Ant dies in rancid towel shocker!

26th November 2011

During this road trip I have been sharing a room with Alex, as the days go by I notice more and more that his towel is getting pretty minging, mainly because of the smell. I can only describe it as a festering, rancid piece of rag. He has not been able to wash it since before we left Labuan Bajo and it doesn't seem to be able to dry out completely because he keeps using it and we're always on the move.. so it stinks and has gone a funny colour.

Anyway..

This morning Alex saw an ant on his rancid towel and went to brush it off, but the ant would not budge. He realised that the ant was stuck on the towel.. dead! The ant had nibbled on the towel which seemed to have instantly poisoned it like some kind of venomous snake. The poor ant had a serious case of rigor mortis and had to be surgically removed by use of a pair of scissors.


 

Alex is already ill.. I fear that the towel will take him next..

5 men, 5 mopeds.. Day 4.

25th November 2011

Today we were heading to Moni, just beyond Ende, we left Riung at 8am. We came to a split in the road and wondered which way to go so we stopped and asked the locals - Greg just ploughed on following his GPS and didnt wait for us.. the locals said that both ways lead to Ende but pointed at the way Greg had just gone and said it was a really bad road. We went a little way down the road after Greg and tried to call him but he had no phone signal, so we text him to say we had gone the other way and would meet him in Moni.

We stopped in Ende for lunch, most places were closed for some reason so we ended up in a Chinese restaurant, wondering why the horses in this picture had a six pack and legs with two elbows!?


Continuing to Moni we met up with Greg at a traffic light where there was some roadworks. The road he took to this point was like a dirt track! He had not stopped for lunch and the rest of us had stopped for 1.5 hours!

We made it to Moni at about 4.30pm and checked into Sylvester's homestay

For some reason my moped is drinking a lot more fuel than anyone elses but most of the others have had a puncture by now so I guess that balances out the fuel costs! :P



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Moped-o-thon, day 3

24th November 2011

We left Bajawa at 7am heading for Riung where we planned to go snorkeling.

Brian was the lucky winner of "fall off your moped" today - the road was really bad in a couple of places and he wiped out weaving around huge pot holes, the crash was quite spectacular and he took some skin off his foot but he was ok with it. It was starting to feel like that film "Final Destination", where "death" was just picking us off one by one..

We arrived in Riung at 12pm and checked in to the Nirvana beach house where we each had our own little bamboo hut with comfortable bed for 120,000 rupiah. The staff there helped us charter a boat to go snorkeling from 1pm until 6pm so we quickly grabbed lunch and went to the harbour.

On the way to the snorkeling area we saw some more flying fox bats. In the day they are hanging in the trees, from a distance it make the trees look pretty freaky and then you get closer and realise its just hundreds of bats! The noise of the boat disturbed them so they all scattered.

The snorkeling was not as good as it was in Komodo national park. We stopped in two places, in the first place parts of the reef were damaged quite badly, potentially by dynamite fishing. The second place we stopped at was better though.

Just as we were ready to go back to Riung we saw some whales in the distance and we asked the captain to try and get as close as possible to them. We got pretty close but it was hard because they move so fast and disappear under the water for so long. I got a video of them when we were quite close though, they were absolutely massive! They disappeared again and when they resurfaced they were way off in the distance so we finally headed back to Riung. It was a great ending to the day. :D




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Moped convoy, day 2

23rd November 2011

We left Ruteng at 9:30 heading for Bajawa, it would be another day of driving.

Today it was Alex who fell off - he made the mistake of touching his front break while turning on a pretty gravely corner.. woops.. Lucky it was a tight corner so we weren't going fast and he was ok but he did take some skin off his foot as he was wearing sandals. The bike was a little damaged too. All the locals who passed were stopping to make sure he was ok, which was nice.

When we stopped for lunch Alex was feeling really bad, not only because he had fallen off his moped but also because he was starting to get ill. He was just crashed out sleeping outside the restaurant while we all had lunch. We tried to get him to eat something but plain rice was all he could manage. Unfortunately for him we still had a really long way to go until we got to Bajawa.

We finally arrived in Bajawa at about 5pm and found a really good place to stay for 100,000 rupiah.


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Labuan Bajo to Kelimutu by moped, Day 1

22nd November 2011

I had arranged mopeds for me and Alex to be delivered to Komodo Indah where I was staying at 7:30am, so we could meet Brian and Mario at 8:30am. Annoyingly the mopeds did not arrive so Alex and I had to run around to the moped hire places to get them as quick as possible, but it took a while because we couldn't find one for Alex that was in good condition for a good price. One place tried to give him one with no licence plates! It was brand new though, but a bit of a risk when you're planning on doing a 400km round trip.

Brian and Mario went on ahead and we agreed to meet them in Ruteng where we would spend the first night. Alex, Greg and I set off at about 11am when all the faffing was complete.

We saw some great views as soon as we set off, the roads were mostly good and really fun to drive, winding around the mountains. In parts it was like being in some kind of race because when you pass groups of people walking along the road they all go a bit crazy and start waving, cheering and shouting "hello mister" and trying to give you a high five as you go by! Especially the children who even try and chase after you.

We stopped at a small village called Lempot for lunch before carrying on to Ruteng. When we got to Ruteng it was dark already and we were pretty tired so we went straight to meet Brian and Mario at the losmen they had found. It was only 77,000 rupiah for a night and I shared a room with Alex so that made it super cheap, but it was surprisingly cold as Ruteng is pretty high up. Mario told us he had fallen off his bike today but he was ok.


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Batu Cermin cave

21st November 2011

Today I just relaxed a lot and arranged motorbike hire as Alex and I planned to leave tomorrow for our trip to Kelimutu. Alex had booked a diving trip and I ended up going to Batu Cermin cave later in the afternoon to pass some time. Had to crawl through some pretty tight spaces in the cave but was pretty cool inside. I went alone and ended up tagging along with a big group of Polish guys when I got there.

In the evening I met up with Alex again and he had met another couple of guys, Brian and Mario, who were planning a similar trip to us so we arranged to go as a group of 4. Then later we bumped into Greg who also decided to join us. Mario and Brian had a plan all worked out for which places to stop so we agreed to stick to that.

Komodo island

20th November 2011

Got up at 5:30 to go to Komodo island as early as possible.  We had breakfast at sunrise and then got onto the island at about 6:30. We had a 2 hour trek and managed to see some Komodo dragons in the wild this time, although they weren't particularly active, just hanging out resting in the sun and didn't seem too bothered by our group. We saw lots of buffalo, deer and wild bore around the island as we walked, dinner for the Komodo dragons!

This video shows just how little the Komodo dragons were doing - only moving to change sleeping position..



After Komodo island we went to a place called manta point to go snorkeling, hoping to see some manta rays there but unfortunately we did not. I did see a huge sea turtle though, which I swam above for some time until it sped up to the point I couldn't keep up and then it disappeared.

The last stop was fairy island where we went snorkeling again, this time we found a lobster hiding away.

The trip was really good value for money, saw some amazing places, the people were all really cool and the food was great too! :P

We got back to Labuan Bajo around 6pm just in time for a massive thunder storm and we got soaking wet walking through town. Had dinner with Greg and Alex. I was planning to maybe fly to Ende and then go to Kelimutu next and Alex wanted to go as well, but his plan was to hire a moped and ride across Flores to Kelimutu which sounded like fun so I thought I would join him.


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