Maumere, Flores Island (Wednesday, August 14 to Saturday, August 17)

Flores is the kind of gorgeous that grabs hold of you tightly.  Plenty of white sand beaches, lush jungle with lots of banana trees, an interior skyline of volcanoes and mountains, and rice fields that undulate in the wind next to swaying palms and rivers.  As mentioned previously, the island was named Flores by the Portuguese for Flowers.

We traveled along pothole roads through traditional villages to see the volcanic multi-colored lakes of Kelimutu carved out of volcanic mountains.  While traveling we observed that the ways of the mountain villages are still very traditional with locals wearing woven ikats and women carry baskets on top of their heads.  Along the way, we also noticed that the cows were very healthy and had an interesting large white mark on their rumps.  After three hours on the road, we finally reached our destination – we enjoyed our hike up to the lakes and were greeted by the monkeys who popped out to grab treats from the hikers.    

Driving in Indonesia.  If you’re thinking about driving in Indonesia, you had better make sure that your life insurance policy is paid up!  The best decision we made in Indonesia was to hire a car with a driver to drive us out to the lakes of Kelimutu – it was worth every penny.  By now we’re pretty used to driving on the left side of the road – it’s been since Samoa that we first started driving on the left side about two years ago.  So it’s not the left side that is the issue, it’s the roads and the drivers; absolutely wild!

The roads are typical third world roads – windy, narrow, full of pot holes, one lane bridges, no shoulders, young children and animals darting out, many villages;  if that isn’t enough to scare you off, wait until you hear how the Indonesians drive.  There are absolutely no safety rules and lots of honking!

Indonesia is very populated (about 250 million) with lots of motorcycles.  It’s not uncommon to see riders with no helmets or a family of five piled onto a motorcycle.  Typically you will see a male driver with his wife or mother riding side-straddled on the bike (usually the women are wearing “ikat” woven long skirts) – each driver and passenger generally carries a large burlap bag filled with grain and a small child.  We even passed a man with about 20 dead chickens strapped to the back of his motorcycle.

Buses and trucks are always packed with people and supplies.  These vehicles generally carry lots of burlap sacks piled high on top of the vehicle along with a young teenage boy on top of the sacks!  Amazing how these kids straddled across the bags and don’t fall off the bus or truck.

Hopefully by now, you’re getting a clear idea of what the driving conditions are like.  When we took our six hour road trip to the lakes through windy curving mountainous roads – my hands covered my eyes most of the trip!

While on this trip, I came up with the local rules of the road in Indonesia.  First, whoever has the biggest vehicle wins – no doubt about that!  Second rule is that drivers use their horns constantly beeping at pedestrians and other vehicles and they never slow down for anything.  Third, as a driver, you tailgate the vehicle ahead as closely as possible with the hope of running it off the road – ha, ha or until the driver eventually pulls over.  Lastly, the drivers always pass the vehicle ahead of them with no regard for oncoming traffic, pedestrians, blind curves or other vehicles in the process of passing.  Often three or four vehicles will simultaneously pass one or two vehicles while a pedestrian is crossing or another vehicle might be approaching from the opposite direction – YIKES!  With my head buried most of the trip, I was very happy to have survived the day.  The emergency hospital rooms must be filled with car accident victims.  All this makes driving in Rome look like a piece of cake!