After 3 great weeks in Bali we signed up to join a small boat cruise through some of the eastern Indonesian islands. After some confusion over where exactly in the harbor the boat was moored, we finally found it and boarded on the morning of the 22nd. The boat is called Ombak Putih, which means white wave in Indonesian. It's a beautiful wooden ship, painted white with blue trim and huge blue sails (when they were somewhat infrequently raised) and a bow that sweeps upward in a seaworthy arc. We met our fellow cruisers, about 20 of us in all, who hailed from Holland, Germany, Switzerland, Australia, and America, all very friendly and we were happy to see two other small children in the group. We were welcomed on board with cold towels and fresh juice from the friendly and smiling crew, an auspicious beginning to our week. We motored east out of the harbor and settled into conversation with our fellow passengers for the next week.
After a very good lunch (another very auspicious sign) we disembarked in a small harbor in eastern Bali where we boarded awaiting cars and drove to a small Bali Aga village. The Bali Aga are the original inhabitants of Bali prior to mass migration from Java, and there are a number of villages where there culture and traditional ways are still preserved. They have been able to preserve their villages through strict rules regarding marriage: if you marry outside of the village you must leave the village. In this way the ownership of their land has remained in the village for hundreds of years. However, with only 600 or so people in the village we saw, intermarriage has caused some challenges genetically. Brothers and sisters do not marry, but first cousins do. But, if you marry outside of the village and are later divorced you can return to the village, with your children, and the gene pool is freshened somewhat in this way. The village we saw is also noted for double-ikat weaving, and incredibly complicated weaving process that I will not even begin to attempt to explain, as I don't understand it in the least. Maybe Wendy can take a crack at it in another posting...
After the Bali Aga village we drove to a temple, known colloquially as the Bat Temple because it fronts a teeming Bat Cave. There was a ceremony going on when we arrived, but everyone very friendly and welcoming and they ushered us around the worshippers to the mouth of the bat cave. Thousands upon thousands of large fruit bats, all hanging upside down, squeaking, flapping wings to find a better spot, guano-ing and stinking, and posing for endless pictures. An incredible sight, not for the squeamish or bat-phobic, and just one example of the teeming abundance of life in all forms that we encountered all over Bali.
Then back to the boat and motoring overnight east to Lombok island. In between Bali and Lombok lies the Wallace line, which roughly delineates Asia from Australia in terms of flora and fauna. West of the line all is lush, green, tropical, and teeming with bats and lizards and snakes and leeches (all of which we encountered first hand in Bali). East of the line the climate becomes drier, the vegetation becomes drier and more Australian - eucalyptus trees, more scrub, etc. The difference was noticeable in eastern Lombok, though we did still see lots of rice paddies and greenery. But the further east we went the more apparent it became, and we actually saw pampas grass and cactuses on some of the eastern islands.
We took a bus from the port in Lombok and headed to our first village where we were to see a traditional dancing performance. We exited the bus and were immediately overwhelmed by our greeting. A full gamelan (orchestra) broke into loud, clangy and drummy song in the middle of the street, and two villagers stood waiting to administer a flower lei greeting to two of us. Wendy and I were selected by our guide as it was the day of our anniversary so we proceeded to greet them, received our leis, and led the procession in a slow march down the street. Children and villagers gathered on all sides, the gamelan banged away, and 22 or so westerners marched down the street accompanies by several hundred Indonesians, with Wendy and I at the helm. Nobody had told us to expect this when we got off the bus!
We turned down an alley and entered a medium-sized courtyard, fully covered with a large cross-thatched awning that filtered the bright sunlight into a blanket of thousands of small diamond shapes that lay over everything. The westerners sat, the villagers and children poured in all around, tea was offered and drunk, and the gamelan clanged away. We were treated to several interesting dances, culminating in a ritualized stick fight dance between two men who were selected. They had large bamboo sticks, and rectangular wooden shields stretched with dried cow hide. They made a loud band when struck by one of the bamboo poles. The combatants each had a coach (who had selected them) and there was a referee. All was ritualized, all knew their parts well, and the actual fighting was continually interspersed with dancing, including the two combatants dancing together. But, ritualized though it was, it was still a fight between two testosterone-fueled men, and in between the dancing they did whale on each other with the bamboo sticks, with both men emerging with large welts on their backs and sides. There was a rumor that one of the men was later taken to the hospital, but I don't know if this is true. Finally the westerners were invited up to dance with the locals, and after a few thousand more photos were taken we marched back to the bus, waving and smiling, and entirely overwhelmed by this, the first of three villages we were to visit that day!
Next we visited a village known for pottery making, and the reception was significantly more low key. We watched the traditional pottery-making process, Emma and David were invited to help, and more photos were taken.
Then we went to a village known for weaving. The weaving was beautiful and I'm sure would be much more interesting to me if I had the slightest comprehension of how the process works. But to witness the weaving we wove ourselves through the narrow streets of this village, glimpsing into courtyards and returning the many friendly smiles that were offered. Our presence was noted more and more until we had a dozen or so local children following us around, smiling, saying "hello mister", high-fiving, mugging for photos, and herding younger siblings along. I said hello to one small boy standing with his sister. He boisterously yelled back something not understood by me, and his sister clapped her hand on his mouth and looked at me red-cheeked and bug-eyed. After a nice lunch at our guide's home in the village, and after Wendy bought a nice woven sarong, we found our way back to the bus and back to the ship.
After the amazing but overwhelming day in Lombok we had a nice down-time day of swimming and snorkeling on day 3. In the morning we visited Moyo island, which is known for an ultra-exclusive resort that caters to the rich and famous of the world, of the likes of Princess Diana, Mick Jagger, and a parade of Saudi royalty. But we steered clear of them and anchored off a beautiful, deserted, white sand beach. The water was littered with jellyfish which made us very nervous for snorkling. Our cruise director, Peter Dieman, a very talented Dutch artist who has resided in Bali for years, calmly plucked a jellyfish from the water with his palm flat. We thought perhaps he was immune to them, but he calmly said (everything Peter did was done calmly) "I have it's back". So apparently you can hold a jellyfish on its back in the flat of your hand without being stung, but none of us tried.
Despite the jellyfish the temptation to snorkel was too strong, and some of us waded in carefully. I spent as much time looking up and at the water around me as I did looking down, but I managed to avoid being stung. The snorkling was amazing, as was all of the snorkeling we did on the trip, with an incredible variety of coral such that I've never seen before. We saw amazing, bright tropical fish, and more exotic sea-life including moray eel, a sea-snake, giant purple sea-stars, bright blue-lipped clams, all "clamming up" as we passed by, and two large lion fish. But the coral itself was the star, more alive and unspoiled, and in more variety of colors and shapes than I've ever seen.
In the afternoon we visited tiny Satonda island, a small crater with a lake in the middle that was once fresh-water but is now brackish after being swept by a massive tidal wave in 1815 after the volcano on nearby Sumbawa island erupted in the largest volcanic explosion in recorded history, far larger than Krakatoa. The volcano lost 1200 meters of its 4000 in height and spewed 24 cubic kilometers of lava and debris into the air. Tens of thousands died instantly, hundreds of thousands more in the famines that followed, and world-wide weather was affected so that in Europe it was known as the year with no summer, and even Napoleon's troops were slowed as a result.
And on Satonda island we saw our first monkeys of the voyage!
The morning of day 4 found us in the harbor of Bima, in eastern Sumbawa. We watched the morning trading at the harbor, fisherman selling their catch to dozens of head-scarved women, all yelling at once. Mountains of bananas being unloaded onto the docks. And load after load of cement bags crane-lifted from the cargo holds of wooden ships like ours, and settled into the backs of trucks by men with rags over their mouths and cement dust covering their bodies. We loaded the bus and drove a few blocks to the market. We wandered threw the market, ducking under low-slung tarpaulins and stepping carefully over muddy puddles, and returning the smiles and greetings of stall after stall of what seemed to be the friendliest and happiest people on Earth. Every imaginable product and produce was for sale, but no one bothered to try to sell us anything. They were genuinely happy to see us, as we were them, but the stars were Emma and David, who had their legs grabbed, their noses plucked, and their cheeks pinched so many times they were sore when we finally stumbled back to the bus. It was just a half hour meander through a market in a small port town on an island most of us had ever heard of before, but it had quite an effect on us, as though our faith in humanity had been restored. I wished naively that Bima could always remain as it was then.
Then we went to a small village in the mountains above Bima where we were treated to more traditional dancing. Three women performed a dance which represented the various stages of planting and harvesting and processing in wet rice farming. Then, more ritualized combat, this time of the head-butting variety! Again there was a referee, and again the two men danced together while the band played, but then one lowered down, elbow on knee, head front, eyes down, while the other danced and waited for the referee's signal. It came, he charged, and foreheads collided with a loud thud directly in front of us. But both men, seemingly unfazed, immediately resumed dancing and eventually they traded places and thudded again, and then we were done, said our thank you's and goodbyes, waved to more friendly people, high-fived more children, and re-boarded our bus.
Day 5 found us anchored off of Komodo island, one of only two islands which contain the dragon population. We set off early, bought our tickets, and fell in line behind our guide for the walk, who carried a very large fork-pronged stick. We were surprised to learn that, in addition to the terrible dragons, the island was also home to vipers, pythons, and spitting cobras! Wow, dangerous place. Unfortunately we didn't get to see any snakes, but 15 minutes or so into our walk we came upon our first dragon. Like most of the dragons we saw that day and the next this one didn't do much, other than lay on it's belly with it's arms and legs splayed out, 5 long razor-sharp claws on each. There were 30 or so of us humans around it, within 10 feet or so, but the dragons are basically indifferent to humans. They have no natural predators when fully grown. (They do however eat each other and eat their young. Baby dragons, after hatching, will immediately climb up a tree and live in trees for the first few years of their life, eating bugs and lizards. Adult dragons are too heavy too climb trees, but even their own mothers will eat them on the ground.) Nor have they been targeted by humans: their loose skin is not good for clothing, and their meat is not good for eating. So they don't care much about us, but we were still wary. We were warned that, even when they are splayed out and look half-asleep they can jump up in an instant, and they can run faster than humans. Their tiny lizard brains operate on instinct, and when their forked tongues pick up an interesting smell they react, as we learned the next day...
On the evening of the fifth day we were treated by our amazing crew to a BBQ on the beach, a tiny spit of beach on a small island somewhere between Komodo and Rinca. We sat on bamboo mats on the sand and ate grilled fish, calamari, and kabobs by candle light, washed down by white wine. Emma and David borrowed flashlights and discovered that the small bait fish in the water were attracted to the light. Then they discovered that if Emma held the light in one spot and David bent down with hands poised he could reach down and scoop up a fish with his bare hands! After catching a few and throwing them back they found a half coconut, filled it with water, and began to populate it with fish. They were up to 5 or 6 fish in the coconut by the time we had to leave, all of whom we're set free, to the kids chagrin, though one or two hadn't taken too well to their new home and were floating a bit...
We woke up on day 6 in a small, swampy inlet of Rinca island. Peter had told us that Rinca was even better than Komodo island for seeing the dragons. We had only seen 4 dragons on Komodo, two of which were camped outside of the lodge having been attracted by the smell. A family of monkeys was playing in the mangrove near us as we set foot on the island. Two minutes later Peter was proved right. We were walking across a large dry river bed, heading towards the visitors center - we hadn't even bought our tickets or got our guides yet! - when to our left we spotted a large dragon, not laying down but purposefully walking towards us, head high and tongue actively flicking. We were out in the open, with nowhere to hide, and no guides with large forked sticks to protect us. Peter quickly rushed us along to the safety of the visitors center. We saw 15-20 more dragons on our walk that day, as well as the scant remains of a buffalo carcass that our guide told us had been devoured only 3 days earlier by 40-50 dragons! We also saw a wild boar, lots of buffalo, and megapods, which are basically a kind of wild chicken, but with a very cool name. At one point we were paused watching some megapods when two dragons came over a ridge towards us, tongues flicking. Our guide then noticed that one of us was bleeding from a small cut on his leg. The guide quickly cleaned off the blood and applied a local balm to it to mask the smell. If the dragons had picked up the smell of his blood they wouldn't have thought, they would have just reacted, but the guide seemed to have masked the smell just in time.
We had another fantastic beach and snorkeling session on our last afternoon, and then our last dinner on deck under the stars. We arrived in Labuan Bajo, Flores island the next morning, and caught our flight back to Bali. It was a great week of visiting villages, snorkling, seeing dragons, and getting to know our delightful fellow passengers, whom we hope to keep in touch with. We flew back to Singapore the next day, and as I type we are hurling through the air towards Hong Kong!
Awesome post! I was on the edge of my seat - seriously scary Komodo dragon action!!
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