refusing! This lady was our favourite staff member. She was such fun!
We've seen these ads everywhere. They're for a brand of cigarette. Some advertising guru probably got paid a fortune for this slogan. They always feature some exteme adventure guy looking daring and determined to "never quit"!
Of utmost importance was the fact that Richmond were playing footy on Thursday! The internet wasn't good enough at our place to stream the game so we found a bar that was showing it. It wasn't hard as this island is so popular with Aussies. We drank cold drinks and talked to other Aussies while we watched the Tiges beat the Swans convincingly. There are two American surfer families staying at our place so we had told them about the footy. They all came over to watch it. It was good fun!
The next night we went to the same bar and saw the first half of the Geelong/Bulldogs match. With some of our family barracking for both of these teams we weren't taking sides! Our Indonesian bartender though, clearly was. He had obviously been hanging around Aussies for a long time!
Meanwhile another awe-inspiring sunset was happening around us.......
I have to confess - I've realised my camera was automatically switching to a sunset setting so the oranges weren't really this orange!
We didn't realise just how much this whole island (from a tourist point of view) is about surfing. We struggled a little to find things to do. Ths is something very rare for us when we're travelling - we usually fill every minute of every day.
One day we got hold of an old boogie board and a mis-matched pair of flippers and got rough directions to where we could find a smaller wave we could boogie-board on. We thought we found the place further down the beach. It was a reef break, which concerned me, but we took the plunge and headed out to it. With me on the board and John swimming with the fins it took us about 20 minutes to reach the wave. Nearby, a rock was sticking up out of the water so we perched on it to check out the waves. The waves looked ok but inbetween we could see rocks sticking out of the water! As the tide dropped, more rocks were being exposed. The more we studied it, the more we realised we couldn't ride a boogie-board here. We gave up.
We then decided to at least watch a bit of surfing. The main wave is a long way out but apparently you can just walk out there over the old reef. We borrowed some booties and headed out. The tide was still going out so the water was a bit deep to see exactly where we were stepping sometimes which made things quite difficult as there were heaps of starfish and a few urchins lurking there. I was devasted at one stage to suddenly realise I was walking on live coral! As a keen snorkeller I've never even touched live coral let alone stood on it. I quickly got off it and was able to go around it but people must walk on it all the time.
It was cool walking among the seaweed nets.
I took us about half an hour to walk out to the reef break. The waves haven't been that great apparently and they get quite crowded. We saw a few surfers catch the smallish waves though.
Ripples in the sand.
On some of our bike rides we've also seen a few small horses. With this island being close to West Timor, we just have to wonder - are these Timor ponies?
The two American families that we met here were great value as were the wonderful staff.
'Bintang o'clock' happened at sunset every evening. This shaded seating was in front of our place and you could always find the Americans here at sunset.
One day we hired a couple of motorbikes and headed out exploring. Mum and dad, the gentle motors and scooter styles reminded me very much of the old Holda step-throughs! The roads were a bit patchy in places. I wouldn't call them pot-holes, they were more like washouts. I found it not so relaxing as riding the bicycles cos I was more on the lookout for animals and rough patches. it was fun though!
Easy Rider.... You can't see it here but John's bike had a surf rack on the side of it.
I looked like a hippy chick with John's bandana on to keep the sun off my scalp.
We wound through beautiful villages. There were a few structures around the represented Christmas trees but this beer bottle one was the best. Robert - your singlet had gone!
Our last day was market day. I wanted to find some long pants but it was way too crowded to even get to half the stalls.
So that was our 6 days in Rote. I really liked the island for its uniqueness - I've never seen seaweed harvesting or pigs on beaches before. The people are so happy and always smiling. There is such a laid-back vibe here.
Til next time,
Heather and John
Great photos and as always, a good read
ReplyDeleteGlad you like it!
ReplyDelete