Categotry Archives: Travel
Cabo San Lucas Pix
I’m trying to organize my travel posts for easier access. Right now I’m working on my two trips to Cabo San Lucas. When I did the posts, I was participating in a blog challenge called 365. You were supposed to post a photo every day. A lot of my Cabo posts were nothing more than a photo. Here I’m bringing some of them together so people interested in the trip don’t have to click on a dozen posts just to […]
The Fish Market
Right before we left Flores to return to Bali, we stopped off at a fish market. This is, apparently, a regular part of the tour that some of the tourists have complained about. The market in question is not for tourists. There are a lot of fish. And it can be a bit odoriferous. It wasn’t any worse than I would expect, but not something you want to be smelling in an enclosed airplane a little later. The variety was […]
A Look Back at Indonesia
After the expedition to Rinca Island, the rest of the trip was about going home. We stopped off at a couple of places on Flores, like the fish market, but they were just short stops. We spent one last night in Denpasar but mostly to accommodate the airline schedules. The big event there was a last dinner together and an expedition to a large mall. Then it was a race around the rim of the Pacific to outrun a typhoon, […]
A Cemetery in Bali
There was a cemetery down the street from our hotel in Denpasar. We wandered down for a look. The first thing I noticed was that they don’t bother to manicure it the way we expect in the US. No lawn. What grass might be found seemed to be of the vacant-lot variety. Lots of the kind of trash that quickly builds up when people put out fifty or more offerings a day. Tombstones shaped a bit differently than I’m used […]
Rinca Island
If Komodo Island had not already put its name into the name for a certain monitor lizard, then Rinca should have. They had more, and more active, Komodo dragons than Komodo. It’s a longer boat ride from Flores, but not by too much. We arrived to find the docks surrounded by boats. Apparently in Indonesia they don’t have anything like a polite or reserved system of using docks. No authorities check the right to moorings. When we arrived, we had […]
Dragon Bones
We stopped off at the Komodo Office in Labuan Bajo on Flores Island. In there lobby is a glassed in display of a dragon’s fossilized bones. This one died of old age – over thirty years old. It lived between fifty and sixty million years ago. it had osteoporosis. Though nineteen bones are missing, we can easily see that Komodo dragons haven’t changed much in a long, long time. The display includes a clutch of fossilized eggs. I have no […]
Cecer Village
Our guide for the the Komodo portion of the trip – I mean everything from Bali until we left – comes from the Manggarai tribe. He took us home to visit with his people. This was a day long excursion that involved a drive along the twisty roads of Flores. Flores is only 220 miles long from tip to tip. Back home that would be about three and a half hours. We only went about ten miles along the spine […]
A Traditional Weave
We went to Cecer Village to see the whip dance. While we were there we wandered in and out of various homes. This weaver was working hard in one of them. Her loom was modest, but she produced their traditional clothing quickly. Cecer is home to many people in the Manggarai tribe. The village elders work hard to maintain the tribe’s traditional way of life. The weaving and wearing of a tube of cloth which is treated as a skirt […]
What Gives?
I’m busy with work. I’m going to lay off the blogging for a few days. I’ll visit everyone who comments, but won’t post until next Monday.
Pink Beach
After wandering around on Komodo Island, searching for dragons, we hopped on the boat and puttered around to a beach. The beach in question is just down the way from the docks to the preserve – on Komodo Island.
Komodo
There is a dragon in this picture. See him? He’s right out front! Still don’t? That’s pretty much the story of our visit to Komodo National Park. Well, partly.
Indonesian Chicken
It seems every place I have gone that had handy access to an ocean has included a steady diet of chicken. Yeah, chicken. Fish, too, of course, but I expect fish. In Belize and Mexico the chicken surprised me. By the time I hit Indonesia, I half way expected it. In the other places, I didn’t see very many chickens roaming around. In Indonesia they were everywhere. Well, everywhere except places like Komodo Island. I get the feeling they don’t […]
Open Market and Hospitality in Flores
Flores’s main claim to fame is its proximity to Komodo Island. It’s the closest place with suitable accommodations, and thus is considered a gateway to Komodo National Park. The island itself is very long and thin, running almost exactly east-west. It is essentially the ridge of a mountain range. That means there is precious little in the way of flat spots, and the roads are all very twisty.
Dinner on the Docks
This particular travel company expects people to provide their own meals about half a dozen times through the course of a three week trip. This gives people a chance to explore on their own. Sometimes my mother and I opt to hang out in our room enjoying some down time and munching on whatever we might have brought with us. Cliff bars work quite well for this. While in Flores, we had two such nights, but our guides offered to […]
