The Journey to Kelimutu

Flores is the most eastern island of Indonesia’s Nusa Tenggara archipelago. The island was once a Portuguese colony, but not much remains from this time except Catholicism. But this did mean that for the first time in a long time we weren’t in a Muslim part of the country; we would begin to see pigs on farms and pork on the menu. Flores' claim to fame, beside the fact that it's beside the Komodo National Park, is that it is home to Mt. Kelimutu and its three striking summit crater lakes of varying colour. We would spend a week exploring Flores as we worked our way towards Kelimutu.

First things first we hung out in the port town of Labuan Bajo for three days as we appreciated sleeping in a real bed, not eating rice twice a day and having daily showers – all simple things we came to really miss after our four day boat trip. We were fortunate that some of our friends from the boat trip were still around to hang out with, this made the Labuan Bajo that much more fun. We also went for our first open water dives since we got certified. The Komodo National Park is considered in the top dive sites on the planet and consistently described as world class. Our dives were no exception. The highlight of our day was on our second dive when we saw six sharks (3 black tip and 3 white tip) a couple of green sea turtles and a five-meter manta ray. An absolutely amazing site to see! Here is a video of what a manta ray looks like, we didn’t take this video, but it looked just like this:

After this amazing experience we booked a car and driver for the four-day drive across the island to see Mt. Kelimutu. We would stop and sleep in Ruteng, Bajawa, Moni and Maumere. In Ruteng we slept in a beautiful monastery, it was so clean you could eat off the floor! We were joined in our car/tour by a nice guy from Switzerland, Julien; we got to speak French the entire tour. Crossing the island isn’t easy, there is one road and in parts, it’s barely a road. Our driver, Yophi, was an amazing driver and guide; he made sure we saw some really cool things!

We stopped to see natural hot springs, traditional villages, the blue stone beach, the spider rice field, the local alcohol (arak) making process and Mt. Kelimutu.

He was also able to show us the huge variety of natural flavours that come from Flores. Through various stops on the road and in the jungle we were able to see tamarind, vanilla, coffee, clove, macadamia nuts, cinnamon and cacao.

We had to wake up at 4am to be driven to the edge of Kelimutu. From there, we had a 20-minute hike to the viewing point where we would watch the sunrise. The lakes can change in colour depending on the minerals coming from the volcano. One is always blue, the other two change between green, red, black and yellow. For our trip, we had blue, black and more blue (maybe a shade of green). Never the less, it was an amazing site to see!

After Kelimutu we made our way to Maumere where we would catch a flight back to Bali. We had to hang out here for a three nights before we could get a flight out. Maumere was a serious dump; three days was enough time for AJ to get food poisoning and spend a night hugging the toilet. Overall, we were very happy with our Flores trip, but we were even happier to get the hell out of Maumere!