Indonesia 2013: SE Sulawesi
Wakatobi to Labuan Bajo, Indonesia
Continuing on our Sail Indonesia rally adventures along the northern route with 13 other boats, we head west towards Southeast Sulawesi and surrounds…
Day 105 – 107 – 17 – 19 August, 2013 – Wakatobi to Hoga Island and Hoga Island
We anchored off this little island with a research station to get some rest and do some diving. We did three dives in two days and enjoyed some easy-going socializing as well… we went to join Neal and Ruthie on their boat with folks from other boats the first night, then had Kia, John, and little Braca, on board for brekky the following day and the Neal and Ruthie back on board for pizza dinner with us. We bought some strange-looking “lobsters” from a local who came over in his boat… don’t think Maine Lobster by any means. Still, they were tasty if a bit difficult to get into and not very meaty.
Day 108 – 111 – 20 – 23, 2013 – Hoga Island to Buton and Pasar Wajo
Wow, what an extravaganza! This stop was totally over the top in so many ways! The welcome and hospitality surpassed anything we could have expected, hoped for, or even dreamed up. We were taken to a tent where we were outfitted with traditional local clothing. We thought they were just for the opening ceremony where government officials were presenting… just to make sure we were all attired appropriately. But when we went to take them off at the end of the ceremony and festivities, they insisted that we keep the costumes as a souvenir of our stay.
We missed the “Doli Doli” ceremony because we had to wait for the officials to arrive (and they were late). This ceremony is intended to strengthen the immune system of babies. There were about 1000 babies – I kid you not – under a tent for this ceremony. They rub the babies in some sort of oil (coconut?) and then roll them around on banana leaves. I was told by someone there that all the babies are crying and making a fuss… perhaps better to have been waiting for the officials at another location instead, lol!
After the official presentations, we were taken to a huge tent where women had platters of scrumptious food prepared. They fed us samples of anything and everything… you aren’t allowed to feed yourself, it’s part of the ceremony. Everything was wonderful… totally yummy. It is called “1000 Trays”, and it sure looked like there were that many!
After we finished the feast, we headed over to other tents which highlighted the handcrafts of the area… weaving cloth and baskets as well as mats. They insisted I get in front of one of the weaving looms and learn how it is done. Once strapped in, there were about 75 people all trying to give me instructions (in Indonesian) and showing me by example. I don’t think I did very well with that and hope I didn’t mess up the sarong the woman had on the loom!
The following day was the “Colossal Dance”… 12,500 dancers performing on a cleared hilltop across the bay from where we were anchored. We still can’t imagine the enormity of this event, but it was certainly impressive… sort of like half-time on Superbowl Sunday, but in a small community in rural Indonesia?… simply astounding!!!
The relatively small village of Pasar Wago put on the “Colossal Dance” performance, an amazing feat and months of preparation. They also provided the wonderful ceremonies, dinners, a personal guide/translator for each person, as well as transportation, a diving trip to see the Mandarin fish, etc. etc. and that was only the “planned” activities. Then there were all the little things… the friendly fisherman everywhere, the boys that paddle out to visit with you to practice their English, the yummy food, the beautifully designed fishing boats and homes, the diverse culture from island to island, even the mosque loud-speaker chanting (calls to prayer) at 4:10 in the morning… this along with the mountains, jungle-clad tropical islands themselves being so beautiful with the crystal clear seas in all shades of blue and turquoise. Indonesians like to tell stories through dance… there’s a dance for everything. One particular one was performed in Buton. This is the main story about Butan and one which every Butonese persons knows… the story of the mermaid. The short version is that the children were misbehaving, playing in the water where they weren’t supposed to be, and they got into trouble. They were swallowed up by the sea and became fish. Their mother, heartsick, jumped into the sea after them and became a mermaid, forever searching for her children. And so it goes, moral of the story is to always obey your mother! 🙂
The next day (Friday), we were taken by car to Baubau, a town on Buton about an hour away. We toured the Fortress there, which is supposed to be one of the largest in the world. We enjoyed a welcome ceremony and had more photos with the Sultans and the King…
We walked the perimeter of the Fortress (2.7K) and along the way we met two local university students playing tour guide. They accompanied us and adopted us as “parents”. They thought us very cute for holding hands and being romantic… we had great fun with them. Pipian and Inang… our adopted kids. We love you guys! 🙂
After the Fortress, we all piled into cars and headed off to either the local farmers market, the handicraft market, or back to a hotel to rest up before the dinner with the Mayor in the evening. Dinner was lovely, outside and overlooking the harbor. At 9:30 they whisked us away to head back to Pasar Wajo, where our boats were anchored (an hour drive). We were exhausted and ready to climb into bed only to find that the mayor of the local town had ALSO planned a dinner and music. So, at 10:45PM we had a second dinner with more singing and dancing. At midnight, we slipped away and headed back to the dinghy and to our boat. We were planning to leave at first light. Yawn.
Day 112 – 113 – 24 – 25 August, 2013 – Buton to Sagori Island
Saturday was nice day sailing and then we tucked into a spot at the bottom of a small island, coral, white beach, little local fishing boat next to us and quiet! We enjoyed having a stir-fry at home rather than another heavy feast. As good as the Indonesian food is, it isn’t the way we normally eat and I always wind up eating too much because I want to try everything!!!
Day 114 – 115 – 26 – 27 August, 2013 – Sagori Island
We tried picking up one of the moorings that were placed for us at Sagoi Island… cement in buckets, but we wound up dragging it off the reef. The other side was rough with swell and wind, so we decided to head up to a little inlet in front of a village where it was more protected. Sagori is a tiny island with 260 inhabitants and no fresh water of its own. For the official ceremony with Sail Indonesia, they had the ribbon-cutting for the new solar panels which will give them electricity on the island now. Everyone has a cell phone, so where have they been charging them until now… generators?
Since several boats followed us to the alternate location, we needed to get back to the island today. The local marine police speedboat provided our transportation service. They picked us up on our boats at 7:30am (at first, they said 6:30am… yikes!) and then after the festivities they brought us back. Their official schedule said we would be there until 10:30pm, so we were pleasantly surprised to be back on our boat by early afternoon. We were all so tired, but the welcome and the lovely lunch were great and much appreciated. We gave some pencils, balloons, and other supplies, to the island school.
Tuesday, we were taken by car for the jungle tour. First, we were taken over to another village for a welcome ceremony. Two long lines of kids that were dressed up and holding long poles welcomed us as we walked through. Then each group of kids (varying ages) did a dance with the sticks, where they moved them back and forth near the ground while the dancers stepped in-between… very nice. Then they fed us an assortment of sweets, which were all tasty and most contained coconut and palm sugar. I love coconut, but I’m definitely going to need to stop eating all of this stuff… I can feel the calories lodging and making themselves at home on my body! After the ceremony, they dressed me up (sacrificial lamb) in the local traditional costume… similar but somewhat different from Pasar Wajo. Everyone needed photos and you can tell by the one here that I was “glistening” mightily with the heat and humidity.
We then headed for the mountain top village. Along the way we stopped at a little shack which turned out to be a palm sugar “factory” (I use that word lightly) as it was just a little shack. We learned how they harvested and made palm sugar. Once atop the mountain at the village and after another welcome ceremony with the children playing reed instruments and some dancing, we were invited to a lovely lunch in what was the old school room (with a great view) and then took a walk to the old fortress. The walk did go through a few stretches of leafy cover, but I wouldn’t actually categorize that as rain forest or jungle of any sort. Still it was a very nice outing and a nice walk. We headed back to Sikeli, the village we anchored by, with a stop at the local market for some provisioning, then prepared to leave for a night sail to one of the trip’s highlights… Taka Bonerate. This is the world’s third largest atoll and I had never even heard about it before coming to Indonesia!
Day 116 – 28 August, 2013 – Sikeli village to Taka Bonerate
We had 90 miles to go and needed to arrive in daylight to navigate around the reefs, so a night passage was the plan. We left at about 5:30PM and I had expected calmer conditions than we experienced. We had left port-lights (windows) and hatches cracked open, which turned out to be a big mistake. We had some rough seas and took a few waves over the deck. One of those came in through a hatch and soaked some of the cushions and rugs. We try very hard to keep the saltwater on the outside of the boat because it will continue to attract more moisture to it… never drying and only turning moldy over time. So tired as we were when we arrived on the first day (didn’t sleep really on that passage), we still had to clean up the salt water mess and wash floors, table, cushions, etc. 🙁
Day 117 – 119 – 29 – 31 August, 2013 – Pulau Tinabo Besar (Big Tinabo Island)
The Tinabo National Park office is on this tiny island, along with a few folks who operate a basic dive boat and have a little “resort” (I use this word lightly) for a few guests. Two of the boats from our route had already found the island and had been diving for a few days.
We organized a dive trip (2 dives) and then another the following day. I thought they were lovely and enjoyed myself thoroughly. Since I’m such a new diver, I can’t really compare these dives to many others (just Great Barrier Reef and Banda Islands, which are both excellent locations), but Roger said these were some of the best dives he’s ever done, so Taka Bonerate apparently lives up to its claim of being one of the best dive locations in the world.
Still, after a full-on schedule since Darwin and then two full days of diving, we are exhausted and ready for a little rest and solitude. We enjoy the boats we’re cruising with and like the socializing and “sun downers”, but we need to balance that with some down-time and rest. We were planning to head further south to Pulau Bonerate (Bonerate Island) the next day, since the wind is expected to kick up and there’s no real protection where we’re anchored, but decided to stay one more day to rest up. Boy this wonderful cruising, diving, touring, socializing, feasting, tropical, life is tiring! 🙂
Day 120 – 123 – 1 – 3 Sept, 2013 – Pulau Tinabo Besar to Pulau Tanajampea and anchored
We left Tinabo in relaxed fashion and headed south through the inside of the western side of the reef system. The winds turned southerly and so we abandoned our plan to go to Tenga Island at the bottom of Taka Bonerate atoll, since we’d have to motor into the wind, and fell off the wind heading more westward and towards our “plan B” destination on the south side of Tanajampea. Roger has the experience and a knack for finding nice little places to tuck into and anchor, and this is one of them. We were so tired that just sitting in the cockpit reading and relaxing was about all we wanted to do. A few boats meandered by, including one with the Polisi. We served coffee with cookies and fruit, communicating with sign language, a few words and our little phrase book… which did not make for a robust conversation. The village was very small and didn’t even have a little traditional market, so we didn’t take the dinghy down nor make our way in. The rest did us good, and after two good nights we were ready to cross the Flores Sea and head for Labuan Bajo. This next stop represents rejoining the fleet and a huge gaggle of boats. We had gotten used to just a dozen traveling with us and weren’t sure we were ready for the large group and more populated stops on the trip.
Day 124 – 128 – 4 – 7 Sept. 2013 – Across the Flores Sea to Labuan Bajo
We had the most magnificent overnight passage from Tanajampea to Labuan Bajo across the Flores Sea. 10 – 15 knot winds on our beam and calm seas along with a blanket of stars above and what looked like a mirror image of phosphorescence in our wake below. We arrived at the first outer islands just at daybreak and saw how different the terrain and vegetation was from just 100 miles to the north, dryer and much more sparse. After anchoring, we set out to take care of our first priority… getting our internet topped up. Then we went to check out dive options and discovered a real bakery… fresh bread for Roger, happy camper he is! We spoke with several dive operators and then headed back to the boat.
On Wednesday, we headed back into town and caught a local bus to the “Pasar Besar” (big market) on the hill. The buses are actually little mini-vans with benches along the sides and are painted with a variety of interesting patterns and colors. They also have a variety of stuffed animals on the front dashboard, often including a large rainbow-colored fuzzy stuffed caterpillar… not sure of the significance. But for about $1.50 we both were transported about 3 miles out to the market where we bought fruits, veggies, eggs, nuts and then went out on a limb and bought local tofu from a bucket and a chicken, likewise from a bucket. I can feel my Mom gasping at the thought of buying a raw chicken from a market the likes of this one, but I cooked it up and survive the experience to write about it. 🙂
After returning to the boat and puzzling all the purchases together into our fridge (always a challenging task) we went back into town to arrange diving and pick up the loaf of bread we ordered from the bakery. Along the way, we stopped by a little t-shirt shop and bought our must-have Komodo Dragon shirts for about $5 – 6 each. That evening we joined our friends for a lovely dinner at an Italian restaurant called “Made in Italy” and it was superb! I wasn’t sure whether that was because we hadn’t had a fine dining experience in so long or if it was actually that good, but in the end, I decided it was great by any standards. We both ordered pizza and ate way too much of it (enjoying every bite!)
On Thursday we took a dive trip out to the northern Komodo Islands. We did three dives… Castle Rock, Crystal Rock, and one other. The dives were very nice… one of them was a fast-current dive which was a new experience for me. Roger said it was an advanced dive and that I did great! On the first dive we saw a pair of white-tip sharks (Mom doesn’t want to hear about sharks either and probably can’t decide whether the sharks or the market chickens pose the greater threat!) and one of them was very pregnant. That was cool to see. The dives were great and the boat trip to and from the sites (about 1 1/2 hours each way) were also very pleasant. So glad we did the dives although they weren’t as reasonably priced as Taka Bonerate.
Friday, we tried to get internet, but it was a challenge, even in town at a cafe. I did a little browsing and bought another dragon t-shirt. Saturday was the “gala” dinner, with buses transporting us and tons of people. I think we’ve had enough of the big group gala dinner thing for a while.
Stay tuned for further “Sail Indonesia” adventures, and bring on the dragons!