27th November 2011
We left Ende and went back to Bajawa, stopping at a traditional village called Wogo along the way.
Alex, Brian and I were ahead and waited at the turning for Wogo so Mario and Greg could catch up, it took a while because Mario had picked up another puncture and Greg, despite being the most experience motorbike rider, had fallen off quite spectacularly and really hurt his chest - Mario said he almost went straight off a shear drop too! :O
So everyone except me has fallen off.. Brian has even come off twice and even the most experienced rider has fallen off quite badly. Statistically I'm doomed! Three days (including today) left for "death" to catch up with me!
At the turning for Wogo there happened to be a little garage where Mario could get his tyre sorted out and also a Padang restaurant. What was a very quiet area had suddenly become very busy, a lot of locals had appeared and were sitting around observing the westerners! lol.
The owner of the Padang restaurant took photographs of us eating there. :P
After lunch Mario's tyre was fixed and Greg had taken some pain killers so we were ready to rock and roll.
Wogo was really cool, lots of Bamboo houses in a big circle. When we arrived a lady called Maria came to chat to us and then showed us around and explained how the village works. Its like a big family really, they all help each other out. When they need a new house, they all help build it in super quick time. We met some of the other people that live there and when we reached Maria's house she invited us inside and made us a cup of their own blend of coffee. Seems crazy to have a kitchen with an open fire in a bamboo house!
Maria told us there was a bamboo forest just up the road so we went to see that before continuing to Bajawa.
The hunt for the hot springs!
We arrived in Bajawa at 15:00 and went straight out again to find one of the natural hot springs in the area. We got a bit split up as Greg and Alex went quite far ahead and I somehow managed to pass them while they asked for directions, I called them to find out where they were and went back and we realised we had gone way too far passed the turn for the hot springs. Mario was a way behind us so we called him and he was already there!
We got to the hot springs just before dark and Mario had been there for ages. The water was a great temperature and it was a really nice place.
More punctures..
Unfortunately we had to drive home in the dark about 28km which wasn't much fun, and Greg picked up another puncture! We stopped at the side of the road to ask some locals where there is a mechanic and Mario almost got run over by a crazy truck driver but he got out of the way in time, then the truck almost hit his bike which would have fallen into my bike which I was still sitting on - I made an effort to move but couldn't much and just ended up burning my leg on someones hot exhaust pipe! I thought it was just "death" coming for me!
The mechanic was just round the corner and he found a piece of wire in Greg's rear tyre which was the obvious reason why he had so many punctures (I think at least 5 so far). They cleaned it out and put a new inner tube in there. We then had a really difficult exchange with the guy that did the work because they charged Greg too much. He had paid for the inner tube when we arrived and then at the end they tried to charge him again for the inner tube plus the labour..
Despite being in Indonesia for the same amount of time as me Greg speaks no Indonesian, and he wasn't doing a good job getting his point across - mainly shouting English and throwing money at the guy and then trying to ride away. But the mechanic took the keys out of Greg's bike and the whole thing started to get a little out of hand. There were a lot of people there, it was late and dark and getting into a fight was not on my list of things to do in Indonesia. I interjected and tried my best with my limited Indonesian to resolve the situation, the guy took the money and passed Greg's bike keys to Alex. It wasn't much fun!
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When we came down we picked up some takoyaki and walked around Yokohama and saw the ferris wheel and xmas market and then went to Junko's place to have dinner before I went back to the hostel in Nishikawaguchi.
Shibuya is super busy so we went through Yoyogi park and made our way to Akihabara, the electric town.. or geek central if you prefer. In Akihabara we went into a few huge electronics department stores like yodobashi camera and some gaming stores before we stopped for a Japanese curry.
Later we went to a couple of huge arcades, Taito Station and Club Sega. Both have 5 floors of arcade games which kept us busy for a while. The first floor tends to be full of UFO catchers (which are ridiculously popular here), then you go up the escalators to find all the games. Its mad how busy they are, in England you're lucky to find an arcade at all, let alone a good one!
On the journey today we saw some guys wrestling a pig up on to the top of a bus. They had tied the pigs feet together and were trying to tie it on top of the roof, the pig was not enjoying it much. It took 5 people to get the job done. I wonder how long a journey the pig had to endure. :/
There's a little village where you have to stop and get a guide to take you to the waterfall, they said it was a 2km trek. It seemed further than that! The path went first through the village and some fields, then into the fairly dense forest.. it probably took an hour and a half to reach the waterfall in the middle of nowhere, but it was worth the effort.
It was a bit of a game of death when we got there as we had to cross the river which had very fast currents, and this involved jumping quite far across some huge rocks! Before we left the village our guide threw his mobile phone in his house, like it might not be handy to have when we are taking ridiculous risks in the middle of a forest, hours from help. Anyway we made it, unscathed, to the waterfall.
After the guide proved that we would not crack our skulls open jumping in we all took it in turns to jump in, I think it was maybe 10 metres high where we jumped. It was great fun. We stayed a while jumping in and tried to swim to the bottom of the waterfall which was insanely hard! The current was so strong - Brian and I made it but it was so hard to stay there as the water kept knocking me over and taking me under, it was exhausting so I gave up the fight and let the current take me back to the jumping area again.
First thing in the morning we went to Bena, a traditional village near Bajawa. Similar to Wogo but seems like they're set up for tourists, lots of the houses have sarongs and things for sale outside and there's a little shop selling tea and coffee. We stayed a while chatting to the locals. The view from the top of the village was amazing. Met this guy called Paulus :P
Maria told us there was a bamboo forest just up the road so we went to see that before continuing to Bajawa.
We got to the hot springs just before dark and Mario had been there for ages. The water was a great temperature and it was a really nice place.
It seemed like the beginning of an episode of casualty (or holby city, whatever its called now) when Greg saw the danger sign at the bottom of a rocky/ clay slope and decided to climb. But he reached the top and had an amazing view of one of the crater lakes so we all followed. No one fell to their death so it was all good. Mario and I went back down and took the path to the other crater lakes like good little boys, but Greg, Alex and Brian decided to go the slightly crazy way which was much quicker but also pretty sketchy! As depicted in the picture below. That small person in the red top is Alex standing at the edge of the crater wall!
