Flores trip: Day 3

We left the hotel around 8am after breakfast, dropped by for a while (sure, photo sessions) to a complex of traditional houses in the center of Ruteng, and also managed to send some postcards at the local post office. We headed to Golo Curu (means a hill used as a meeting point - according to Donatus) in north of Ruteng. It is a pilgrimage area where you can find a shrine with a statue of Virgin Mary at the top of the hill. We got a beautiful view of terasiring rice fields from the top and also met a hyperactive cow that wanted to follow us (or was it only Ole, I did not remember exactly :-P) in a 'scary' way.


Leaving Golo Curu, we continued our exploration to Compang Ruteng, a Manggarai traditional village. We visited one of the two traditional houses in the village with a guide to show us around.


After spent some time in Compang Ruteng, we started our journey to Bajawa with a stop by at Ranamese lake which is located right next to the main road Ruteng-Bajawa (surrounded by a wall, made it kind of a hidden lake :-P) and a palm wine refinery.


We reached Bajawa around 3pm and decided to stay at Edelweiss hotel with a nice view of Mount Inerie. After taking a rest a bit at the hotel, we went to Mangaruda hot spring at Soa, about one hour from Bajawa. The water is quite hot at the main pool so we moved to the side pool which has some jacuzzi effects (ask Ole for that :-P). We left the hot spring before dark and returned to the hotel afterward.