Flores trip: Day 6

Our itineraries for Flores all have been fulfilled and we stayed in Maumere only for our flight to Denpasar. Initially we planned to leave Flores that morning but we could not get the ticket for all of us, only one ticket (that we gave to Desy since she had to go back to work the next day), the other three tickets were for the next day (even it was not that easy to get them). That means we had one more day in Maumere. I said good bye to Desy when she left us around 6am, then did some expenses calculation with Runi (thanks Run, you're the best..:-)) and had a walk a bit at the beach.


The beach at our hotel was not that interesting, so we planned to go a bit farther from the city to Ahuwair (around 24 kms), hoping to get another beach day. But when we arrived it was low tide, so the beach was full of rocks. The sea area around Maumere used to be regarded as one of the finest dive site in Asia before the earthquake and tsunami in 1992 destroyed its beautiful reefs (but now they said they are in recovery mode). We planned to take a boat to Babi island or Pangabaton island to have another snorkeling session. But because of the low tide, we could not take the boat from Ahuwair, we had to go to Nangahale, which is about 8 kms from Ahuwair. The boat rent that was offered was also quite pricey so we decided to forget the snorkeling idea.

We did not have any more ideas what to do in Maumere :-P Donatus suggested visiting Watublapi, a village close to Maumere to see dance performance but we suppose to reserve it first so they could prepare the dance performance when we arrived there. Unfortunately none has the contact number of the people in Watublapi. But we decided to give it a try to go there directly. And as what we're afraid, they could not do that without reservation at least half day before but they offered us to see Ikat weaving process demonstration. At first a bit pessimistic actually (too comercial for me because we had to pay for that, they're quite professional with the tourists) but it was still around noon and we did not have any idea what to do the next half day.

It turned out it was a nice demonstration on how to make Ikat, they showed us how they did the dyeing process using natural materials, like from mengkudu fruit (is that for red color, forgot already hehe). Then the spinning process from cotton and the ikat weaving itself...interesting... and now I could imagine why the price of one cloth of Ikat is expensive :-P We bought some Ikat at the end of the demo, but only some small pieces, the price is expensive as they use natural dye for their Ikat.


We dropped by at Ohe, a point close to Watublapi where we can see both coasts (north and south coasts) of Flores. Then we returned to Wailiti around 4pm, was a bit raining (or wasn't it :-P), I only remember we decided to chat until dinner hehe.. Oh before that, we said good bye to Donatus since it was the last day we rented the car. He is a nice guy, got a lot of info about Flores from him.

Note: thanks to Ole for the pics on this post.