Flores trip: Day 1

We officially met each other during breakfast in our hotel in Kuta and we left for the airport around 9am. Our flight was scheduled at 10am and unfortunately it was delayed for one hour. The good thing about the delay is that we managed to have our return flight tickets from Maumere to Denpasar that day since we were on the waiting list in the previous day.

It was my first time flying with Fokker 50, kind of funny experience because we had to weigh ourselves and our cabin luggages during the check in. But the flight was okay, it was not as scary as I thought :-P

We arrived in Labuan Bajo around 1pm and were picked up by Ino, the guy who arranged our boat rental, to the port. Then we met Marzuki and Rusdi, the captain and helper of our boat, we departed directly after we arrived at the port since we were already late because of the flight delay and we had our first lunch on board not so long after.

We reached Loh Buaya, in Rinca island around 4pm. Loh Buaya is one of the two developed visitor site in Komodo national park, the other one is Loh Liang in Komodo island. After registered and paid the entry tickets at the PHKA office, we took a two-hr trekking around the island. Oh and we encountered the komodos for the first time when we entered the PHKA office, there were 3-5 of them under the houses. They look lazy but scary. We did 2-hr trekking in Rinca and it was a bit muddy because of the rain (but the trekking was great, nice sceneries and we met some more komodos). After the trekking we decided to go to the toilet to clean up a bit and our guide has left us alone.Then as you can guess, there was one Komodo approaching us without we knew his coming. It's really quite close to us (like 2-3 meters) and we screamed to call the guide but thanks God, the komodo decided that we were not that interesting after all and he just returned back after ... had an eye to eye contact with us :-P

We left the PHKA office in Rinca around 7pm and was too late to go to Kalong beach to see the swarm of bats coming out from their nests. It was dark already and we were a bit dissapointed that we missed it (blaming our flight delay again :-P) but it turned out that they would not come out anyway if it rains... at least that was Marzuki told me, maybe to comfort us :-)

We stayed overnight on the boat, first time experience to me to stay overnight on a wooden boat :-P

Flores trip: Introduction

The Flores trip is my ultimate destination for this going-home trip this time. I did not remember why exactly I chose Flores, but the main motivation is to visit Komodo island to see the dragon and since there is also the three-colored lakes of Kelimutu nearby in the eastern part of the island, the idea is to combine them in one trip. First I discussed the plan with Runi, my travel mate from some of my European trips who has returned back to Indonesia (so it's kind of reunion for us :-)). Then Ole, my German friend who planned to visit Indonesia during my holiday became the 'victim' to join us for the trip. The last one to join us is Desy, Runi's friend who was not sure to join until the very last minute, but glad that she finally made it :-)

Runi and me (well..Runi was the main coordinator, I was more like the supporting one) have been busy preparing the trip several days before I left Germany, discussing the itinerary, trying to find the cheapest boat and car to rent, finding info on the flight tickets, etc.

The four of us met each other in Kuta, Denpasar. Ole and I were the first who arrived in Bali at 10th of Dec morning from Malang with an unforgettable night trip with the minibus shuttle. After finding some rooms for us in Poppies lane, we had a mission to finalize the flight ticket bookings, including collecting our flight tickets to Labuan Bajo for the next day. We managed to walk around Kuta shopping streets and spent some time on the beach and had dinner in Jimbaran (that was after we got the tickets on hand :-P).

Runi arrived around 9pm from Balikpapan and Desy arrived around midnight from Jakarta, was totally slept when Desy arrived since I (and Ole) did not have a normal sleep the night before.