We get up early to get to be ready for our 5:00 pick up so that we can see the sunrise over the lakes at Kelimutu Vocano. There is no power at the homestay when we get up. Although it’s not the homestay’s fault it just adds to our overall experience here. We have to turn on our flashlights to get dressed. The toilet must operate with electricity because it doesn’t work either.
Fortunately we slept in our clothes, and so there wasn’t much to do to get ready. We’re into the car on our way to Kelimutu Lakes by about 4:50.
The lakes are located in Kelimutu crater, an active volcano. The mountainous road to the lakes are narrow. It’s a 40 minute pitch dark drive at this time of the day. They’re upgrading the road, so a lot of it is a slick muddy mess. On one section in particular, the tires grab and slip repeatedly and that would normally be OK except we’re on a hairpin curve and there’s a cliff on the other side of that shoulder.
We make it to the parking lot and there are many other vehicles who have also made the trek up. Probably more than normal given that the road was closed yesterday due to the rain. We walk up to the lookout point on the hill. It’s a 30 minute walk over trails and stairs. Lots of stairs.
The lakes are an attraction because the three lakes are all distinctively different in terms of colour. And they can change colour from red to green to blue to black. Today Lake of Young Men and Maidens is a pale green, Enchanted Lake behind it is a deep green and the third, Lake of Old People is black. The different colours are due to volcanic gasses being emitted by subterraneous openings into the lakes. Since each lake has its own unique connection to the underlying volcano the colours in the lake change independently from one another.
Lake of Young Men and Maidens in foreground. Enchanted Lake at the rear.
Lake of Old People
The lakes are spectacularly beautiful. The sunrise is nice enough too. Our guide Ben loves to take pictures with his phone camera with us in them. We just humour him. Personally, I just concentrate on the scenery and then arrange for a picture with Judith and I to prove we were there.
We come down from the lookout and back to the parking lot. It’s foggy coming back down the mountain but it clears up enough to take a picture of the muddy road.
On the way down, we stop for a quick tour of Waiuraka Village, a small farming community near Kelimutu. It seems like an idyllic little place with farming done in the valley on the side of the mountain. In reality the life is hard with villagers eking out their living.
We return to the homestay to have breakfast. One giant pancake each and for me, some thick black coffee. Since drinking the Indonesian coffee I’ve started to add a bit of palm sugar. To make this coffee, they put a heaping spoonful of very fine espresso grind into the cup and add hot water, stir and is served unfiltered. The grind settles to the bottom as a sludge. It’s strong stuff; I find that a little bit of sugar takes the edge off.
The sludge after I finish my coffee.
We sat outside in the shade of our building bordered by the owner’s home and the ATM booth. The breakfast was good. A pleasant surprise given how unsatisfactory the rest of the place was. After breakfast we packed up our stuff and gave the homestay family the Rogers maple flavoured popcorn and the duty free maple flavoured candies we had bought for them. Today we’re on our way to a Ende, a city that has a small airport. From there we will fly north to Labuan Bajo to start the cruise portion of our trip.
Up the road from the homestay was the lovely Murondao waterfall. A section of the area is the local bathing hole, but we just checked out the waterfall.
The next stop was the Nduaria market. The appeal of fresh vegetable was too good to pass up. We ended up buying beans, carrots, passion fruit, oranges and a local fruit, sawo. It had a deep dark purple skin that could be peeled off. The inside is shown in the picture below.
The fresh veggies were great but we put the bag in the rear footwell where we were sitting in the car and it kept rolling around and getting in the way when entering and exiting the car. Why we didn’t do something sensible like move them behind our seat to the cargo area is a mystery.
After lunch we go to visit another farming village. Wologai village is inhabited by the Lionese tribe and they are noted by their thatched roof homes on raised foundations. The people there are interested in showing us their traditional lifestyle.
The main building was the temple house (keda kanga). We were invited to enter the house by the village headman and learned about some of the rituals of this village. At the time, I didn’t know it was unusual to be invited in. I feel honoured to have had this opportunity to see inside the temple building. Or maybe it was because our guide slipped him som money when I wasn’t looking... The translator for the other group that were visiting at the same time got up to talk about how the Lionese people believe that god, ancestors and nature are inseparable. Their worship incorporates all these concepts.
Inside the temple building.
Outside there were a collection of very hard shelled nuts which the inside nut is used as fuel for their lamps. Cracking them by using a rock would always break the nut. They showed us a tool with fibres lashed together like a baton that cradles the nut in one end. When the cradled nut was whacked against the rock, it would just crack the shell. I tried the two ways of breaking the shell a few times and was amazed at how well that tool worked in only breaking the shell.
Coffee is an important crop. There were beans in various stages drying in the sun. We got to “grind”coffee, which involved putting the roasted beans in a deep heavy vessel (in our case it was a hollowed out section from a tree trunk). I used a heavy pole and smashed the end down repeatedly into the beans. You’re done when you have espresso grind in the bottom of the vessel.
Judith was keen to have me take some pictures of some of the villagers. They are faces that show a tough life.
As we drove away from this village, there was a vantage point that looked back on the village. We stopped to take this picture of Wologai village.
We ended up going into another village, Wolotopo, another Lionese. village. The village is located on a steep hill and we climbed many roads and narrow staircases in our walk.
At one of the tops of a staircase, a young man appeared selling a sweet treat. Without knowing the composition, I ate it. It was sweet, reminding me of rice based treats I have eaten in my youth.
Ben was keen to show us a longhouse style home where 6 families lived. This building was elevated, standing on rock pillars They all had their separate living areas including cooking areas so conceivably, there could be six smokey fires going on simultaneously in that small building. That floorspace could easily fit into my downstairs tv room with room to spare.
We drive through some amazingly beautiful farming communities. We stop in one of them, Detusopo to take pictures of the rice fields.
We ended up in Ende around 2:00 and elected to go for a late lunch. It was in a restaurant, no where as interesting as our plan B lunch of yesterday.
It’s raining a bit. Instead of checking out some more villages, we just go to the house where Indonesia’s first President Soekarno spent his days in exile from 1938 to 1938 by the Dutch until released by the invading Japanese forces. When Japan surrendered in 1945, Soekarno declared Indonesian independence and led the country in resisting Dutch recolonization efforts without any bloodshed.
We then check into our hotel, the Grand Wisata Hotel. It would be a fine 3 star hotel if the room was a bit cleaner, but it’s Ende, Indonesia and after coming out of that homestay, I’m fairly content. My friend, on the other hand wants to scrub this sink too.
We have dinner in the hotel restaurant. Strangely, it’s empty except one other table. We’ll be up early tomorrow to leave at 5:00 to catch our flight to Labuan Bajo on the northwest part of Flores Island
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