Hello to all of our friends and family around the world! We spent a glorious ten days traveling on Flores Island in Indonesia and 4 days on a boat snorkeling between Komodo Island, Sumbawa Island and Lombok - and we finally are back to our home in Bali. Here is the first update of our Flores Island trip - but we’ll save some for another day as we don’t want to bombard you with stories and photos! We began our trip by flying to the town of Ende, in the middle of Flores, and on the airplane we were thrilled to be only one couple of a handful of other tourists. We knew we had to be going to the right place for a nice, non-touristy trip. As we landed, we met a French couple who we decided to share a taxi with to go to the bus station, to then take a 2 hour bus ride to the mountain town of Moni. Imagine five tourist couples in an airport the size of an average school classroom with over fifty local men outside the baggage claim window all waving your down to give you a ride - we took a big deep breath and let the adventure begin! We made it to Moni after a bumpy ride on a local bus with 90’s American music blasting through bass enhanced speakers, and stayed at the base town of the Kelimutu Volcano. Kelimutu is an inactive volcano that has three different colored lakes at the top craters. We took off at 4am the next morning to climb to the top of the craters, and were unprepared for the bitter, damp cold wind! But we did see the sunrise through the mixture of clouds, bought some local ginger coffee from the local villagers selling warm drinks, and saw the three lakes - one was red, one turquoise and one green. Kelimutu Lakes however are very unique, as two of the lakes are constantly changing colors based on the mineral composition and the current climate, and go from white to blue to red to orange to green to brown! Local villagers once believed (and still do) that all people go to the lakes when they die where their soles live forever. The elders go to the turquoise lake (which is always turquoise), the children and unmarried women go to the green lake, and evil people go to the red. If you talk to most people on Flores Island, they will tell you this and which lake their ancestors are in. On our way down from Kelimutu, we saw the French couple we met at the airport (Julian and Urdu) and took a taxi ride back to the guesthouses we were each staying at — we were beginning to enjoy having familiar faces with us! We met several children walking from school as we were in town and all of them stopped us, asked us for “gula gula” (which we had no idea what this was but later learned it is “candy”), and all of them wanted their picture taken. They were quite lovely children and always interested to talk to foreigners. After Moni - we took a bus back to Ende town to stay for one night to see the Blue Stone Beach and Pantai Nanganesa, the infamous black sand beaches. We met a very nice Endenese man who spoke decent English who agreed to take us around for the day on his motorbike - and a day at two beaches turned into a trip to visit his home to have tea and bananas while meeting his mother and children, and then later to the night market and town fair where everyone wanted to take our photo, as many had never seen a non-local person in the particular area we were in. In expressing his gratitude for letting him take us around, he said he wanted Barb to come back to Ende (not to visit him but to live at his house as it would be such an honor - and perhaps he there was a slight desire for a beautiful American wife:)). That aside, we saw Ende in a way most tourists don’t, and the low-key town with dirty and littered black sand beaches was probably the highlight of our time on Flores Island. Thanks to our new friend Allen for a wonderful time and granting us insight into life in Ende. We are grateful for your hospitality and kind heart. Next Update: Travelling Through Flores Island
Posted on: Mon, 25 Aug 2014 01:46:43 +0000
Trending Topics
Recently Viewed Topics
© 2015