After a pleasant Chritsmas day relaxing with our neighbours eating chicken feet and drinking home-brewed arrak, we decided to leave Maumere on boxing day to see the other end of the island, the distant port of Labuanbajo in the west, and spend new year's eve there.
Imagining ourselves to be intrepid travellers, like the backpackers we sometimes meet in Ankermi, we decided to take the long route to Labuanbajo. The itinerary may prove helpful to anyone reading this planning a similar journey through Flores: (Click the link to read on)
Day One
Make an exploratory visit to the bus station at 7.00am to explore our options. The place is completely empty. Find a man who operates a shared taxi service to Ende, called in local parlance a 'travel', confusingly. He agrees to pick us up from our house at 8:30. At sometime past 9:00 he actually arrives (which is pretty good for Maumere) and we are bundled into the very back of his MPV, on the small seats set up in the rear (behind the passenger seats). This is fine until the driver decides to give his chum a lift to Ende, so he squeezes into the seat with us. The small car now contains 8 adults and three children, and our rucksack is tied to the roof.
The four and half hour trip to Ende is cramped and uncomfortable, partly because this is the worst stretch of road on the whole trans-flores expressway. This road snakes up and down the mountains, and never gets larger than a neglected 'B' road in Cornwall. However, we have taken this journey many times to Ende, so we know what to expect.
In Ende we stop for lunch and change drivers, and discover that the tarpaulin was never attached to roof of the car, so our rucksack has been exposed to the past two hours of heavy rain. Three hours or so later we are in Bajawa, a very pretty town high up in the highlands, where it is very cold and wet. The scenary is almost alpine (though without snow), and it is interesting to think that as Bajawa sits at around 1300 metres above sea level it is higher then many ski resorts. We find a cheap and clean hotel (Hotel Elizabeth, appropriately enough), and try to dry out all our clothes.
Day Two
We take an ojek (motorbike taxi) up to the bus terminal and wait for the Ruteng bus. A group of locals tell us that we have just missed it, but that one may be along later, though it may be full. We spend a happy two hours in conversation with our new friends, and in the process do some useful research about coffee farming and co-operative development. At around midday a very crowded bus turns up, and the driver seems adamant that we he can fit six more people on. In true Flores fashion, any young men who have been lucky enough to secure a seat are thrown out and told to climb onto the roof, to make way for their elders. A system I thoroughly approve of, though when it started raining again we had to find a way to let the poor bedraggled chaps back onto the bus. It is amazing how there is always room for 'just one more'.
The five hours to Ruteng passed peacefully enough, with some chickens sleeping on my feet and the man in the seat in front of us doing some truly impressive expectorating. He seemed to have a pattern of activity that is quite common in Flores: smoke kretek (clove) cigarette, hawk up at 180Db and spit out of the window, vomit into a plastic bag and throw out of the window, light up a cigarette. His exertions were so emphatic that at one point we were afraid we would need to stop the bus and run back up the road to retrieve whatever vital organs he had unwittingly ejected.
That night we stayed in an outrageously expensive room (Rp 165,000) at the Hotel Sindha after trying to get a room in the Hotel Dahlia, as recommended in the Lonely Planet Guide. The Guide needs updating. The Dahlia is a very expensive dump, and the Sindha is also horrible and redeemed only by the presence of hot water (not something one usually needs in Flores, except in the rainy season when everything you own is wet).
Ruteng is another very pretty town in terms of its position, which is half-way up a 2,350m mountain, and is also blessed with the only proper supermarket in Flores, which sells such usually unobtainable luxuries such as crunchy peanut butter and decent soy sauce. We bought an umbrella for Rp 17,000 (one pound sterling) and spent the rest of the evening knee deep in floodwater.
Day Three
Keen not to miss the morning bus to Labuanbajo, we sent a boy from the hotel off to the terminal to book us a place. At around 9.00 am a very shabby bus turns up at the hotel and we are encouraged (one might almost say compelled) to board. Our hearts drop when we see that the bus is barely a third full, as this means it will be some time before we actually hit the road. Sure enough, the next two and half hours are spent driving between the terminal and various parts of town looking for passengers. At one point we are all shouting out of the window: 'Mau ke Labuanbajo?' to attract punters. Each bus has a tout, whose job it is to spot potential customers, and then persuade them to board. In practice this means running up to anyone with luggage, grabbing their posessions and running onto the bus with them while the perplexed victim tries to explain that he has no plans to go to Labuanbajo today.
At length, the bus is full to bursting and the journey can begin. I am seated next to the side door, which is broken, so they have given me a u-shaped piece of iron to clamp the door to the coachwork, thus preventing me from tumbling 400 metres down into the valley below.
The route to Labuanbajo entails going up a steep mountain, through hairpin bends, and then steeply down the other side. The bus struggled on the way up (too heavy), and then laboured on the way down because the brakes were broken so the driver had to use the gears to slow our descent. In practice this meant one hour of tortuous driving in first gear, with the engine screaming in protest. We eventually arrived at around 18:00, meaning we were sat on that bus for nine hours.
Labuanbajo
If anyone got here by googling 'places to stay in Labuanbajo' then here is a word of advice: don't stay at the Golo Hilltop. This place is known for its fine views of the islands, but it is little way out of town and the proprietress is a very angry westerner who seems to be the Dutch equivelant of Basil Fawlty. The moment we arrived (a little bedraggled after nine hours in a bus) we were berated for being late, and then accused of fraud when we apologised for the fact that one of the rooms we had booked was not required (as Aileen could not join us on our jaunt). We paid for both rooms for the night and then made our escape preferring to pay for two hotels that night than stay another night in place where guests could be made to feel so unwelcome.
We stayed at the Gardena in town: cheaper than the Golo Hilltop (Rp 65k) and much more convenient. This had the added advantage that we could opt to spend two nights at the Gardena's outpost on Seraya island. Thus New Year's Eve was spent on an almost uninhabited island, in a small shack, watching the deer and goats play on the beach. The place has no fresh water, so one bathes in the sea. It is a simple existence, and we enjoyed a few beers with an urbane Dutch backpacker called Nikolas, retiring to bed at about 10.00pm when the generator got switched off.
The next day we decided to leave Labuanbajo and make our way back to Maumere. We had not yet had a chance to see the Komodo dragons, or go diving, but frankly the weather was so foul that there was little point. We will re-visit the place later this year, but perhaps travelling by boat from Bali. Labuanbajo is one of the great wasted opportunities in Flores. It has astonishing views, beautiful white beaches, unique wildlife and good transport links to Bali. However, the town itself is very dull, without even an ATM for tourists, which limits the amount of cash they will spend in the place. The choice of accommodation is limited, as is the quality of restaurants. We were not too sorry to be travelling back home to Maumere.
The trip home
We decided that we could not face another three days in a bus, so we cheated and booked a private car to get us home. We left Labuanbajo at 14:00 on Sunday, stayed the night in Ruteng (Hotel Rima - half the price of the Sindha and twice as nice), and arrived in Maumere at 17:30 on Monday afternoon. I think we have to come to terms with the fact that we are not backpackers, in fact we are rather poor travellers compared to many of the crusty trekkers we meet here. That said, the fact that we can sit on a bus for hours on end, not being able to read a book or listen to music, being thrown from side to side by the winding roads while chickens peck our feet and other passengers vomit gaily beside us, shows that we must have acquired some skills of mental discipline while we have been out here. We seem to have cultivated the ability to sit still and do nothing for hours on end, which is an especially Indonesian talent.
I will be cycling from Labuan Bajo to Larantuka and will be in Maumere on or about Monday 13 Feb. I am flying in from Brisbane Aust. Is ther anything (small) you need? Medicine? Just email me if there is anything u need. Cheers Derk
Posted by: Derek Nicholson | January 27, 2006 at 20:06
I will be cycling from Labuan Bajo to Larantuka and will be in Maumere on or about Monday 13 Feb. I am flying in from Brisbane Aust. Is ther anything (small) you need? Medicine? Just email me if there is anything u need. Cheers Derek
Posted by: Derek Nicholson | January 27, 2006 at 20:06
I was having a look at Labuanbajo websites and did google 'Golo Hill Top', when I came accross your website, it brought back many memories of New Year 2005/6. We were in Seraya island with you, with my Indonesian husband and our 2 year old Son, but we quit before we got too drenched. Your website is fantastic, I really enjoyed reading it and wish you all the best with the great work you are doing.
Posted by: Angie Marung | July 27, 2006 at 20:32
Hello
Great book. I just want to say what a fantastic thing you are doing! Good luck!
Bye
Posted by: tovorinok | July 05, 2007 at 12:44