This post was meant to be sent last week, but with connectivity issues were not able to send it. The Kanawa experience will be posted in next few days.
Im afraid this entry will be shorter than normal, as our
boat for Kanawa island is shortly departing. It is our final destination before
coming back to Bali for a few final days, and there is no electricity there. It
is a small island close to Flores and Komodo Island. Can you guess what animal
lives in Komodo? If your guess was
beasts of fantasy and legends then you are correct. From Kanawa we want to take
a day trip and see the legendary Komodo dragon in its natural habitat!
AWESOME. But how did we get this far
from Bali?
.JPG)
Well, a few days after our last days volunteering, we did a night
climb of Mt. Batur and were able to catch the sunrise. We climbed with a gent
from ze France, and had fun speaking ze French avec il. We were also surprised
to meet a family of monkeys living at the top of the mountain, well I guess a
more accurate description would be active volcano. Steam came out of many holes
and the most recent eruption occurred in 2004! We received nourishment at the
top and were stoked because we were told we would get an egg and banana bread
once we reached the summit. I guess we got just that because along with the
hardboiled egg, was banana slices stuck between two pieces of wonder bread… I
ate mine, Emily passed on hers:).JPG)
A few
days later we went to the legendary party island off the coast of Lombok; Gili
Trawangan. Now, despite being in that
party atmosphere with bars lining the beaches and locals asking if we want this
or that, we were too busy getting certified to independently SCUBA dive anywhere
in the world! So over 4 days, we were able to take 4 dives and see some
incredible things! Turtles, octopi, eels, and sharks, not to mention the myriad
other fish we saw enjoying the coral reef surrounding the island. Im afraid we
have no pictures of things SCUBA related yet, but hopefully we will get a dive
or two in on Kanawa and take some pics then. Other noteworthy things is that locals like the saying "why not" as a response to many questions. Ex) At a restaurant, asking the waiter for a drink he responds "why not" (made me giggle). Also many many cats are here, and no dogs like the many in Bali..JPG)
Our
trip to the Flores area is worth mentioning, if only for the fact that it took
31 hours to get there over 3 ferries, 2 busses, a van, a taxi, and a horse
driven cart. We were told on Gili that it would take about half that time and
all be on 1 boat by our lovely travel agent. The good part was that we were
experiencing areas very few foreigners go through, in fact after we got to
Lombok from Gili T, we were the only white people! We were famous, and many
people took pictures of us regardless of if we cared or not. These girls were
probably the cutest example of this. The bad part is that it was terrible. Em
and I both took an oath not to complain on the ride there, but now that it is
over prepare for a mini rant. Bus drivers don’t care about you because they
blast (bad) indo music at you til 11pm,
then start it up again at 430am. The company doesn’t care about you because
they cram more luggage in the bus than space and shove it in the aisles, then
cram more people than seats and put those people on the luggage. And the people
spread out and spill stuff on you and stick their feet in my seat area, while
due to bad maintenance air conditioning fluid leaks on me from the ceiling.
Even MORE people come on at some stops and try to sell you stuff. Em cant sleep
for a bit because a cockroach ran by her arm and later had ants all over her
bag. Since we don’t speak Indonesian and no one spoke English, we were never
entirely sure we were going to end up where we wanted. We did end up where we
wanted however, and are now taking a short breather in a nice hotel with this
view. So now that we are all clean and
rested, it is time to undertake 4 days paradise in a private island..JPG)
In Labuanbajo, this is the view from the hotel.
We will fly back to
Bali.
