Chris and I

Me and Rod pulling over

Chris and Isa all smiles :)

Me on the back of Rod's bike

Local children

I am in fact so proud of ourselves for finally plucking up the courage to do it! Rod and I went on one, and Isa and Chris went on another and neither of us fell off! The cultural villages were nice to walk around, but it was quite set up and the first on we went to, all the young children kept shouting, ‘GIVE US MONEY!!!’

Cultural village

Cultural village

Not looking very happy!!

An old man

An old lady

Buffalo horns

Kids playing in the fog

Cultural village

Cultural village

Cultural village

Me holding vanilla pods

Cultural village

Cultural village

Cultural village

Me standing next to where they sacrifice

Cultural village

This was really irritating and upset us quite a bit, you had to give a donation to enter which we didn’t mind so much as long as it went to the community, but we also had to pay the locals to take their photos and with children asking us for extra annoyed us and didn’t make it feel so natural. So, we left and found another village that wasn’t in the Guidebook hoping that this one would be better. We did have a far better time here and we met with one of the villagers who had learnt English from speaking with tourists so she was great to speak to so we could learn about the culture and the history from her. She also gave us coffee, roasted sweet corn and some local spirit to try, which was kind.

Inside a local home

Inside a local home

inside a local's home

inside a local home

She also didn’t ask for any money, although we did offer, so we instead brought a couple of souvenirs from her. On the way out, the chief’s wife asked us to sign the guest book and to give a donation, which was fine, but you had to write down the amount you were going to give and hand it to her personally instead of putting it into a box, like the one before. So we all put an amount together and gave it to her, and then she just said, ‘More’. We were so disappointed and we were then forced to give her double and as it was a donation and not an entrance fee, it made us realise just how places like this have been destroyed by tourism, so we left there quite disheartened and decided to just go back and leave the rest of the villages.

Laughing

Kid firing a sling-shot

Lovely beach

On the boat

Nice straight jetty

Entrance to the 17 islands

We got up at 7am to have breakfast, before walking to the harbour to go on our snorkelling trip, stopping off at 3 places along the way to pick up snorkelling gear that we had reserved with different people.

Unfortunately, the other 4 travellers we were going with took all the best gear from the town, so we were left with the not-so-great equipment.

Flying foxes

Flying foxes

Me and Isa

Rod

Flying foxes

Us

Lovely beach

We stopped at a small island and went snorkelling from the beach, which was amazing, and the coral was beautiful so we had a great time there and Rod was kind enough to lend me his mask and snorkel so I could appreciate it as well.

Swimming in the sea

Chris

Isa and Rod

Fish

Star fish

Coral

Coral

Beautiful coral

Rod trying to catch a lobster

Chris

Chris

Rose coral

Coral

Coral

We stayed there for a few hours having a tasty fish BBQ on the beach before going back to Rihon late in the afternoon.

Fish BBQ

Chris

written by  chrischarly on June 14, 2011 from Riung, Indonesia
from the travel blog: Chris and Charly's Passage through SE Asia
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2 local guys

Chopping up a coconut for us

Locals

House on the water

House

Man with a big gun

Us being given coconuts

So finally, about 5 hours later than planned we made it to the beach, which was amazing!

Goats on the beach

It wasn’t white sand and perfect turquoise water but still great.

Fish

A sea urchin

We found some locals who cut us down some coconuts to eat and drink and we shared biscuits with the local children whilst Chris played football on the sand/mud with some older kids and we played in the sea.

My new-best-friend after feeding him biscuits!

Cute boys

Chris playing football with the local kids

Chillaxing

After a mud fight

The beach in Riung

Market

grafitti

A nice road

Local woman

Local man

Local woman

Local woman

Local man

Local man

When we arrived we found a nice place to stay infested with millipedes and woodworms, but apart from that, it was perfect, with clean crisp white sheets, something we haven’t seen in a long time!

written by  chrischarly on June 12, 2011 from Riung, Indonesia
from the travel blog: Chris and Charly's Passage through SE Asia
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The sunrise

Chris and I waiting for sunrise

Today we woke up at 4am and quickly got ready to meet Isa and Rod outside to get in our bemo (minibus) to take us to Kelimutu volcano. It was about an hour’s drive listening to loud old pop music from the 90’s. Bit too much for first thing in the morning! Once there we had to climb the rest of the way to the top, which was a mission climbing what seemed to be never-ending steps but at least we managed to warm up as it was freezing outside and we were all wrapped up in fleeces. The reason we got up so early was to watch the sunrise come up and if it is a clear morning, the views are meant to be spectacular!

Chris drinking un-filtered local coffee

We were unfortunately unlucky as it was a foggy and cloudy morning so we saw nothing!

Our first sighting of the black lake

Cloudy day

But it did have a nice eerie feeling to be able to watch the fog and clouds slowly disappear once the sun came out.

Just as the clouds were lifting

The black lake still a little foggy

An explanation of the lakes

At the top of Kelimutu there are three crater lakes to see which all change colour at different times in the year, one even going a burgundy colour, but not while we were there.

'Fanch' means fence by the way

Coffee

Rod taking a closer look

The blue lake

Chris, Isa and I

Local children on our walk down from Kelimutu

The blue lake

Chris and I

Nice blue sky finally

Very cloudy

The black lake

The blue lake

Beautiful view

us really cold!

Then we walked back 13Km to Moni, taking an off-road walk with a few wrong turns before ending up on a banana farm, but one of the kind barefoot ladies working there led us back to the path, it was quite rough going but we finally made it!

Chris and I

Monkey checking out the view as well

Coconuts

Rod and his new friend

Chris walking over a waterfall

Local man also cold

The guy who served the coffee

Local woman

Local man also cold!

Local woman

Local woman

As we took ages to get back to Moni, the owner of the guesthouse we stayed at was pretty annoyed with us for checking out late, especially as we didn’t pay him any extra! We then grabbed something quick to eat as we were famished and took a bemo to Ende as we missed to bus to Riung.

Me

On the bus

Chris and his new buddy

On the bus

Ende is a really dusty city and everyone avoids it as it’s not the nicest of places, but we really enjoyed it there. Chris and Rod finally found some Bintang (beer) which was not easy, we sat outside the shop we brought it at, and a cow soon gathered to look and chat at the Westerners!

Local man

Locals

We counted at one time almost 40 people surrounding us and most of them children, who were so funny and friendly.

Cute kids

Check out the youngest posing with her hands on her hips!

It was a great evening, great day and seriously long, but so worth it!

Us eating at a local place

Where we stayed

On the beach

Today we woke up, packed, and walked to the end of the road to catch the bus to Moni. It was a small mini bus, so a little cramped but it was nice to take local transport.

Walking to the main road

Locals

A fish stall

Ojeks

A view on the bus

Cocoa beans drying on the road

Digging on the road

Locals on a van

Chris and I

Rod and Isa at the back of the bus

Chris and I

When we arrived in Moni we walked around for a while before finding some cheap accommodation which we had to haggle hard for before going for a nice long walk in the early evening for a few hours to a Waterfall and then to some hot springs.

Preparing to walk the bridge

A cow

Windy road

Nice view

Rice paddies

Local children

The hot springs- aka- a burst pipe

The waterfall

Rice fields

Hot springs- aka baths

Cute kid

Locals

They weren’t exactly what we expected them to look like, considering all the locals were bathing in them and they didn’t look that hot either?!

Nice view

Local woman

In the evening we went for a local dinner (Mountain food), the ingredients had to be gathered from the Mountain in the afternoon. It consisted of local rice cooked in a strange leaf, Banana flower and other Mountain vegetable mixed and an amazing vegetable soup, which was smokey as the veg, had been roasted on a fire beforehand. VERY tasty and nice to have something different.

written by  chrischarly on June 10, 2011 from Gunung Kelimutu, Indonesia
from the travel blog: Chris and Charly's Passage through SE Asia
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Maumere beach

The beach we stayed on 25km outside of Maumere

Today was a great do-nothing-day but enjoy the peaceful and practically empty beach and sea, and going for a walk around the village for a couple of hours.

Fishing boat

Fishing boat

First we met a local diver who had caught an octopus and some other delights.

The local guy proud of his catch

An octopus

After this we trekked through some swamp until coming across a small family living and working on a coconut farm.

Picking the coconuts for us

A guy climbing a tree

Cutting open the coconuts for us

The village

They were lovely, gave us the biggest coconuts to drink/eat, and showed us how they make the coconut milk. Very impressive.

Coconut mincer

Where we got the coconuts

Chris drinking a coconut

Local guys digging

We also saw some local women weaving in the traditional way.

A happy guy

Weaving

Then back to Sunset Cottages to sit, relax and enjoy a beer whilst watching another fantastic sunset and have a beer.

Sitting in the waiting room waiting for our flight

Our Garuda flight

We woke up really early today and took a taxi to the airport, which wasn’t far, about 30mins away. It was a tiny airport so we checked in and made our way through departures really quickly.

Chris and I enjoying our free plane food

Mount Merapi from the air

We flew with Garuda Airlines to Bali which is a great airline to travel with and a nice change from low-budget airlines.

View from the plane

Mount Bromo from the air

Once in Bali we checked straight in to fly with Merpati Airlines to Maumere in Flores noticing a nice 2-hour delay but at least it wasn’t our first flight and our second that was running late.

The plane

Kelimutu lakes

Merpati has a reputation of cancelling, delaying, and even crashing planes, which we discovered after booking it, so Chris for once wasn’t that excited about flying. In the airport, we made 2 new friends, Rod and Isa who were also going to Maumere so we decided to travel with them once we arrived.

The view of Flores

A view of Kelimutu lakes from the plane

But it was quite a surprisingly long journey there as the plane stopped off on the way to another island, Sumba, to drop and pick up more passengers, so we all had to get off and wait for a while, but a good excuse for a quick cigarette break!

About to board our Merpati flight

Walking to Bali airport

Then, in Maumere airport, we took a taxi to 25kms away from the city to stay on a lovely beach at Sunset Cottages just in time to watch the sunset, which was gorgeous!

View of the sunset when we arrived

Rod passed out on the floor after waaaay too much arrack!

After this, we had a great evening with our new friends whilst Chris and Rod especially got drunk on local Arrack.

It got a bit messy!

written by  chrischarly on June 8, 2011 from Denpasar, Indonesia
from the travel blog: Chris and Charly's Passage through SE Asia
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Outside our accomodation

Chris chatting to his Mum

We spent most of the day before leaving Merapi trying to get our flights confirmed for the following day understanding that flying in Indonesia is really not that easy as many airlines don’t accept U.K credit cards so you have to book through a travel agent online, which is a real pain. Once we had finally finished we left to go back to Yogyakarta so we were close to the airport in the morning. Unfortunately where we stayed before was fully booked, but we still found somewhere nice to stay. We chilled out for the rest of the evening taking an early night after strolling around eating some cheap street food.

written by  chrischarly on June 7, 2011 from Yogyakarta, Indonesia
from the travel blog: Chris and Charly's Passage through SE Asia
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It’s 0320am and we awake earlier than planned full of excitement of going to see Merapi. A few facts, to get you warmed up:-
1) It's rated currently as the MOST active volcano in the world…
2) It’s been in a near-constant state of eruption for 100s of years; last major eruption was November…
3) It wiped out a staggering 10 Million hectares of forest and land…
4) It destroyed 22 villages…
5) It killed 300 people (found), another 100 never found…
6) 30,000 people evacuated some of which can never go back…
7) It erupts clouds of rocks (some as big as houses) and gas all at about 1500 degrees C that travel down the side of the mountain at 150kmph. It looks like traditional lava, but it’s actually the rocks crashing into one another and exploding into flames and sparks…
8) Only Christian (a legend in these parts) can lead into the danger zone (3km from peak), which is exactly what we did!..

We get ready and go the restaurant to meet Richard, another trekker, and Christian our incredible guide and have our first of apparently 3 breakfasts before being briefed on how dangerous this is!

We then set off through town guided by the stars and up a dark path and steps into a forest.

Getting to the top of the ridge is about 30 mins before the sun starts to break.

We wait here and as the sun creeps up and the stars disappear, we can see the silhouette of Merapi smoking in the distance. As it lightens, the sheer magnitude of the devastation is revealed. Chris tries his best to capture it on the camera, but it was impossible to reflect what we saw. Basically, massive hardwood trees have been smashed just like a domino effect all along the slopes down, and on the slopes in the distance there WERE villages. Some people are still believed to be buried under the 2m of volcanic ash!

A house that had a tree landed on it

Up Merapi volcano

Walking

The climb up was pretty slow, as it was more scramble and climb than actual walk, but we made it through without any significant damage. It was only 3.5kms but it was tough and very rough and some of the ridges drop off several hundred meters. You don’t want to slip, so you go very slowly.

Merapi

Happy tpo be in the danger zone

Entering the danger zone- hence red flag

We retuned back and saw some of the damage to houses in Kaliurang, which was mainly protected by a hill. We then had a second local breakfast (soyabean burgers, sticky rice with whole green chillies, yummy) and returned to the guesthouse for a full breakfast. Chris got double as he recognised the smell of the Cinnamon leaf on the tour. So much for all the exercise.

A TRULY AWESOME DAY and it was only 10am.

written by  chrischarly on June 6, 2011 from Kaliurang, Indonesia
from the travel blog: Chris and Charly's Passage through SE Asia
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