Roel and I disembarked from the ferry. We had finally made it to Bali. In my head it was like the promised land of Indonesia. Good food, good roads and a relaxing place when compared to Java which as far as I could make out was one giant city.
The plan was to meet with the Irish nurses, Sally and Sarah, we had met on Pulau Weh. We thought Bali was a small island, it is compared to Sumatra, but we still had to ride close to 200km to get to Amed where they were staying. There was the promise of good food and good diving. We hoped to dive the Liberty, a US supply ship from WW2 which was just off a beach.
A very big pig which looked rather tasty.
I spent a week there, eating, diving, eating, snorkelling and eating. My stomach protested since it was not used to good food, especially salad which I ate twice daily. I was close to growing big floppy ears and pointy teeth.
The Indonesian word for foreigner is 'Bule' pronounced 'Bully'. I found this amusing and took to shouting 'BULLY!' whenever I heard the word mentioned by locals. They looked mainly confused. I don't think they would have understood 'Bullies Special Priiize!'
This Bully had a shave in an attempt to look like Hitler.
The diving was nice and relaxing but strange being on black volcanic sand. I was especially keen to see some pygmy sea-horses who live hidden away on seafans. Usually they only come in pairs and are rather elusive but one had at least 10 to be found.
The Liberty was fun too. We started at dawn in an attempt to avoid other divers but it soon became diver soup. My dive computer decided to reset itself at 30 metres which was helpful.
Sabine, a biker from Germany turned up one day. She has been on the road for 18 months with plans to attempt to get to Papua New Guinea before Australia. She seems to enjoy crashing into things.
When we were suffiently bored at doing not very much we headed to Kuta, the whorish capital of Bali. On the way the police stopped us. Sabine was all for keeping going but I stopped. They asked for our licenses and where we rented the bikes.
'England' I replied. They looked a bit confused then seemed dissappointed that our paperwork was in order. Their children probably won't get a new mobile phone for Christmas.
We were looking for a rumoured 'big bike' shop somewhere on the road to Kuta. It wasn't where Roel said it was, the 'Lying Dutchman', so Sabine turned back to where she was staying.
In Kuta I got trapped in a one way system. When I stopped to figure out where I was locals called me 'Boss' and tried to rent me scooters. Western tourists tried to ignore me like the persistant hawkers.
We found a hotel which tried to be posher than it was and was filled with Australian posers.
After our meal that night we went to a small shop to buy water. A small 10 year old boy approached me and held up something he was hoping to sell. He looked pitiful and kept rubbing his stomach saying he was hungry. I dismissed him and when he could see he was getting no cash from me he grabbed my crotch, grinned then ran away laughing. I was bemused.
I managed to buy some fiberglass. I knew exactly how to fix my boxes so spent an afternoon on the hotel balcony fumigating the room with resin fumes and massacaring one of their 'complimentary' towels. I also changed my oil in the carpark, nobody seemed to be very impressed but for a change I didn't make a huge mess. Roel and I had a go at trying to repair his fuel pump which had packed in. I successfully took it apart and cleaned out the gunk from inside. We then forgot how to put it back together.
As good as new, although the outside 'finishing' fiberglass later delaminated and fell off.
Rule No. 1 of taking things apart: Don't forget how to put them back together.
Kuta is sort of like the Costa Del Sol for Australians, full of persistant hawkers asking if I wanted a motorbike. I asked if they wanted a massage. There are good restaurants, if somewhat expensive and my stomach paid the price after we went Mexican. I felt a bit out of place.
I tried my hand at surfing. Having a giant ego I decided against lessons and just rented a board. My first mistake was to try to get out into the deeper water where the big boys were playing on some rather large waves. Several times the sky went dark as I was crushed by monstrous waves. I swallowed quite a bit of sea water and sand and was physically exhausted but did at least manage to stand up a couple of times. Surfing seems to be a lot of effort for very little reward.
When Sally and Sarah left for home I headed to Lombok accompanied by a friendly cold. Roel was awaiting his visa to be extended, something we thought would be easy in Bali with so many tourists but the buggers make it more complicated than it really is and charge extortionate prices for what I acomplished in one day in Aceh.
Before I left I met a couple of Swiss bikers also on their way to Oz who had met various other overlanders along the way so we swopped a few stories.
The ferry took 4 hours which I occupied by eating garlic peanuts. I managed to convince the ticket people that my bike was 400cc so that I would pay the cheaper less than 500cc price. With the engine having LC4 stamped on the side it wasn't too hard.
When directed where to park on the ferry I removed my possesions and locked the bike up. A man then told me to move it since it was too big, despite fitting snuggly into a corner. I complied and moved it to the back of the boat, where it was in the way of a truck, then locked it. He got angry with me for locking it up in case he needed to move it. I told that if he touched it, I would hurt him. I'm rather protective of my beast of burden.
I made my way around Lombok's coast accompanied by my friendly cold to Sengigi in search of rumoured cheap accomodation but couldn't find any. The 'Lying Planet' strikes again. I even managed to get my bike stuck down a small alleyway in my quest.
After dark I rode onwards and noticed a sign for the beach so decided to check it out. There was a small shack restaurant in a secluded field shaded by palm trees. After a meal I made my way to a quiet corner, put up my tent and went to sleep.
I set off slowly around the island. I was in no rush since I was still waiting for Roel to try to catch up in case he had success with his visa. Around every corner there was a perfect almost deserted white beach.
All the petrol stations were empty so I had to buy petrol from small shops selling groceries at the side of the road. They were a bit annoyed that I bought all their stock since my tank is 24 litres and the small local bikes are only 1 or 2.
I headed up into the hills towards a volcano called Rinjani or something and tried to ride up a track to the top but it was too small so turned round and rode back to the village. After stopping for lunch in cafe I found some cheap accomodation where I could nurse my cold. The owner kept asking if I wanted to stay and I repeated that I couldnt afford it so he dropped the price.
I spent the rest of the day recovering and avoiding locals. I never used to avoid people but I'm really fed up of being asked the same questions over and over and over and over again.
I took lots of drugs to get to sleep that night but strangely awoke at around 2am. I lay in bed for a minute before a deep gutteral rumbling eminated from the centre of the earth and the room shook for a couple of seconds. I lay still with my heart beating fast wondering what to do. Should I hide under a table? Under a doorframe? Run around outside naked screaming? In the end I went back to sleep but it was the first earthquake I have consiously experienced. I always managed to be asleep during the others so concluded that was the safest thing to do.
My cold developed into a double ear infection the next day, but unperturbed I set off to Sumbawa via a not so short-cut over a volcano in the middle of the island where quite a lot of locals had decided to live.
According to my 'Lying Planet' Sumbawa is the poorest of Indonesia's Islands. I was a bit perplexed at first since the roads were really good. Then things got worse and I was soon bouncing over some of the worst pot-holed roads I can remember being on. They were so bad that it was usually easier to ride in the dirt at the side of the road. Thankfully there was little traffic but a few times I did encounter strange political protests involving lots of scooter riders who took over the road until I forced my way through.
As it got dark that night I decided to find somewhere to camp. My first attempt was down a track towards to coast where there looked to be a field. It turned out to be a very muddy field so I skidded around a bit then headed back to the road.
My second attempt saw me waiting next to a small track for 10 minutes until the road was clear before I headed down when nobody was watching. I ended up in a small graveyard so decided against camping there despite the potential peace and quiet.
My third attempt was successful, sort of. I passed a small field right on the coast next to the road. It was a bit exposed but in the dark the sparse traffic would not be looking in my direction and I could hide behind a small bush.
I waited a few minutes and eventually a guy on a scooter pulled up and shone his headlights at me. I shone mine back at him to blind him. He went away.
I set up my tent, took some cold drugs, and went to sleep. A couple of times in the night curious locals with torches came in search of me so I shouted at them loudly in German. This upset them and they promptly left.
At dawn I could see that it was quite a nice campsite.
I departed on my way to the unpronouncable Hu'u. I think it might be like the noise an owl makes or maybe like a wolf whistle.
The place is apparently a surfing Mecca but I just planned to waste some time there awaiting Roel. There are big waves out there. VERY big waves. An experienced surfer asked me 'how long had I been surfing?' '3 Hours' I replied. He advised me not to continue my learning experience here.
Instead I attempted to rid myself of the disease that I have been incubating in a nice little log cabin. What first started out as a cold had by now become a double ear infection with a fantastically hearty chesty cough so I took it easy for a couple of days and after exhausting myself reading in the hammock I had aquired in Bali, decided to swim to the 'surfing observation post shack type thing' which was built out on the reef on the other side of the lagoon.
Doesn't look too far away?
I expected it to be a short 400ish metre swim, however after 10 minutes I noticed that the shack I was aiming for had moved rather abruptly to my right. I had gotten caught in the outgoing tide from the lagoon. I stayed calm and recalled my training. Having watched 'Finding Nemo', I sang to myself; 'Just keep swimming, just keep swimming.' So I kept swimming and after another 20 minutes, during which time I moved approximately 100 metres, finally made it. When I swam back to the beach I discovered it was actually shallow enough to walk, but swimming against the current was easier than staggering over the rocky bottom.
Rather than attempting any more water activities I relegated myself back to the hammock and joined the locals for a couple of hours by watching the only man in the village with a hedge trimmer cut a rather large lawn in fascination.
I was also granted a visa for East Timor, the final country prior to Australia.
I went a bit bezerk in taking photos of the sunset too.
After 3 days I was suitably bored enough and Roel was finally on the same island so I set off to the port of Sape to meet up with him. When he arrived we confirmed that the ferry would be departing for Flores the next morning at 8am so bought some supplies and headed up a nearby hill. In Indonesia it's usually best waiting until it gets dark before finding a campsite since usually a man and his goat will turn up on a scooter to stare, then go away and bring his mates. Amazingly, although a guy did wander past with his goat, we were left unmarauded to enjoy the scenery until the next morning when Crocodile Dundee turned up.
At the ferry port we met an amazed Tim from Wirral Advanced Motorcyclist's who was on his was back to Bali from visiting Komodo on his 125cc bike - I said I'd mention him. We were ushered onto the ferry and rather than joining the locals who sat on benches upstairs and were wailed at by some idiot with a guitar for 8 hours, we set up home next to the lorries on the car deck.
Our hammocks were put to good use and we tried to spot Komodo Dragons from 3km offshore using binoculars. We failed.
I, however, discovered that my hammock had a handy 'nutsack'.
We arrived on Flores just after dark, stopped in a cafe filled with 'Bully', ate and set off into the night to find somewhere to camp. After a few kilometers we found a suitable place next to a river and around 10pm, after setting up camp were disturbed by a 4x4 with four occupants. They excused themselves as they wandered past our tents to the river where they claimed to be 'looking for a stone'. After 5 minutes they must have found it because they left again after reversing their car into a tree.
In the morning Roel went for a wash in the river whilst I kept a look out for real or imagined crocodiles. We set off to traverse 'the island that had killed Carlos' suspension'. Carlos was stranded for a couple of weeks after he hit a pothole and snapped his suspension and we wondered whether we could guess which one it was. We think we found the one. A group of locals had gathered on either side, not to fill it in, but waiting for someone who didn't know it was there to damage their vehicle or themselves. I saw it early and decided to hit it with lots of power, lifting the front of the bike up a fraction and bouncing gracefully over, the locals looked disapointed.
We met some overlanders from Singapore on the last leg of their way home from riding around the world.
At a petrol station the locals were amazed that a 'Bully' knew how to check his oil level.
The road twisted and turned over the landscape. The road builders never knew what a straight line was. Buffalo grazed next to rice paddies whilst volcanoes loomed above and smoked like shifty teenagers. I think all I've done for the past couple of weeks is take photos of landscapes.
We camped on a football field in a small village next to the sea that night. In the morning an old lady looked shocked as Roel wandered around in his underpants. Her husband marched over looking angry, saw that Roal was 'a rather large Dutchman' and changed tack. The old lady came back for another look.
We made it to Ende and spent a couple of hours faffing around causing traffic chaos as crowds gathered to poke us and the bike to make sure we're real whilst we tried to ascertain where the ferry to Timor left from and when. Lots of people just seemed happy to name various days of the week. We didn't believe them so found the tourist information building occupied by a very enthusiastic young man who I didn't think had seen many tourists. He confirmed, after printing out lots of pieces of paper from his computer and giving us lots of brochures to places we will never go, that it was indeed on Monday at 8am.
We had 5 days to 'waste' so set off up a mountain to look at some pretty coloured lakes.
For two days we lounged in our hammocks whilst locals attempted us to convince us to go and see some weaving. We stayed in our hammocks reading. It was suggested we could visit some hot springs. This turned out to be a tiled bathing area filled with locals washing, shaving and cleaning their underpants. We didn't go in.
One morning at 4am we set off up to the top of the volcano, Kelimutu, to see the lakes. Apparently they change colour depending upon volcanic activity or maybe the leaves that fall in or maybe they're magic. No one really knows despite lots of official studies by incompetent Indonesian universities - The same universities who decided to study the effect of the 2004 Tsunami upon the coral reef on Pulau Weh 6 years after the event by dropping big blocks of concrete on the coral.
We staggered around in the pre-dawn darkeness driven forwards with stories from locals that the lakes hold the souls of the dead and that several people have died after either falling or jumping in.
Having gotten fed up of paying what we thought was a lot of money for rather rubbish food, we decided to spend an evening making pancakes. Roel decided he might make a business out of it.
After 4 days we rode back to Ende the day before the ferry was due in case it had been cancelled or delayed or moved somewhere. Indonesians have no idea what a schedule is and like Indians have 'elastic time'.
No ferry here.
It turned out that the ferry was cancelled. The ferry company had built a brand new harbour outside of town for their boats. They had built it in a place where there was no shelter, thus no boats could actually use it.
There was a chance of another ferry the next morning at 6am from Aimerem a town 120km away back from where we had come. Failing that it might go 2 days later or from another town, Larantuka, the day after that 300km in the opposite direction. We made the decision to ride through the night in the offchance that the ferry would be the next day. We arrived at midnight, and set up our tents in a carpark. It didn't go the next day so we made the carpark a temporary home for the next couple of days in true gypsy style. Sabine turned up too having ridden across the previous 2 islands non stop. Crazy girl.
We made quite a stir. Indonesians never seem to have a job to do. People hung around to watch us read in our hammocks all day. Roel found a broom and started to clean up. Doing my laundry was a big village spectacle as was repairing Roels fuel pump, which we had built wrong back in Bali. Ever since he had only been able to ride 80km before he needed more fuel.
More active than an Indonesian.
I made good friends with a crazy homeless guy who I called Jimmy. He wandered around all day mumbling to himself. The locals threw stones at him and shouted. When he came to sit next to me I had a conversation. He talked in tongues and gesticulated wildly with his hands. I had no idea what he said but he didn't speak Indonesian. I talked to him about the weather and everything else that came to mind whilst also gesticulating wildly. The locals watched awestruck. This Bully was talking to the madman and both seemed to understand each other. Jimmy occasionally wandered off shouting 'Jimmy' to himself.
Jimmy!
Jimmy shows off some rubbish which is now part of his personal collection.
The hobo, the legend, Jimmy.
When Sabine cooked some rice and Roel cooked some eggs, it drew a pretty big crowd. Even lying in my hammock was a noteworthy event. The locals had formed a new religion by putting a large screen and a projector in the nearby church to watch the World Cup.
The first off the arriving ferry, Sabine thought we were getting onto Noah's Ark.
We had to force our way through a crowd being held back at the gate to get onto the boat where a man wanted 10,000 Rp (about 1USD) for us to use his ramp to get onboard - he wasn't charging anyone else. We pushed him out the way and caused a traffic jam whilst we built our own out of coiled ropes.
The idiots loading the boat had put no thought into anything. They loaded bags of rice first, then squeezed the trucks in between then let everyone else on. Our bikes were by no means in the ideal position and were close falling over several times.
The chaos of boarding.
Finally onboard.
The boat was filled with hundreds of people. There was not enough room in the stuffy passenger area so people slept anywhere and everywhere. You have to admire Indonesians for their versatility. The conditions were akin to how I would imagine a refugee or concentration camp. Animal crap still littered the deck from the previous voyage, pigs squealed, chickens were on the loose and babies cried.
100's of eyes followed everything we did. We put our hammocks up and people were amazed that we could make ourselves comfortable out of the crap on the floor. When I boiled 3 eggs for my tea, people stared, amazed at the white man's ability to cook. After I discovered that our ticket included a free meal, and being full I gave mine away.
I had a restless 4 hours sleep. The sea was reasonably rough and I was concerned that the family who had the clever idea of sleeping under my bike, not that there was much alternative, would be crushed to death if my bike toppled since we had not been able to put them somewhere where they could be strapped down.
Eventually, about 28 hours after departure we arrived in Kupang. The unloading of the boat was as organised as the loading. First about 100 extra people forced their way on to carry off the bags of rice, which by now had been soaked in shitty water and used as temporary beds. It took another good couple of hours before there was enough room for us to push Sabine so she could jumpstart her battery dead bike.
Finally we were in Timor. Only 400km from Dili in Timor L'Este where we can ship our bikes to Darwin, Australia. The only remaining problem is that Roel doesn't have a visa for Timor L'Este yet. Hopefully it will come within the next day or so.
I don't know when I'll get the chance to update next, probably Darwin. Till then...
(Thanks to Sabine for some of these photos)
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