Maumere

Welcome back!

After Yance dropped us off at Maumere, we spent four nights here in our wonderful bungalows just near the beach. We were welcomed with young coconuts to drink!

The sunset from the beach was lovely........

John and I got up early on our first day to get a walk in before the heat set in. We saw a gorgeous sunrise.

We found ourselves having to wade across a river to get back to our hotel!

Two Aussies on a dark sand beach.

John had one snorkel with me then started feeling unwell. Sadly, he came down with what is probably a dose of giardia. As I write this he's into his second afternoon of lying in our air-conditioned room. He's so sick! Thank goodness we had booked into this nice place for 4 days. It's going to take all of that to get better.

Connor and I had a couple of snorkels together and the coral right off our beach is amazing! It's the best we've seen so far on this trip. There aren't a lot of bigger fish here though - fishermen are out there every morning and afternoon.

I did find one really interesting fish though. After researching it, I think it's a baby spotted sweetlips. Connor and I later found three larger ones too.

I'm not sure if this video will work - it's a big file!

These fish swim vertically! I think they're called shrimpfish.

I bought a new underwater camera for this trip (I snorkelled once without closing the seal on my last camera amd wrecked it!) I've only just discovered now how easy it is to take videos underwater so I've put a few in this blog post. PLease let me know of they don't work and I'll use photos instead.

These Christmas Tree Worms are so colourful.

The corals were great.

Connor had fun mucking around underwater.

Connor and I found some pretty creepy things too. On this bare patch of sand we found these big worm-looking things. We learned later that they're garden eels. They reminded me of meerkats - they pop their heads up and look around comically!

There were also these huge sea-cucumber things. Many were over a metre long. Gross!

We found a few different types of lionfish, although they weren't in large numbers like at Seraya.

When the tide is low, we get really close to the corals - too close for comfort at times! Check out how close we were to these clownfish! Connor's floating on the surface. He could have touched the fish if he chose to.

Sadly, it was then time for Connor to go home. I took him to the airport and he navigated his way home just fine. We'll miss him!

With John still sick, I spent a lot of time working on this blog (hence all the blog posts in a short period of time!) then headed out snorkelling again. The tide was so low that I couldn't go over the bulk of the coral without risking getting stung by those black urchins so I hung aorund the outer edges of the reef. It was fantastic! The fish always seem to be more concentrated at low tide.

These three batfish hung around me for a while which is unusual cos they're usually quite shy.

Another weird creature was this little guy. I'm guessing he's some sort of puffer fish.

A couple of times I saw these corals feeding. Cool!

There are these weird starfish here. They look more like coral than starfish. I love their range of colours.

                       

                       

I love trigger fish. They swim in such a cool way and their colours are amazing.

At least once, I saw a stone fish. These are highly poisonous but this one was more scared of me though. He bolted for a rock and did the camoflouge thing as soon as he saw me.

Finally, after about 48 hours of being really sick, John came good. The next day he was up to a bit of gentle snorkelling. It was Sunday and a big group of schoolkids had been playing on the block of land next door and the beach for most of the day. As soon as we walked out to snorkel we got mobbed.

Take photo! Take photo!

After our snorkel, we showered then went to check out the singing we could hear next door. The only information we could get was that it was schoolkids. They stood around in groups singing. Maybe it was some sort of practice for a competition. We really don't know. We certainly recognised the start to this song!

We watched another beautiful sunset.

All this sounds very idylic but there were some big cracks in the veneer. The parents of the schoolkids had set up picnics on the beach. When they finished with their plastic bags and cups they just threw them on the beach. This is right near the reef that we had just spent days admiring. Again and again we see beautiful places littered with plastic. It's a real problem in Indonesia.

Also, as we were sitting admiring the sunset, some boys walked past, each wth a live starfish in their hands. I can only hope they put them back in the water. They certainly carried them around for a while.

The staff at this place have been fantastic. They don't speak a lot of English but they have treated us like royalty. Their smiles could light the planet.

So that's the end of our Flores journey. It's been marvellous. The people here are among the friendliest we have ever met anywhere in the world. The food is great, the countryside is beautiful and there are so many amazing things to see.

We're off to West Timor next!

Cheers,
Heather and John

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.