We wake up earlier than normal because we think the breakfast service will be slow based on our experience from yesterday. We are pleasantly surprised that it’s a buffet and there is a selection of self serve items to choose from. I decide to go with an omelet and order my vegetarian special. I now know that if I ask for vegetables and cheese and no meat, I will get a plain omelet, just eggs. You have to say, “cheese, yes, onions, yes, tomatoes, yes, green peppers, yes, mushrooms yes”.
We’re in the lobby at 8:00. Ben is already waiting for us. We’re off to see several sights before we end up at our final destination in Moni.
The first stop was a farm where Sopi is made. It’s the popular liquor distilled from sugar palm trees. On Flores Island, Sopi is often served at special occasions. We see the type of sugar palm used for making Sopi. The fruit of the palm tree is harvested to extract the palm juice. It is the big stick in the picture and you can see some hanging in the tree picture.
The harvesting process of the palm fruit results in moke which has a low grade of alcohol in it. A pail of moke was shown to us.
The moke is then brought to a boil in a kettle to increase the alcohol content. We then get to see the still in action for the process of making Sopi. The steam from the boiling moke rises up and cools down in a very long bamboo tube that runs about 15 feet long and then runs back towards the still.
The finished liquid is collected in large plastic jerry cans. The long pipe running out from the middle of the shed overtop of the owner and then our driver’s head keeps on going until it’s joined to another pipe that drips the liquid into the jerry can.
I’m not sure what the alcohol content was but it tastes really high. And the Sopi tastes really awful. Judith was surprised that anyone would drink it and we declined the offer to buy some.
The next stop was a local fishing village, Waring. The homes were all constructed on stilts and the boats were small skiffs.
I was appalled by the amount of plastic collecting by the wharf that ruined how picturesque the village could have been. Besides the picture here, there was loads garbage strewn all throughout the village. The developing nations I have toured have a long way to go about their attitude to and dealing with their garbage. These days their waste is no longer just organic matter as it would have been generations ago. The way people dispose of waste hasn’t changed to accommodate this new generation of non-compostable garbage resulting in the situation we have now in these countries.
Next we toured a local market. There was a fish section, vegetable and fruit section, clothing section, and vendors selling meat and spices. The vendors’ displays were carefully laid out.
Anchovies anyone?
I liked the straw containers for palm sugar.
Gigantic cinnamon sticks. They could have done double duty as small clubs.
As we strolled through the market, the guide, Ben, bought some mangos. We borrowed a knife from the vendor and ate one of the mangoes. It was alright. I like the Altaulfo mangoes better.
The next stop was a chocolate factory. We didn’t see much production, but they sold chocolate bars and we bought a couple. The chocolate production happened behind this wall. The glass display case in the front displayed the chocolate goods that were for sale.
The next stop was an old church in a village Sikka. St. Ignatius Loyola Church is an old Portuguese and Dutch church built in 1899.
The interior was beautiful.
On the path towards the beach from this church there was a group of women selling their ikat textiles. This is a weaving technique and Ben indicated that if we wanted, the women would show us how the cloth was made. The cost was 100,000 rupiah, about $10 CDN so we said yes.
The ikat cloth made by this group of women uses traditional methods. The fibres are picked from a tree, that they call cottontrees, but they must differ from the horrible cottontrees I have making an annual mess in my yard.
The cotton like buds are laid out onto a woven mat, probably made from tough coconut fronds. The fibres are beaten with narrow bamboo sticks to make them soft and remove the seed attatched to the fibres. The women sit across from each other, a stick in each hand and together will alternate whacking the fibres.
Once the fibres have been softened they are rolled through a press to compress them, remove the rest of the seeds and prepare them for spinning. Judith took a hand at this. Her instructor thought she was going too slow at one point and urged her to spin faster.
The fibres are then spun onto a spool. The spinning method used her toes to guide the spun fibre onto the spool.
The yarn is then looped onto a frame. The number of loops determines how wide the finished cloth will be.
The design that the cloth will have is made in the next step. The woman here is binding the fibres together in a way so that when it is dyed, the sections that are bound will not receive any dye. The cloth strings are then removed from the frame and dyed.
They use natural dyes. They show us a couple of the raw indigo plant and tamerind pods that are used to make some of the colours.
The dye is applied to the cloth strings. Once dried they are removed and put back on the frame. The ties are removed and the patterned lined back up on the frame.
Next the weaver takes the frame with the patterned yarn and adds the lateral threads. The thread is attached to a wooden shuttle which is woven across and slid across the strings. It will take 6 days of weaving to finish the piece she is working on.
We take a picture with the group. I wanted to buy something because I like textiles but couldn’t make up my mind. In the end Judith wanted to give some money to one of the women and she gave Judith one of the cloths which was table runner sized. I bought it off her. Everyone came out happy.
We had a planned stop for lunch, but when we arrived, there was a huge crowd. We find out that it’s about a two hour wait. Ben decides to implement plan B, so we go to a local fish vendor and purchase some fresh fish. Rather than put them inside the car where they would smell, they hang the bag from the rear wiper arm and we proceed down the road until Ben sees something he’s looking for and gets the driver to stop.
We back up about 20 feet and Ben jumps out to have a word with the owner of a 7 seat, kiosk stall restaurant to ask if they would cook the fish for us. The answer is of course yes. So we hop out, the fish is passed over to the cook and we wait for the meal to be prepared. In the meantime, a cassava appetizer is served. The root vegetables is peeled and steamed and served plain. It appears the chunks of cassava can be eaten with your hand (because there were no serving utensils with the dish), and for extra flavour, you can add chilli sauce already on the table, in a small vessel. I ate a few chunks, Judith tried it but gave it pass when she was offered more. This soy / rice / cassava thing really isn’t her cup of tea. She’s also nursing her stomach which doesn’t like the change of diet. Although she likes to try the local cuisine, her stomach’s tolerance level is low and so needs to dial it back a bit before it escalates as it did in Bangkok last year. 
I thought the cassava chunks were good, but that’s what I think about the vast majority of food I eat. And my tolerance for foreign food is wickedly high—I’m lucky in this respect.
The fish was served cooked on a charcoal grill and was very tasty. They made up some vegetables to go with our meal. The rice was already cooked and kept warm in a large rice appliance. She had a large wide rimmed soup bowl in her hand and scooped out a large serving of rice and asked if that was enough. We both looked at the size of that serving and asked for half of that amount. It came back about 7/8ths of the original size and so we asked again for half of that and motioned with our fingers where that line was on the heap of rice. I swear there was no change when it was presented again. We asked for half again and it came back about 3/4 of the original size. After this third time we gave up and just left a bunch of uneaten rice at the end. The four of us finished off all that fish. They were small tunas and they were very good. I thought Ben’s plan B to go to another restaurant was a stroke of genius, but you wouldn’t have been able to do this for a larger group. I love the flexibility of this smaller group touring.
Of course, the toilet facilities are’t great here and we’re advised to use the one at the bank across the street. Judith let me know it’s a “2”. I have no choice.
We drive for a couple more hours. Moni is in a higher attitude location and I wasn’t prepared for how cold it would be. Maybe the rains also cooled down the temperature. Maybe it was the air conditioning still running in the car. By the time we arrived around 4:30 we were very chilled.
Ben suggested we go to the local restaurant, Mopi’s Restaurant (I think there’s only one restaurant for miles.) and pre-order our dinner. This is a place that caters to the tourist trade that comes to see Kelimutu Lakes. I order the vegetable curry and Judith orders a quesadilla.
The next stop is our accommodation for the night. It’s a “home stay” because we were unable to get into the hotel where other travellers like Judith and I normally stay, as it was full by the time our package was being booked. Since it was high season, the home stay was presented as our only alternative, so we thought how bad could it be? I had pictured that we would be staying in someone’s house with the family but that wasn’t the case at all.
Our home stay was one of three units in a stand alone building located on the owner’s property. I was amused to see a stand alone ATM machine inside a telephone booth sized structure beside our building. But that was where the laughter ended. The owner unlocked the door (the lock was the size you would find on luggage), flipped back the metal latch and we entered.
You can see in the picture the homestay linens. That was one of the first things that caught our attention. The gigantic king sized bed and the lesser 2nd bed beside it, are now funny to us, but these were less funny that day.
The bathroom looks OK on the surface but there where a few issues that may not be apparent in the picture or not captured by this shot.
They are as follows:
- The river rock in the shower is really small river boulders. There’s no way to stand on them. You had to wear sandels to step on the rocks.
- There was no hot water.
- There is no door for the bathroom
- The small slug that came out of the drain when I was brushing my teeth.
The room was cold. There was a thin blanket on the king sized bed and a comforter on the lesser bed, not enough to keep either of us warm enough. Our solution was to move both comforters to the large bed and wear warmer clothes to sleep in.
I recognize homestay was the only solution we had, but for adventure travellers who aren’t backpackers on a budget, I don’t think that homestay should even be offered. This was clearly an uncomfortable stay. While I survived the experience and have come out laughing about it, it’s clearly not the level of stay I would have signed up for. The trip advisor star rating is definitely in negative territory. Judith’s positive note was that it didn’t smell bad as it did the prior night. I told her that wasn’t a ringing endorsement.
On the other hand, dinner at Mopi’s restaurant was fun. My curry was good if not a little bland. Judith didn’t touch her dinner at all; her stomach was bothering her. After dinner she pulled out a deck of cards and we played crazy eights using her rules. She won soundly; had we been playing crib I think I would have avoided being double skunked by the tiniest of margins. I find out later that the deck was missing two cards.
Sometime into our card playing the live band comes on stage and went through Bob Marley’s hits. A couple of them had dreadlocks. Judith knew all the songs; I had no idea she liked reggae and was a Rasta wannabe. Now my burning question is what happens to Rastafarians when their hair turns silver?
We left the restaurant, turned on our flashlights and reluctantly returned to our home stay to sleep. We need to be ready at 5:00 to see the sunrise over Kelimutu Lakes.
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