Once we met up with Jill we booked plane tickets to the port town of Labuan Bajo, Flores. When we arrived at the airport in Flores we were greeted by a slew of taxi drivers and tour guides, all hoping for our business. We ended up having Tony, a very rastafarian fellow, drive us to our hotel and eventually arrange a four day adventure for us. We booked a car and driver, Charles (the mellowest guy I've ever met), to drive us to some of the islands sites. We began bright and early, leaving Labuan Bajo at about 8:15 (we had planned on meeting Charles at 7:30, but he had us worried when he showed up about 45 minutes late due to sleeping in) and heading to the nearby Mirror Rock Cave. It was a muddy and interesting cave filled with crickets, spiders and bats. From there we took the extremely windy and hilly main road to an incredible waterfall. Getting to the site required a beautiful and very steep hike through the jungle, across a small river and through rice field terraces to the base of the massive waterfall. Our guide to the fall, Augustina, was a tiny, local man with a huge nose. He was around 50 years old and no taller than 5 feet. He spoke no English and was very sweet and patient with us. At the base of the fall his wife joined us, she wore a traditional sarong and her mouth and teeth were stained bright red from the beetle nut that many of the locals chew. When the four of us jumped in to the water and slowly made our way to the back of the falls the woman was jumping up and down with laughter at the site of us.
After the grueling hike back up to the car we drove to a place called the spider fields. We walked to a lookout point were we could view the very unique rice fields below us. The fields are massive, all differnt shades of green and arranged like a giant pie cut into many slices. This makes the field look a lot like a spider web. This is the only place in the world where the rice is arranged like this. Each slice of the pie belongs to one family and is passed down generation to generation. That night we stayed in the town of Ruteng. The next morning we headed out of town hitting the sprawling local market where Jill and Alex tried beetle nut. I was hilarious! Their mouths went numb and there saliva, which they were producing very quickly, turned bright red. They were spitting the red juice all over the place. From there we went to a 'traditional village'. It was a bit of a disappointment. We had to pay to visit and then received next to no information about the village, and had to content ourselves with listening to the sounds of televisions coming from the traditional houses. Our drive to the next town, Bajawa, was long, hilly and very windy. Once in Bajawa we checked out their local market, which was so much cleaner then Ruteng's, and then decided to go to a near by hot spring. It was fantastic. It was later in the day so we had the place completely to ourselves. There were a couple of large man-made pools to swim in and then the natural hot spring river which you could jump right into and float down in the perfectly warm water. It was a very relaxing way to end a day full of riding in a car.
Well we have again fallen a few days behind with our blogging, but there will be more to come of our adventures! Soon to come : Villiam, the troublesome tour guide, a gorgeous resort on a deserted island, some interesting weather as well as journeys on and under the sea!
Ashley
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