FLORES - INDONESIA

The morning after the boat trip I quickly discovered than LabuanBajo on the west coast of Flores didn't look as good as it did when arriving on the boat. It had a very run down look but the locals seemed friendly enough. I managed to locate 3 people from the boat trip and we arranged to hire a car and driver between us. I did however have to wait 2 more nights in the town as they were all going diving. 24 hour electricity and running water were wishful thinking in that part of the world. Did find a bar slightly out of town with a live band on the Saturday night.

Finally the 4 of us (Holland,Spain,Switzerland,myself) and our driver headed out into the countryside. I was expecting the roads to be a nightmare like Sumatra but 90% of them were sealed. It was very hilly.

We stopped at a local village on the way and had a look around. Like other 3rd world countries I couldn't help but notice that there were loads of kids but very few old people, stopped at Ruteng for dinner. Unlike a lot of Indonesia Flores is Catholic and it seemed strange after coming from Lombok to see loads of churches.




On the way to Bajawa where we stopped the night we seen a massive snake crossing the road just in front of the car. On arrival we went out for some food and met a group of other travellers. The following morning we went to visit some more villages including some rice fields that looked like a spiders web from above. Also stopped at Blue stone beach........

The second night we stopped in the small village of Moni after spending ages sorting out our flights in a travel agent in Ende.


The plan was to get up early (4:30am) and go to the crater lakes but it was raining so hard that we had to wait until about 10pm.



When we got to the top it was so foggy that you couldn't see 20 meters let alone the lakes. After about an hour we were ready to come back but in the space of 10 minutes it cleared.

The 3 lakes are coloured due to dissolved chemicals and change colour over the decades. The other 2 were brown and black, this one was the most impressive.



After seeing a waterfall the trip through Flores was over. The others were going on to Sulawesi but the time was running down on my visa so I had to go back to Bali then back to Malaysia.

If I had gone a few years earlier I would have had a 3 month visa instead of a one month. I have always wondered why some countries make it so difficult for themselves when they would obviously benefit from tourism.