In Reply to: Labuan Bajo, Question GaryD? posted by chelley on Friday, 25. May 2012 at 15:49 Bali Time:
I was in Flores in March this year.
I took a two boat trip from Labuan Bajo to Senggigi in Lombok. We disembarked from the boat at Labuan Lombok on the east coast of Lombok and went by Perama Bus without headlights through the night to Senggigi. We arrived at about 10 pm. I recommend staying overnight in Senggigi before continuing your journey. Perama can take you from Senggigi to most places in Bali.
See: www.peramatour.com.
In Bali, I found the Sky Aviation counter at the Bali Domestic Airport Terminal, just along from the International Terminal. To my regret, I did not book a flight with them for Rp 600,000, but instead took the thirty six hour bus/ferry trip instead to Labuan Bajo, through Lombok, Sumbawa and Flores.
I stayed at the Mutiara Hotel in Labuan Bajo for Rp 200,000 per night, as it was more secure than the Gardenia Hotel, but it had lots of mosquitoes. After I arrived in Labuan Bajo, I booked the Perama boat trip to Senggigi via Rinca Island which was leaving in four days time from the Perama agent opposite the Gardenia Hotel. I then took off to Ruteng to see the cave where the remains of the Hobbits (hominids) were found.
Travel in Flores is slow. A journey between Labuan Bajo and Ruteng took 4.5 hours to cover 140 km. Every bemo driver will lie to you that their bemo is full and about to depart. Instead your "full" bemo will wander for an hour extracting passengers from houses and warungs before setting off. Roads are narrow and are made up of endless hairpin corners with traffic banked up as a truck needs both lanes to negotiate a hairpin corner.
In Flores, I was determined to see the Komodo Dragons and the cave where the Hobbits (hominids) were found. The Lonely Planet Guide to Indonesia is misleading as it states that the track to the Hobbits Cave could be impassable in the wet season. In fact there is a narrow sealed road right up to the cave. The floor of the cave, really a natural amphitheatre is about 300 sq m. The archaeologists have only dug up about 30 sq m where they found the hominids and the stegadons (miniature elephants).
It does not take much imagination to wonder what the archaeologists will discover in the other 90% of the cave floor. It also upsets the previous view of pre-history in having Homo Sapiens travelling through uninhabited islands to reach Australia 50,000 years ago. It seems that these ancestors of Australian aborigines would have met the hominids on their way south.
The country between the coast with a plentiful food supply and the cave is so rough, you can understand that Homo Sapiens may have initially stayed near the coast and left the hominids alone.
The caretaker of the cave and the children were friendly and not pushy. The caretaker offered to introduce me to a local dwarf (Cebol), but I thought that this was tacky and I refused. I did sign the visitors book and pay Rp 20,000.
I travelled to the cave and back with an ojek for which I paid Rp 50,000.
I took the Perama trip as I was trying to kill two birds with one stone. I could not stand the thought of doing the 36 hour bus/ferry trip back to Lombok, as I had already done the trip before but in an easterly direction. I also wanted to see the Komodo Dragons, but the tour operators in Labuan Bajo wanted a lot of money to go to Rinca Island and were looking for groups of four or more and I was travelling by myself. I now realize that the Komodo National Park charges visitors Rp 200,000 each and this fee is included in the Rp 1.235 m I paid to Perama. That is probably why the trips to Rinca Island and Komodo Island from Labuan Bajo were so expensive.
The Perama trip is for the hardy not the super fit. I slept two nights on the deck though cabins with two bunks are available. The seas were quite rough around Sumbawa and I got seasick. The rough seas broke part of the wooden superstructure of 22 metre wooden boat.
The food was Indonesian, served buffet style. There are no tables, you eat sitting on the floor or with your plate on your lap while sitting on a bench.
The guides were all Indonesian and were competent. We took a small dinghy with an outboard motor ashore several times to visit Moyo Island to see the waterfall and to go snorkelling. Boarding the boat from the dinghy was tricky in rough seas and one lady fell, but only suffered bruising.
After I returned Labuan Bajo, I joined the Perama boat at 5.30 pm and slept on the deck that night while the boat was anchored in the harbour.
When I was on Rinca Island, I saw a dozen Komodo Dragons near the kitchen hut, but nowhere else on the island. The guide did show us the burrows where the female Komodo Dragons lay their eggs.
On the way to Senggigi, we stopped off at Moyo Island, Sumbawa. There I swung on a rope over a waterfall and dropped 6 metres into a water hole. Part of the filming of an Oliver Stone film "The Savages" was done on Moyo Island with lead actors Taylor Kitsch, Aaron Johnson and Blake Lively. Alas, my spectacular drop into the water hole will not be in the film, as filming finished in February 2012. One of the actors Taylor Kitsch appeared on the David Letterman show, spruiking the film. He told an anecdote about the Imigrasi in Bali, but somehow confused the Philippines with Bali!
Have a good trip!
GaryD