Kelimutu

One glance at mine and Rosa’s backs and it was obvious that it didn’t make any sense to go on a 10 hour bus journey the next day. I shuddered when I thought about what hoiking our rucksacks onto our backs would be like…

Time to change the plan.

We talked to Pepeng and he was happy for us to stay another night. He also said he had a friend called Maxi (Maxi Taxi!) who might be able to help us get to Kelimutu on the day we were now leaving. He could pick us up from the bus when we arrived in Bajawa (10 hours), drive us to Moni village at the base of Kelimutu (6 hours). We would all stay the night in Moni then Maxi would take us up the volcano for sunrise the next day (45 minutes) and then back to Ende to catch the boat at Friday lunch time (2 hours).

Bloody intense and the cost was a cool 1.5 million Rupiah, (£75). It was a lot of money, but if it meant we got to Kupang three days early it might be worth it.

The only part of the plan that seemed a little vague was the ferry timings, I couldn’t find details of any crossings leaving Ende on Friday, Saturday or Sunday.

We spent half that next day trying to find the information we needed. ASDP was the other ferry company operating in Indonesia and their website was beyond me if I’m being nice, and an utter pile of garbage if I’m being mean.

I eventually found an email address for Customer Services and spent a frustrating afternoon sending emails going back and forth trying to find out when the ferries left from Ende.

‘The timetable is on the website’ they said ‘I’m really sorry I can’t see the timetable on the website’ I said – ‘is there a boat from Ende to Kupang on Friday, Saturday or Sunday this week? – ‘Here is a link to an instagram timetable’ they replied – the timetable seemed to indicate that ASDP only had one sailing a week from Ende and it went to another island first… In the tooing and froing I did discover that the fast ferries had stopped for the rainy season and in my last email I asked one question only:. ‘PLEASE can you tell me when the next boat to Kupang leaves Ende?!’

“10.00 pm Tuesday” came back the reply. A day after the Pelni ferry left.

How hard would it have been to say that four hours ago!?

I spoke to Pepeng that evening, and told him that we wouldn’t be needing Maxi’s help because we were going to catch the Pelni ferry on Monday.

The next morning Pepeng told me Maxi had said there was absolutely definitely a boat leaving on Friday. I told him we had had it in writing that there was no ASDP ferry until Tuesday, so unless his friend was 100% certain we would rather stay in Moni a couple of days and not spend the £75. Pepeng promised to pass that on and we said a fond goodbye when we left at 6.00 the next morning, in a bright red bus that had windows for air-conditioning.

Our driver smoked, I think whenever he was starting to get a bit bored, and he spoke on his phone whenever it rang, but he took breaks when he needed them and had clearly been trained in the ‘Shannon school of driving’… He was careful, slow and considerate of other drivers, which was just as well, because that was the most terrifying road I have ever been on…we had no seatbelts and the side door was open the whole journey.

I counted 296 hairpin bends on that road – when I was trying to distract myself from the endlessness of it all, I sat there and counted them on my map… Two Hundred & Ninety Six!! Puts Zig Zag Hill into perspective…

I took a screenshot of a small part of the route because it’s bonkers… I literally have no idea how they managed to build that road. I found out later that it has only been here for the last two years, before that it was ‘pothole hairpin pot luck’ ‘take your lives into your own hands with this death defying journey through volcano country!!’

After a very hot, VERY long 10 hours we arrived in the mountain town of Bajawa.

Our saintly bus driver took us to the guesthouse, a place Pepeng had approved of when I told him the name, and there outside, waiting for us was Maxi Taxi,

What to do?

There was no way our family could stand any more travelling that day…perhaps I hadn’t been clear enough, maybe there was a boat?!

We rang Pepeng and with the help of the owner of the guesthouse I negotiated a way out. Maxi was now saying there was a fast boat on Saturday, not Friday, but ASDP had told me there were no fast boats running anymore so I held my ground. It wasn’t an easy conversation, but Maxi departed. happy, – I gave him 200,000  Ruoiah (£10) …he had shown up after all, even if I thought I’d been clear he’d still made the effort.

The Cinnamon Guesthouse was run by a man called Johannas. It was the first time we had arrived at a guesthouse without having made a booking… and somehow he had a triple room ready. It was the cheapest price we’ve had for any room so far….we started to relax.

We all had quick showers, treated our sunburn, and then went out for a meal. We had an easy, relaxing evening in Bajawa, we met another English couple in the restaurant who unbelievably had travelled big chunks of the same route as us, overland! It was great to share stories and to meet people who had made the same effort as we had. The lovely Holly and Matt even gave us an idea for the way back – they were planning on getting a ‘repositioning cruise’ back to America – we had never heard of ‘repositioning cruises’, could be interesting!

Bajawa was a sweet mountain town I think we would all have liked to stay in for longer, but with the uncertainty still surrounding whether we could get Pelni tickets for the ferry to Kupang we needed to leave early the next morning.

Johannes arranged for the bus to come and collect us at 6.30… And then a wonderful piece of luck came our way. Mesak, a friend of his, was driving to Moni that next morning and would be happy to take us in his car for the same price as the bus …and if we wanted, he could stop in Ende so we could go to the Pelni Ferry Ticket Office…!

We couldn’t believe our luck…it turned out to be such a great day. Mesak was a tour guide and he was driving a Swedish guy called Rikard around the island for three days. We tagged along with every fun thing he had arranged…and none of it involved money – simple beauty all the way…

We stopped to look at a smoking volcano – spent an hour on ‘blue beach’ covered in blue pebbles and volcanic sand…I swam in the warm water on the deserted beach …luckily I didn’t know about the scourge of the salt water crocodiles at that point!

Mesak then took us to the Pelni Ferry Ticket Office. We floated out clutching our tickets and went round the market buying fruit and deodorant (we get through a lot of deodorant!) – we were going to Kupang and we were going to smell like Scandinavian forests!

Our next stop was a bamboo bridge across a river and finally some beautiful rice terraces. We did all that and still arrived in Moni before the bus would have…and I had hardly noticed the insane drive up the side of the volcano with all its hairpins…(adding another 76 to my 296,)

After a surprisingly tense negotiation around giving us a lift up the mountain to the base of Kelimutu the next morning we headed off to our guesthouse. I reckon we were thinking ‘you are going anyway and you are wanting to charge us the same for a twenty minute drive up a mountain as for a whole days travelling’ and he was thinking ‘there are three of you and this is the going rate’ – we compromised half way between his over pricing and my naivety and headed for ‘Watugana Bungalows’.

The balcony was pretty and John was a cheerful man who we reckoned managed the pain of his motorbike accident by self medicating with whatever herbs grew locally and alcohol.

The rooms were basic – our shower didn’t really work and the beds were unbelievably creaky but we liked John and the balcony so we stayed two nights.

That afternoon we went to the waterfall at the top of the village only to discover the women in the cafe opposite charged an entrance fee for ‘keeping it clean’ – it was an open path down to the river but did I blame her for trying to earn some money from the tourists? No…there is a very real chance I would have done the same thing.

My instinct was to get in the water (any chance to cool my sunburn) but I dipped my toe in first in case it was freezing…to find it was really warm!

Volcano water I thought! Maybe it would be good for me…we didn’t stay long but it felt good to swim in warm waters. On the way back we went for a meal and discovered that Moni was a village without WiFi – they hadn’t had any for a week…could make planning the next bit tricky but we were here for the magnificence of the natural world so planning could wait!

None of us slept well that night – Theo and I woke each other up each time we went to the loo and we all had to be up by 3.30 anyway to go to meet Mesak for our lift up to the base of the volcano. He and I had made friends again that evening when I’d played guitar in the local bar…he’d liked that I could sing so there weren’t about to be any frosty silences 🙂

As we walked up the road to our meeting point the world was quiet and dark. Unfamiliar stars glittered overhead and a reverence settled on our small group.

We drove mostly in silence to the entrance where two women arrived and took our entrance fees…

Mesak parked and wished us luck seeing three different colours in the lakes, ‘sometimes they are all the same colour’ he said, and got out his blanket so he could go back to sleep, he’d seen the lakes many times before so the four of us headed up the volcano without him.

The light was beginning to touch the edges of the night as we walked the couple of kilometres upwards. The forests were mostly pine up here and the smell was fresh and the air a little cooler…

We arrived at the first viewing point about an hour before dawn and climbed up the steps. There before us were two big lakes – we could make out that they were different but couldn’t make our the specific colours.

We headed on up to the highest point we could go to in search of the third lake.

The view was stunning – forests and mountains and three different coloured lakes…the lake of the old spirits was black and had steam rising from the surface, reminding us (if we needed it!) that this was not water for swimming in…we each had our moments with that lake. It had a presence that inspired stillness and peace.

We all saw the first glimmers of the suns rays and sat in silence as, for the second time in two weeks, the three of us saw the sun emerge from the darkness.

The colour of the two lakes before us changed from an indiscriminate darkish colour to a dangerous looking light green and a picture postcard blue. We talked softly about our travels and how incredible it was to be here, the people we knew who has sat in the very same spot …and wondered what the hell we would think if we came up one day and the blue lake had turned red!

We agreed that if we lived here and saw one of the lakes was a different colour one day we would definitely be trying to work out what the spirits were saying to us…

We munched on bananas and biscuits and wondered about the explosions that had caused the three craters. We stayed for a couple of gentle hours in the early morning light …and moved a very large caterpillar from the central rock, where it had managed to get somehow, back to a tree. I am never really sure if I’m doing whatever creature I ‘rescue’ a favour when I do something like that but we figured it had a better chance of not being trodden on back in the green areas.

We said goodbye to the lake of old spirits whispering a little prayer as we left and headed to another viewing point between the young and evil spirit lakes.

It was pretty disconcerting that the most beautiful of the three lakes was the evil one…

I managed to find meaning in that after a while of staring at the two sat side by side. The toxic green lake being the future we have made, and are making, for the young spirits I decided, and the beautiful blue is the everyday consumer temptations that are using up everything on the Earth.

…I’m not sure that was an accurate reading of the mysteries of Kelimutu but it would do for me…I loved it up here, it was ancient and had an ‘underneath’ power I could feel.

As we walked back down the volcano I looked at my map…and a crazy, secret plan started to form in my mind.

We were going to be here for another night and I couldn’t think of anywhere I’d rather be for sunrise the next morning…so how long would it take me to walk back here?

We couldn’t afford the taxi to get me up here, or the entrance fee which was more expensive the next day…but I could see there was a path that meant I didn’t have to pay.

It was a 10.4 km walk and would take me two and a half hours …so I’d need to leave at 2.00 in the morning. Perhaps a bit ambitious but what an adventure!! I had a torch and I loved walking …it was a once in a lifetime chance to be here…I was NEVER driving along that road again.

I almost hugged myself with excitement as we arrived in the car park.

Mesak took us back down the mountain and we said goodbye to our adventure companions of the last twenty four hours and I paid Mesak a bit more than we’d agreed because, well, that was the kind thing to do.

John made us breakfast of pancakes and fruit when we got back and suddenly we were all knackered.

We did very little that day apart from eat and try and get WiFi with no success…I played my guitar for a while and watched the day pass by…

I looked at my adventure plan again and saw the first part went through the waterfall gully…it would be great to see what that first part of the journey was like so I suggested a walk and Theo wanted to come with me.

There was a viewing point indicated on the map so we headed for that, after paying our enterprising cafe owner her entrance fee.

On the way I saw what looked like a child’s toy on the path and nudged it with my foot…it buzzed so loudly I screamed and ran away – it was about an inch across and had frightened the life out of me… when Theo stopped laughing and I’d calmed down we had a look at this spectacular little bug that could make such a loud noise – but not too closely, that thing was more scary than a Komodo!

…was I really going to do this on my own in the full darkness of 2.00 in the morning…? I cast my doubts aside and we headed on up the path.

We walked through a village filled with chickens, small dogs and baby piglets and headed on up.

Oh my god! The ‘up’ was relentless…we had soaked all our clothing within ten minutes of that climb and continued for another twenty before we realised we needed to head back to meet Rosa for dinner and we had not made it to the viewing  point 1.5 km from the hotel. We got lost on the way back and my doubts decided to come back. (This might be another opportunity to be flexible I thought!)

I confessed my secret plan to Theo on the way down the mountain – there was absolutely no bloody way I was going back up there again, in the dark, on my own …he didn’t think I was mad but he agreed it could have been ‘a little challenging…’

I’d seen Kelimutu at sunrise once obviously that was enough 🙂

The owner of one of the cafes allowed us to use his phone to hotspot that evening so we could book a hostel for tomorrow. Theo arranged a taxi for the next morning, which was nearly the same price as the bus for three of us and would get us to WiFi early enough to be able to do research for the next part of our adventure…

After our banana pancake breakfast the next day we said a grateful goodbye to our squeaky beds and a warm goodbye to John and his quick smile, and headed back towards Ende.

Thank you for writing to us Flip…Sunrise at Kelimutu really will stay with us for the rest of our lives!