Labuan Bajo & Nusa Lembogan

  Lembongan, Indonesia
Friday, August 8, 2008

Basically, quite nice to get off the boat and rent a room in a hotel with a toilet and a bathroom that was actually bigger than two turkish toilets put next to each other and a bed that was not moving. It is funny how a little journey on a boat can lower your standards so that you can be happy and enjoy the most simple things. I don't know if you have ever tried to do number two on a squat toilet that is balancing with the waves but if you have diarrhea, you are in deep shit !

Once in Labuan Bajo, I had two choices. The first one was to stay in Flores and make my way towards Maumere, the main town to go and check out the three coloured lakes. While Maumere is 500 kilometres away from Labuan Bajo, it takes, they say about 30 hours by bus. If from my past experience traveling in Indonesia four hours is six, I let you do the maths for the 30 hours trip.

The sea in Flores

You will tell me that I could stop here and there to check out lovely little towns on the way, but if we believe the Lonely planet guide book, there are no such things. Insteas the Lonely planet elaborates a lot about the state of the road, or the no road situation and the lack of public transport. On that one, I have to confess I gave up and chose option two which was much more appealing for an enjoyable time : stay one day to scuba dive in one of the best site of the world, the Komodo national park and then...FLY out of there !

The only plane company being closed at the time I arrived and my scuba diving trip leaving before they open, I decided to trust those two French guys (yes trust the French...crazy, isn't it?) that were on the boat trip with me and were also looking for a flight out of there. I gave them one million (rupiah that is) in cash to buy a plane ticket out of Flores for me as I really did not want to get stuck in Labuan Bajo. Once again, with "what if ", life would be much less enjoyable ! Well it worked all right as they got me a flight from Labuan Bajo to Denpasar, Bali for the following day. Absolutely all the flights out of Flores transit in Denpasar. Or example, my two travel agents French guys were flying to Lombok (closer to Flores than Bali) but they were on the same flight as me, all the way to Bali and then on another plane to Lombok. It seems like no matter how hard I try, it was impossible to get away from Bali.

The diving was absolutely breathtaking. The first site was called Batu Bolong which is a small rock outcrop with a hole through it. With the rock disappearing into the depths, it marks the beginning of another world, you simply feel like swiming in the middle of a giant aquarium. FANTASTIC ! Thousands and thousands of fish, all colours and sizes, all turning around this big rock in the water. Giant tuna fish, Napoleon Wrasse, sharks and turtles, beautiful corals of course. All the fish seems to swim around in a slow motion, peaceful way, following the current and they do not seem to mind you. It was...I can't find any word to describe it. The next dive site was Manta alley.Needled to say what I've seen there, you could even see the manta rays from the boat. I just stood a good 25 minutes laying flat at the bottom of the ocean right under this 3 metres manta ray. Even the dive instructor had never seen such a big ray ! It was majestic but once again, there is no word to describe the feeling of what I experienced watching that ray peacefully swim around in circles 30 centimetres above me.

After the diving

Well, you have seen the pictures, so yes, I had a little accident and got a tank dropped on my head and bounced on my leg I guess. Don't ask me how it happened, the important thing is that all my bruises are nearly completely gone and I am back to looking normal now. No further damage to report.

The next day, I was ready for my flight out of certainly one the smallest airport in the world in one of the smallest plane. Very interesting, no crazy security, no waiting on line to take out your shoes to be X-rayed, no questions, no passport checking, no safety instructions showed in the plane and it works ! It was the most beautiful plane ride I have ever been on. Amazing corals, islands, sea colours, volcanos, just great views all the way. Once landed in Denpasar, I took a taxi (remember, this is the only way out of lovely Bali's airport) in order to get as far away as possible from Kuta beach.

Nusa Lembogan

I wanted to go to the island of Nusa Lembogan off of the south east coast of Bali. There was only one taxi boat per day at 8 am, so I had to spend the night in Sanur, lovely town which hosted a festival the night I was there. Delightful, apart from the fact that there was no water in my hotel, but "merde happens" (title of an hilarious book by Stephen Clarke by the way. Highly recommended when on a boat from Lombok to Flores for three days!)

In Nusa Lembogan, I met up with three English girls

The girls team

traveling for a month and we had a very nice girly time. Feels good sometimes. I walked nearly all around the island and I was basically on my own the whole time. Alone on absolutely beautiful beaches, on amazing paths through the middle of the island.

The waves at Devil's point

All the tourists are concentrated on one main beach and all the rest is mainly locals and a couple of surfers (those seem to be everywhere in Bali!) It is a small island but the landscape is very diversified and the waves were amazing to look at on devil's beach. Name well chosen. The main activity of the island, apart from tourism with surfing and scuba diving is seaweed farming. Seaweed is all over the path, roads, beach, drying with potent smell and beautiful colours. It is amazing to see them bring the seaweed out with their wooden baskets balancing on a bamboo stick and sort them out in seconds. Nice island, the best place is ever you get stuck in Bali.

Drying the seaweed