Indonesia Island Life III: Sailing the Seas of Life

When we think of island life, images of swimming in crystal clear aquamarine waters, lying on the bright white sands of beautiful beaches and taking boats out on the expanse of the sea come to mind.

While Gili Air offered a taste of this lifestyle, Bali felt nothing like that. Being stationed in Ubud felt more like living in a medium-sized city somewhere in the middle of India than vacationing on an island nation.

So in the spirit of a country that is comprised of roughly 17,500 islands, I decided to spend my final ten days doing a little island hopping with a company called Travel Wise, which operates live aboard boats that travel between the islands of Lombok and Flores.

Praying to the Water Spirits

After experiencing a full month of beautiful weather on the island of Bali, my final week there was marked with unseasonably heavy rains, produced as an offshoot of a cyclone makings it way through the Indian Ocean considerably north of Indonesia. I was starting to worry that my plans to sail might be in jeopardy, especially when the boat company that operates boats between Bali and the Gili islands informed me that they would not be sailing the day I was scheduled to depart for a few days on Gili Air.

Fortunately, I had padded my travel plans with a few days on the front and back ends to account for any unforeseen delays like this one. But nevertheless, I started to worry that my karma might have other tricks in store.

Along with providing an opportunity to say goodbye to my new friends in Bali on that final Sunday, I also took the time to visit a small water temple near my apartment and offer a prayer to the water spirits that they would bless this trip on the seas. Apparently, they heeded my request because I write this safely on the other side of the voyage.

The Eka Jaya fast boat did depart the next day and I was deposited in Gili Air again, where I also spent my first week in Indonesia. H2O Yoga was full so I took a bed at the Fantastic Bamboo Hostel near the harbor and attended a couple of yoga classes at H2O.

Unfortunately, the delayed boat trip did cause me to miss a kundalini yin class at Fire and Flowers, the other yoga shala on Gili Air, that I wanted to try out. But alas; I did get in an extra Balinese healing yoga course on my extra day in Ubud.

Because of the delay, I only had a single day on Gili Air before taking a morning boat on the 15-minute hop to Lombok, from where the live aboard boat would depart.

The Island of Lombok

I arrived in Bangsal Harbor on Tuesday morning and checked into my room at the nearby Arnel Bungalow, where the Dutch Indonesian owner greeted me warmly and showed me to their honeymoon suite, which was really quite a bargain for the rate I paid.

There is not a whole lot to do around Bangsal, but I did wander up to a local Buddhist vihara, or temple / monastery, where a local member of the sangha named Bakti, greeted me and gave me a tour of the grounds. In addition to the primary Buddha image in the main hall, there was a standing Buddha outside, with two Balinese dragons leading up the steps to the temple. There was also an image of the Chinese goddess of compassion, Qwan Yin (Tara in Tibetan Buddhism), standing on a lotus in a small fountain.

He took me to a nearby household temple but unfortunately, the friend, who is adept at meditation, was not home at the time. Bakti and I discussed local culture and religion a bit before parting ways. It turns out this one small village and another up on a nearby hill are the only Buddhist communities on the island of Lombok, which along with the majority of Indonesia, is primarily Muslim.

I walked along the beach near the harbor but it was not developed and ended at an impassable inlet. I had to wander inland and cross the channel back to the main road with the assistance of local rice farmers who had constructed a rope and pulley boat to traverse the watery divide.

I made my way back to the hotel and had some of the hotel’s homemade gado-gado before turning in for the night and preparing for the boat trip.

Day 1 – Bussing and Boat Launch

It turns out most of the first day of the four-day, three-night tour is actually spent traveling by land across Lombok. We had to first go south to Senggigi, the touristy area of Lombok, where the Travel Wise headquarters is also located.

A group of forty international travelers, with a high percentage of Dutch, assembled there. We were briefed on the details of the excursion and put on a nice tourist bus that took us three hours across Lombok to the port at Kayangan, where we boarded our boat, the Wahyu Pertama.

The boat holds forty passengers and is managed by a crew of about seven boatmen – our guide Uno; the captain, who I never saw leave the helm; a couple of kitchen guys; and several all purpose crew members who took us ashore ten at a time in a small dinghy among other tasks aboard the boat.

And we sailed off into the sunset.

Well I call it sailing, but no sails were ever lifted. It was strictly a motor boat trip.

The first evening, we stopped for a short hike up a hill on the island of Kenawa, from which we could watch the sunset. Fortunately we were the first boat to arrive, because the small hill filled quickly with other travelers from different boats. I had a nice spot to sit and meditate as the sun settled into the western seas.

On the descent, I stopped to check out a couple of small hill-like structures dug into the earth like Hobbit homes with walls constructed of worn out tires and empty glass beer bottles. They clearly were not maintained although there were signs of recent habitation in and around what Google Maps lists as Earthship (Indo 1 and 2).

We sailed off into the night, having our first real meal aboard the boat, a simple buffet spread of rice, boiled veggies and fish.

Day 2 – Whale Sharks and Troubled Waters

I slept well but woke early, just before 4 a.m., and did my daily morning kriya and meditation practice on the bow of the boat as it swayed gently up and down, en route to the site where we would get to swim with whale sharks.

It was still quite dark out when two Dutch women, Joy and Yvonne, first spotted the whale sharks as they fed rom the back of a fishing boat that we had connected up with. These massive sharks swim with their mouths open, swallowing up everything in their wake, much like blue whales absorbing the phytoplankton they constantly ingest. Unlike some species of sharks, whale sharks pose no threat to humans; so we were allowed to get in the water and swim with them as the fishermen continued to feed them.

While I discovered on this trip that I am not a strong or confident swimmer in any respects and that I have some fear of water, I did get in briefly and just as I was about to drop into the water, one of the gentle giants passed just a few meters below me. It was an impressive sight to see its speckled body glide just beneath the surface as I floated above it. Unfortunately I could not keep up with its pace and lost sight of it quickly in the still dark waters.

Back from the deck, in the early light of dawn, we could see them as they fed from the boat ahead and passed just below the surface of the waters near the hull.

After the whale shark expedition, however, the rest of day two was spent plugging around the island of Sumbawa. The waters got rough at some points, but I did not have to resort to taking any of the sea sickness medications I had bought on Lombok as a precaution.

The rocking and rolling continued well into the night and the easy sleep I had the night before was not repeated.

Day 3 – Dragons and Wild Life

The waters settled as the light rose on the third day, but our guide Uno told me we had lost time in the heavy winds and rough water and were later getting to the peak at Padar Pulau than they normally expect to arrive.

Regardless, we got to the island, which is situated between Komodo and Rinca islands in the Komodo National Park but were amid large groups of tourists who were day tripping. The view from the top of the 150-meter climb was nice and I saw a couple of wild deer walking along the beach on the descent.

We continued around Padar island to the pink beaches, which get their hue from the shards of red coral reef that continually wash ashore.

We then continued on toward Rinca island, which is Komodo’s World Heritage Site that includes a museum and walkway from which tourists can view the native Komodo dragons. During the tour, the guide explained how the massive lizards, which can grow up to nearly four meters in length, will feed on just about any living creature they can catch, including deer, water buffalo, human beings or even other Komodo dragons.

Our group did spot one off the trail some distance on the walk back to the museum and there were two hanging about in the shade just behind the museum, which we could view from a safe but relatively close distance. Although the ranger claimed they do not feed the dragons, we speculated these two might be an exception to that rule so tourists who travel to all the way to the site don’t leave without getting to see at least a glimpse this exceptional specimen of wildlife.

On the rest of the walk, we did spot an orange-footed scrubfowl, some buffalo and deer and a few monkeys but no more Komodos, save the bent over grass just off the path where the guide said one had been stationed just a couple hours earlier in the day.

I have been fascinated with the Komodo dragon since my early childhood, so it was definitely a worthwhile experience to get to see a couple up close and personal even if the rangers were feeding them on the sly to keep them around.

We spent that evening watching a swarm of thousands of flying foxes soar overhead in their nightly search for food before setting anchor just off the shores of Flores for the night, where we had a wild life party and played a cut-throat card game called Cambio with a group of Irish-Scottish friends.

Day 4 – Boat Yoga and Meditation Rocks

The fourth and final day of the boat ride started out nice. I had skipped my morning pranayama kriya the day prior so I was trying to get it in this morning, but I heard the younger deckmates talking about down dogs and thought I would see what they were up to.

It turns out no one on board had a great deal of yoga experience so they thought it was kind of cool that they had a “yoga teacher” on board. I took them up on the offer to lead a yoga workout on top of the cabin.

We went through some joint warmups and we noticed that some people atop a nearby boat were also joining in. The sun was already rising into the sky and warming up the air so a few rounds of sun salutations for the yoga newbies seemed appropriate. They were ready to get in the water by that point so they did not keep me on the hook for the full yoga experience.

I think I was less nervous about leading the class than I was about losing my balance and falling off the top of the gently swaying boat into the water below. It was deep enough that I would not have been harmed, other than a bruised ego. It all turned out good though and I got a couple of photos of the class in progress from a fellow tour taker, Jessica.

We were near a long pier, which we swam alongside for a couple hundred meters and fed he fishes pieces of bread from the end of the pier.

Our final stop was at a beach on a small island where we were able to swim or just chill. I found a nice rock overlooking the sea where I could sit quietly and reflect on all the experiences that got me to this point in space and time.

Uno and crew dropped us at the Labuan Bajo marina a little after noon that day and we said farewell on the docks as we made our ways to our separate onward destinations.

Finishing up on Flores

Labuan Bajo is a smallish town on the northwest corner of the island of Flores. Apparently this is a major scuba diving hub with lots of diving businesses offering daily trips out to the hot spots like Manta Point, where giant manta rays haunt the waters.

I was considering another trip out to Komodo island on a slow boat, but all the trips are the same and stop at many of the same destinations we hit on Friday. While a couple hours on Komodo island would be nice, I didn’t really want to revisit the tourist trodden hike up Padar Pulau and Pink Beach as part of the trip.

Instead, I spent the next to last day on Labuan Bajo walking up to the Mirror Stone Cave, which is a natural rock formation with stalactites just a few kilometers from the city. I was particularly fascinated by a balanced rock outside the caves, which is called Payung Batu, which translates from Indonesian to "stone umbrella." As I looked at this mushroom-like rock formation, I fancied I saw the head of a rock giant with a pastry chef's hat, about to rise up out of the earth.

There are hiking expeditions further inland, but as my flights back to the United States depart from here in a few short days, so I am taking the rest of the time to relax. and prepare mentally for the 48 hours of travel back to home. It’s hard to believe that’s less than five days from now.

It’s been a long year. I will probably try to find some way to recap it all – maybe not before I get back, but sometime in the near future. Until then, sampai jumpa lagi.