Larantuka | Chaos roaming the world

We got of when it was still mostly dark!

The boat was early! We were mentally prepared for a lot, but not really for arriving at 5:30 am, ahead of schedule. Never mind, we got a moderate level of sleep out of this night and were ready to embark onto Flores in the first light of day. After a last brief interlude – before everyone could leave, an ambulance backed onto the ferry and the coffin got heaved into it by the assembled crowd. With a long salute of the ship, the ambulance rode off into dawn, and we close behind.

View over the bay at early morning

I have read about a series of guest houses 100 km to the east offering beach views and much needed tranquility and not too much in terms of sights on our way there. The road offered gorgeous views and was in good repair. That allowed us to arrive at our destination still early in the day at 8:30 am. The first place we went to, Lena House, had a bungalow at the beach available. Tired and exhausted we were more than happy to call it a day and booked ourselves in.

While the room was prepared, we got into a conversation with Andy, a globetrotter character originally from the UK, and his lovely partner from Java, where they currently reside. As we were talking, we discovered that we had an interesting thing in common. A while back I would have been surprised, but NZ and traveling really made us accept that small world encounters are more common than one would think. So it turned out that both of us have hosted Chris Schlatter, a motorcycle traveller from Switzerland, and his partner Francesca at different points of their trip.

Has been alive quite recent

After a lot of lounging and relaxing, we decided to follow a recommendation by them to have dinner at the guesthouse next door. As it turns out they would eventually join us, and later on we were joined by She Ye and Matt. The dinner turned out to be … exciting. No meat was available in the kitchen, so Andy set out on a quest to find us something nice to share. Nina was sorted, with an eggplant curry using the only remaining eggplants. When Andy came back, there was more than one raised eyebrow. He bought meat all right. In his hand on the bike was a feathered, white and very much alive chicken! Turns out he got the directions to the chicken farm and not to any sort of butcher. Well, the bird met its timely end right there behind the kitchen and we got a great shared dinner out of it. We washed it down with some home distilled arak, a sort of palm tree spirit.

: We got of when it was still mostly dark!

: the bay is sheltered by 3 islands, so the sea is extremely calm

: No one up but us …

: We skipped that one, plenty more to climb.

: Here, the rice patties are all green

: Our bungalow right by the sea

: View over the bay at early morning

: Unfortunately, the tide brings in mountains of rubbish to the beach here

: Has been alive quite recent

The day that Flo and I really weren’t looking forward to: Taking the ferry from Kupang on West Timor to Larantuka on Flores. A 15 hour ferry ride.

Mahdi style baths are not for everyone …

Anyway, we tried to get up late and failed horribly. The sun now rises at about 5.30 which means you start waking up around 6am. At 7am we gave up and went to have breakfast. Toast and jam as well as coffee was included in the price for the room and while we were munching away a French couple arrived doing a similar route to ours on push bikes, and also the other way around. They asked us a bit about Timor-Leste before heading off to find cheaper accommodation.

We, however, packed up and rode to the ferry terminal. Accounts of the ride we had read/heard promised a horror trip on an overcrowded ferry with no life boats etc. Common advice was to buy dinner and snacks for the day as nothing would be available on the ferry itself so we carried 4×1.5l of water, oreos, chocolate cookies, salted corn snacks and dinner with us.

professional stevedoreing …

The ferry was bound to leave at 2pm but advice also stated to be there early to get a ticket. Arriving at 8am, tickets were no problem. NZ$35 for shipping us and the bike across the ocean for 15 hours doesn’t seem too much. Then we had to wait. The officer explained with gestures that Rocinante was too big for a regular motorcycle parking spot and would need to go in after all the lorries had passed. Thinking this might take hours, we started walking around but were called back before long and drove onto the ferry. While passing the gate, our tickets were checked and devalued. Hm.

Rocinante got her spot but was not tied down. We could just hope for calm waters so that the bike wouldn’t start sliding or falling. But then we were on the ferry at 9am. Parts of our tickets already ripped off. I didn’t trust our Bahasa Indonesia enough to explain that to an officer if we left the ferry again. So we bit the bullet and claimed a space, a whole row, towards the back of the ferry. At about 10.40am it started to fill up. Also, with more passengers, many, many vendors came offering snacks, fresh fruit, whole meals with rice and meat or eggs and much more. We weren’t too sure about the guy selling sunglasses but most of the other items made a lot of sense including cross word puzzles and colouring books for kids and mats so that you can sleep on the floor. Despite our overpreparedness, we spent a couple more dollars getting a proper lunch, fresh oranges and two sleeping mats. It seemed to be a thing to spread those on the ground and lay down.

1 mm to separate sleeper and filth.

At what felt like 1pm, our tickets were checked again and by then the ferry was full, maybe even over capacity already, but by no means as overcrowded as we had been made believe. Surprisingly, no one contested our complete row for two people so we put our mats on the ground and had two places to lie down: One across all four seats and one on the ground. The spaces around us were well filled though and checking up on Rocinante showed us a colourful picture of people, chickens and a coffin in the previously empty space at the cargo floor. The coffin was accompanied by a whole company of mourners who lit candles and probably prayed.

The ferry left right on time if not even early and we were on our way to Flores. Trying to make time go by while reading, we got a bit tired of a group of young Indnesian men (early twenties) who seemed to have too much testosterone and needed to show it. Also, we figured, they enjoyed the white audience even if Flo and I tried our best to completely ignore them. Anyhow…time went by okayish till dinner, then another hour of reading and off to bed. Each of us had a pair of trusted earplugs and with those, I slept quite long. Sure, you wake up and turn around…but then I went back to sleep again immediately.