White beaches, beautiful sunsets

Forget what we’ve written before, Indonesia is great! We might not have liked Kuta Bali and Gili Trawangan, but Lombok is beautiful. We spent 2,5 days exploring the north and south of the island by scooter. Kuta Lombok (not to be confused with Kuta Bali) is a great little place that isn’t overdeveloped yet. The beaches there are spectacular and the sand is rather fine rock, so it doesn’t stick to everything, which is really nice too. The food there was great and people very friendly. The north of the island has some spectacular waterfalls. It was about a 100 km scooter ride to a very cool waterfall. On the way there we had something to eat… And then it happened. Jenny didn’t feel too well after lunch. Food poisoning. The journey home took us hours because we had to stop so often because of Jenny’s vomiting and diarrhea. On the side of the road we had lots of spectators looking at this white chick getting sick. A little wave goodbye after the show gave us lots of smiling faces! After a horrible 2,5 hours on the scooter we finally made it back. Luckily it cleared up overnight so we could enjoy our four day boat trip to Komodo and Flores.

It certainly was not a luxurious boat we stayed on. The engine was horribly loud and the boat was very uncomfortable. The toilet was the usual squatting style, complete with cockroaches and there was no fresh water on board (besides the bottles drinking water – only five bottles per person for the four days, not enough for a shower). But the company was great! We met some really nice people on the boat and heard all about their interesting itineraries. Everyone got along really well. On our trip we saw lots of dolphins playing in the water and stopped at a few places to go swimming and snorkeling. One night the boat had to sail for about twenty hours straight and during the night we felt we might tip over. That was really scary, but we made it through the night and the next morning we woke up to a magnificent landscape of islands dotted everywhere. Amazing! The beaches around these little islands are so beautiful, the colours of the water so turquoise – just like a little paradise.

One of the islands we went to was Komodo, to see the Komodo dragons. It was great to see these huge lizards in real life. They’re only found in Komodo, Rinca, some other island we can’t remember the name of and northern Flores. So it was quite special to see them in the flesh.

Eventually we made it to the island of Flores, the end destination of our boat trip. Labuan Bajo, the village we are staying in at the moment, is very nice and quaint and nobody bothers us. All of the people on board ended up in the same restaurant at night which was good fun.

Today we did two dives around Komodo Island. When we were diving in Sipadan Island in Borneo two years ago, someone told us the only dive sites that can top Sipadan are around Flores. She was definitely right! The diving was absolutely amazing, the best ever! The temperature differences in the water, together with very strong currents bring loads of exotic sea creatures to these waters. We saw the brightest corals teeming with fish – huge fish! Everything here seems on steroids! We saw turtles, sharks, huge manta rays, the biggest murray eels, everything! Very, very much worth our money for sure!

This evening we’re meeting some people at a restaurant for the sunset, but before that we might pop into a café with free wifi to publish this.

Our plan for the next two weeks is a bit hazy. We are definitely not going to make it all the way to Sumatra, so the flight that we booked from Medan to Kuala Lumpur we just have to cancel. So our options are to either go back to Bali or Lombok and catch a flight to KL from there, or to sail to Sulawesi and go to KL from there. We prefer to go to Sulawesi (another two day boat trip), but we’re not sure if this is the most economical way to get to Malaysia. We’ll see. We’ll get there somehow before the 3rd of December.