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TRAVEL BLOG ENTRY
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After the usual performance of getting off the Perama boat and transferring to the small boat we were dropped off at the harbour of Labuan Bajo – although a more accurate description would be a disused part of the harbour where the boat had to keep it's engine revving to push against the edge of the sea wall as we scrambled up the side
Labuan Bajo is a small fishing town on the north-east coast of Flores set on quite a steep cliff side. There were only 4 of us getting off here – me, Ben and a Dutch couple Gus and Kristen - everyone else was taking the round trip on the boat and going back to Lombok.
As Gus and Kristen didn't have anywhere booked they decided to share a taxi with us and come and check out a place Sas from Gita Gili had recommended – from the map it looked a bit out of town but it's a small place and we figured we could just get a taxi back if we didn't like it. 15mins into the journey up a sheer cliff face I started to think they might be regretting their decision, when the taxi could go no further due to mud and we were kicked out in the middle of nowhere I was pretty certain they were!!
Thankfully the place was close and lovely if a tad expensive, with the most stunning views out over the sea and most importantly we had air con so we could empty our bags and dry out all our stuff that had been getting slowly damper in our bags during the boat trip!
That evening there was a farewell dinner on back on the boat so we headed down into LBB and it turned out in only took 15mins to get down, it also turned out LBB was a naff little town and we were quite pleased to be up on our hill. We then had the joy of finding the small boat that was going to take us over and when we managed to find the place we'd scrabbled up we had the pleasure of scrabbling back down except by now the water level had dropped and there were an extra few feet of slime covered rocks in the way!
The evening on the boat was lots of fun, we had a lovely meal, the crew did the dance again, Craig disapproved of Brooke drinking the cocktails I was making and so I made more and I even danced on my own to the scissor sisters!
Me, the monkey, Gus and Kristen then had the pleasure of doing the boat transfer whilst somewhat inebriated – not one of my most graceful moments! We go back to land and found a taxi who asked for 40,000 ($4) to take us up the hill we all said fine and he said ok ok 20,000!
We decided to stop just before our place at Paradise Bar for another drink – I had a rather fine cashew wine – and then we walked the last bit, Ben had the head torch and was guiding me and Kristen round the mud, Gus however had decided to take his own route right through the mud which caused his flip flops to get stuck and then break, oh how we laughed!
Ben and I then spent the next 2 days doing basically nothing but lazing around enjoying our aircon room and its fabulous view – with the odd trip to Paradise Bar to enjoy the sunset. We knew that once we set of for Kelimutu it would mean a series of 5 hour bus journeys on awful roads so we were happy to put it off, however we found out from our hotel that there were minibuses – called Treffels - doing the journeys so we wouldn’t have to go on the public buses, apparently these would be easy to book from any hotel along the way.
And so we booked and headed off on the not too long but excessively windy road to kelimutu!
previous travel blog entry
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