Taking it to the streets

While traveling around Flores isn't hard persay, it surely isn't comfortable or pleasent either. What it lacks in comfort, it makes up as a memory you're soon not to forget. To get from town to town you stand on the street and wait to flag down a colorful Bemo travling in your direction and jump in. Usually fitting only 10 people properly it's common for these to balloon to well over 25 people during your ride. All the chairs are quick to be snatched up before huge bags of rice, or any other bulk food fills in any and all free space to add additional seats. When that's not enough younger people hop out and climb onto the roof of the minivan sitting on top of more rice, building materials and traveler's bags. These bemos are hot, dusty and play horrible pop music way too loud for hours as you make your way through colorful Flores.

When Cassie and I arrived in Ende, Flores we only had a day or two to visit the city. To be honest there wasn't really much to see, so one afternoon we sat on the side of the street and photographed life as it passed us by. Bemo's, motorbikes, pedestrians, and even more Bemo's. While sitting there we remarked many times on how much fun this was to just let the photos come to us.

Kelimutu's crater lakes

One of the major attractions that kept driving us farther east through Flores was Mt. Kelimutu. A towering volcano that contains three lakes of various colors. This is due to chemical reactions from minerals in the lake that are triggered by volcanic gasses or something like that. Which makes for excellent photos and many ohhs and ahhs from visitors while standing on a large crater between the lakes. 

We woke up at an ungodly 4am to be motorbiked up the hour long winding road in the blistering cold. Once on the top we continued our journey by foot where we watched the sun greet us to another lovely day in Indonesia. The views were breathtaking and endless, while the lakes leave you pondering how amazing this earth we inhabit actually is. After a bit of chatting with some locals and travelers we hiked our way back down to Moni, our base city if you could call it that. 

Since we took a bunch of photos of ourselves this morning I'll post them so you get to see how lovely my wife looks in the morning. 

Cast Away

One of my favorite stops while on this boat trip was to an island near Komodo. We hiked to the top for a unbelievable view of the crystal clear ocean below, and the surrounding islands. The dry grass was a lovely golden color that contrasted wonderfully with the blue seas all around us. 

I'm on a boat!

To be honest, I was a little hesitant to go on a four day boat trip from Lombok Island to Flores when Cassie and I first talked about it. The price was pretty steep and living on a boat didn't really appeal to me, but after some debating we both agreed that it was something different and a great way to find ourselves on an island that hasn't been as touched by tourists. Plus we would be stopping on Komodo Island to see the largest dragons in the world.

There were three boats in our fleet, each sleeping 20 tourists. We choose to sleep on the top deck towards the front hoping it would be a bit smoother when we hit rough seas. The crew of six or so would be cooking us breakfast, lunch, and dinner as we laid around on the deck snapping pics of endless blue seas and hundreds of uninhabited islands all around us.

Luckily we boarded on the best boat; we had an energetic guide and a group of young travelers from Germany, Holland, Austria, and Indonesia who we quickly became friends with. We filled our days reading, sunbathing, snorkeling and a few drinking games before we reached our destination. Once on land and after much needed showers we reconviened with our new friends to have an italian dinner before everybody parted ways.