How I missed my ferry

I had gone to considerable effort to confirm the date and time of my next ferry crossing, from Kalabahi on Alor to Atapupu on Timor. My research prior to leaving Australia indicated that it left on Tuesday evening, but, as I'd discovered during my previous island hopping all the way from Larantuka, ferry timetables change, so you need to go down to the port and find out for yourself.

Kalabahi has 4 ports: the one I arrived on from Lembata with the ADSP ferry, another that serves the government mixed cargo Perintis ships, the Pelni Port, and a fourth that seems to be for larger commercial ships. I started with the port I'd arrived at, because Pak Khris at my Homestay said it was the same ship that I'd arrived on that continued on to Atapupu. Atapupu, by the way, is on the easternmost tip of West Timor, just before the border with Timor Leste, and is the shortest ferry crossing between the two islands. The only other ferries going to Timor taking the much longer route to Kupang, on the western tip of Timor. I'd chosen Atapupu not only because of its proximity, but because I wanted to see Timor from east to west without having to do a round trip from Kupang.

Pak Khris told me the ferry left on Wednesday. This didn't make sense to me as it arrived from Lembata at 1pm on Tuesday. It didn't make sense to sit around for a whole day before leaving again, so I headed down there to find out.

Pak Khris was wrong. The ADSP ferry didn't go to Atapupu, a Perintis cargo ship went there, from the next port up, so I walked up there to ask again. The chaps there told me it left on Wednesday around 8pm, but it was best to turn up around 6pm to get a good position. See Perintis isn't really a ferry, they just take paying customers willing to find a spot amongst the cargo to take advantage of the short 8 hour crossing. I asked very pointedly, are you sure it's Wednesday not Tuesday? I'm quite adept at days of the week in Bahasa Indonesia, there was no communication breakdown, they insisted it was Wednesday.

So on Wednesday I happily went on my little adventure to the backblocks of Alor with Mika and Om Hary, had a shower, packed my bags, grabbed some food and water for the crossing, and took an ojek down to the port at 6pm.

To find out the freaking ferry left yesterday!!!

The Indonesian word "sudah" can be a very painful word to hear when you discover that your weekly ferry has already left, a day ago. What the hell to do now? I did, for a short while, contemplate the idea of whiling away another week drinking Sopi cocktails on Alor, and maybe actually try to go scuba diving, but I was given an alternative. A Pelni ferry heading to Kupang was scheduled to turn up around midnight, and I could take that instead.

Going to Kupang first wasn't the plan, but with good roads on Timor (courtesy of a large Indonesian army presence for all those years they were fighting the insurgents in East Timor) I knew it wouldn't take long to cover the distance by land. But first I had to wait for that ferry.

So for six long hours I waited for the ferry to turn up at midnight. It didn't. But more people turned up planning to catch the ferry, so at least I knew it was expected, if a bit late. 3 hours late!!

Yep, nine hours waiting for a ferry to turn up in the wee small hours. We boarded, and the ferry promptly departed 15 minutes after it docked.

There was maybe 15 other passengers on the ferry, and it was a big ferry. We all found places to sleep in the big bunkrooms on the lower deck, and all promptly fell asleep.

In the morning we were first awoken by the call to prayer, and then by an announcement that we could pick up our breakfast from the crew. I lined up and explained I didn't have a ticket and the purser simply took my name and 100,000Rp ($10) and gave me a boxed breakfast, a bottle of orange juice and a carton of flavoured milk.

The ferry very slowly steamed its way across the Timor Sea towards Kupang. I spent a few hours up on one of the outside decks where it was a little cooler, but unfortunately a bit noisy due to the crew doing rust remediation with hammers and chisels. We were fed lunch, and, when it was obvious we weren't going to arrive in Kupang at the scheduled time of 5pm, dinner as well.

After you've spent almost a day on a boat, people lose their reserve and become quite friendly, so the afternoon was spent chatting with fellow passengers (all from Alor, mostly going to Kupang to visit family or for study) and the crew. I watched the crew lower a rope ladder down to the pilot boat, and the harbour pilot board the boat (and shake my hand). I got to see another sunset from a boat, but I was mighty relieved when at last we docked in Kupang.

I grabbed an ojek to a hotel in central Kupang, and slept!!

New Shoes, New Schools, No Teachers!!

Whilst on Alor I had the opportunity to join Mika on a trip into the more isolated areas of Alor to distribute shoes to school children.

Mika initiated the 1000 Shoes Project with one of her sisters in Jakarta, who had arranged for the shoes to be donated and sent to Alor. They've also got school children in Jakarta learning about the fact that lots of kids in poorer parts of Indonesia still don't have basics, like shoes to wear, so the Jakarta kids have also sent letters to the kids in Alor. And on this particular Wednesday, we were going to some villages in the Mataru region to distribute them.

Getting there required the use of a 4x4 vehicle, which Mika borrowed from the government, who also are involved in the project. Om Hary, the government official responsible, did the driving, and Mika paid for the fuel. This girl knows how to network!!

We headed south out of town, climbing up a razor edge ridge on steep roads, affording fantastic views in all directions. The road was narrow, but mostly quite well sealed.

We arrived in a valley with a small town and a few government buildings, where we asked for directions to our first village: xxx. A kilometre down the road we took a right hand turn onto a goat track. And engaged four wheel drive…



Up the top of the hill was a small village, with an old bamboo walled school, and new concrete schoolrooms in the process of being built. But no schoolkids, and no teacher!!

The villagers, however, turned up in swarms to greet the strangers who'd arrived. I doubt they get many cars up that way, and I hazard a guess I may have been the very first foreigner most of them had ever seen in the flesh. We deposited the shoes, got a bunch of photos to show the sponsors, Mika got up to date contact details, and I went for a wander around the schoolrooms. No teacher since the previous Saturday, hmm….

Then we headed to our second village. The road was, well, more of an actual road after that, but it twisted and turned up and down the hills, through small villages perched on the steep terrain, until we arrived at our second village school: Bagalbui.

This school was much bigger, and construction of large new buildings was in progress. But guess what? No teacher here either….

Being a larger village with better road access, our arrival attracted a much smaller crowd, but we still managed to get our photos and contact details, and leave them with a big pile of new shoes.

And then we drove back to Kalabahi.

I had a ferry to catch….

Meet Mika

Just down the road from my Homestay, opposite the local hospital, I spy a little café that has some ikats on display so I pop in there for a look. Whoever owns this place has some business sense, as there are bags made with leather and ikat, there is pottery for sale and the place has an ambience of a Bali café rather than a local hole in the wall. There is a simple menu of food, coffee and tea and also, as I later find out, cocktails.

I meet Mika, the café owner, and over the course of four hours we get to know each other. Mika is from Jakarta, though more recently Jogjakarta where her mother lives, and has a funny surname because she was born whilst her father, as a young doctor, was working on the gynaecology ward. All the kids except one have medical specialty surnames. Weird hey?

Mika has been in Alor for about 3 months. She used to work for NGOs and UNICEF doing community development and child and maternal health. She even did a stint in Afghanistan in 2003. She had a German boyfriend for 14 years, who also worked in the same field, so she has travelled extensively, and speaks excellent English. Then she got sick of it. Sick of the complaining of colleagues, of the frustration of top down approaches where the donor's wishes outgun the wishes of the community, of the wastage of money, of just the whole system. She wanted to settle down somewhere and have kids, but her boyfriend didn't want that, so she decided she'd do it anyway. She separated amicably from her boyfriend and began to plan her new life.

She knew that eastern Nusa Tenggara missed out on a lot of aid and infrastructure from Jakarta, so decided that was where she'd go. She chose Alor because she believes it will be the next Labuan Bajo (confirming my suspicions that LB is now a mini Bali), meaning there will be a steady supply of tourists to create a market for goods that people can make.

Mika has so much experience, so much passion and so many ideas. She isn't here to make buckets of money, she's here because she thinks she can make a difference and still make enough money to live on. She wants to adopt a girl from one of the local orphanages, though I suspect with her passion it's unlikely to stop at one!

It was the most amazing experience talking to Mika. I had some lunch and one of the local cocktails. These are made from Sopi, but watered down with juice, soda or whatever, to be lowish in alcohol, and then spices and fruits in season used to make cocktails. Not quite mocktails! Apparently there is a problem with alcoholism and violence, including domestic violence, which is being attributed to drinking too much Sopi and the government is talking of banning it. The trouble is that the people of Pura gain a large amount of their income from selling Sopi that they produce on their island. Banning Sopi would be a disaster for them, so Mika has received a grant to look at ways to market the Sopi as a low alcohol drink. She wants to bottle it and sell it locally, but has no expertise in how this could be done. She asked me if I had any friends who might know, and I said I didn't, but could always ask. Anyone know about what would be required for preservation of the drink when it's bottled, and how to set up a bottling plant on an island that has a dodgy electricity supply?

She's also doing work with local women to set up a weekly food market selling snacks, talking with local pottery makers about how to improve the quality of their product (the ones she has for sale are made in Jogja) and discussing the idea of local women learning to make value added products with the ikat they weave. It's all pretty new, but she has so many ideas, and isn't in it for the business opportunity of being the one that makes the money, she wants the people themselves to be the beneficiaries.

She's already made some good connections with government officials, including the mayor and his wife. Mika's cafe has quickly become the place to come and hang out amongst the white collar workers in town. This has allowed her to forward some of her ideas with government backing. 

She has a business partner, another woman with whom she has worked in the NGO business, but her partner is yet to come out to Alor, so Mika has been running everything herself for the last 2 and a half months. She's hoping her friend will arrive in the next week or so so she can take a much needed break, but that's yet to happen. In the meantime she's training her staff to take more responsibility for daily running of the cafe, or else she'll never get a break. 

I try one of the Sopi cocktails, one with vanilla, lemonade, cinnamon and a few chunks of banana. Usually it has mango, but that's not in season at present. It comes out in a mason jar, tres chic, and is delicious! Wow, coming back for more of these! In fact I come back to the cafe most days and try out various cocktails, including a lovely margarita, but the vanilla one is my favourite.

We talk all afternoon. We talk about what it is to be a woman who is strong and independent, and who follows her passion rather than the same old pathway of marriage and children. Mika, BTW, is 40. She says once she realised that her goals were different to those of her boyfriend, she knew that she needed to move on. Although it was painful, she didn't want to compromise her own needs and desires for someone else. I really applaud her for that, because so many women subjugate their own needs for the sake of their relationship. In fact, as I said to her, it's a recipe for remaining single. Such is life….

I return to the cafe often over the week, not just for cocktails, but to sit and chat with Mika who is one inspiring lady. Plus it's nice to have a good conversation in English, having spent a good 3 weeks mostly talking very basic conversation in Indonesian. I buy some souvenirs, and Mika offers to send them home for me from Kupang, when she goes there in a couple of weeks. it's cheaper, and faster to send mail from Kupang than from Alor, so I happily agree. Plus we plan to meet up while she is there.

On Sunday the cafe is closed and I end up visiting her at her house and we go to the posh restaurant in town. It's built over the water in a fantastic setting. We are there for the stunning sunset. We have an OK meal and then the Karaoke begins so we leave.

Mika has started a project to distribute shoes to kids living in the remote areas of Alor. it's quite a mountainous island and many places are quite isolated, hence why there are so many local languages for such a small island. The people are very poor, still hunting and subsistence farming, and the kids don't get luxuries like shoes. Mika's sister in Jakarta has donated the shoes, and kids from schools in Jakarta have sent letters to the schoolkids in Alor, so on Wednesday we head out to some villages in Mataru province with Om Hary, a local government official, to give out shoes. But that adventure is a whole blog post in itself.

I am so grateful to have met Mika. She's an amazingly inspirational woman and I know she'll go far. We've become firm friends and she may well use that Australian visa she has and come visit. If you are reading this blog and think you may be able to help her out regarding the bottling know how, please send me an email (whatsnextnaomi01 at gmail dot com) and I can pass it on to her.  If you'd like to help out in some other way, also let me know.

Cheers, oh those cocktails were divine, someone needs to bottle them….

A Traditional Village that's got it worked out

I was impressed by Takpala, Alor's major tourist attraction aside from the underwater delights that most people come here for. It manages to be a living museum without tackiness, and the people maintain a genuine hospitality towards gawking visitors.

I got taken to Takpala by Razta, a chap I met at the Museum Seribu Moko in Kalabahi. He genuinely wanted to show me around and adamantly wanted no money for the experience. We went by motorbike, heading east out of town, turning right where I'd turned left the previous day on my hired bike. We arrived and walked up the stone steps to the village.

All the houses in the village are traditional Alor houses with lower verandahs and the sleeping quarters above in the thatched roof space. There's a hearth on the lower level as well as in the sleeping quarters, and although they may be dark and smoky, they are extremely cool. The people are also wonderfully friendly, allowing me to take photos, to look inside one of the houses, to watch the women cleaning the rice, and even to try doing it myself. The women are obviously used to this, as they effortlessly provide me with a pile of rice to winnow and someone else offers to take photos of me doing so. I surprise them by continuing to clean my little pile once the photo op is over, and for my persistence get a cup of coffee and we all have a good chat about our families and such trivia. I have to say, since I've invented a family, the conversation is so much easier than the one about why I'm not married. They all think my "daughter" is very beautiful, which of course she is, beautiful I mean.

upstairs sleeping area

Whilst I am chatting, some of the other women set up a few tables with wares for sale. Mostly beads and a few boxes for storing your betel nut supplies, and some ikats. They don't weave the ikats in the village, and I have no idea about the jewelry and beads, but I don't care, as this is a way that they can make money from tourism. There is absolutely no hard sell, and I end up buying two ikat sarongs, which I bargain down to something insanely cheap based on the fact that that's all the money I'd brought with me. They even give me a bonus necklace.

Then I head over to chat with Abner, the village headman, and get another cup of coffee. We chat and then he offers to get dressed up in his traditional garb for photographs. This guy is a real ham, you know he's done it hundreds of times before but he absolutely loves it, making fierce gestures and faces for the camera. Then I pop one of my newly purchased sarongs on, and his wife places a traditional belt around my waist and we take more photos.

I later discover that usually they ask for money for photos and dressing up, but either Razta paid something when I wasn't looking, or, because I purchased the sarongs they didn't ask for extra money, just asked me to sign the visitor book. Either way, the visit was extremely enjoyable and the atmosphere really welcoming. It's also possible to stay in the village, something I'd like to do if I returned to Alor.

After Takala we headed a very long way east to visit a very disappointing hot springs. But it's a tourist spot, so why not. The fresh coconut juice was worth the excursion.

Then we headed back to Kalabahi. A pleasant day indeed.

Around the bird's head on a motorbike

I decide to hire a motorbike for a day from the Homestay owner in Alor. It's a semi automatic, ie it has 3 gears and a foot brake, but no clutch, and comes without a helmet. I throw all caution to the wind and go on an adventure.

It takes me a little while to get used to the gear changes, but I've ridden a bike like this before so it's not completely new. Soon I'm feeling more confident and managing to get a bit more speed up on the nice roads. I head towards the airport and the beach at Mali, but stop along the way to admire the turquoise waters and deep blue sky.

After Mali the road heads up hill and becomes narrow and dodgy, and doesn't improve one bit for a very long time. I'm feeling a lot more confident on two wheels now, but still play very safe indeed. I find myself at a lovely bay called Batu Putih, named after the white stone cliffs at one end of the golden sand beach. It's hot, but very picturesque. The locals say it is safe to swim (the waters around Alor have wicked currents so it's important to ask before venturing in to the water) but I decline. I don't know what it is, but I'm just not that into going swimming, even though I've brought the snorkelling gear with me.

The road then heads up into the mountains, gets very steep, very narrow, and even more dodgy. It then begins to rain, so I quickly stop to put my camera and all electronics safely away inside my lightweight drybag. By then it's pouring down and I find it impossible to ride with the rain pelting in to my eyes. My sunglasses provide no protection, and since I have no helmet, there's nothing to stop it. A young farmer offers to drive me up to his house and let me shelter on his verandah until the rain abates. He happily walks back down to his farm.

Once the rain stops I continue further into the interior. The rain has caused the branches on each side of the road to droop over, making for an interesting and rather wet ride, and the road itself is a little slippery now its wet. I drive oh so carefully and have absolutely no dramas at all, no slipping wheels, certainly no falling over. I'm really proud of myself.

I get to a small village, and ask the way. I later discover there is a nearby waterfall, but I missed it through ignorance and a complete lack of any maps or signage aimed at tourism. Though admittedly, there are many more road signs on Alor than I'd seen on Lembata, which had, well, none!!

I find myself at Kokar Beach, on the northern side of the birds head peninsular. The road has now improved and I hope to get back to Kalabahi by dusk. I am stopped by a couple on a motorbike going in the opposite direction and invited to their house. It's only 2 o'clock so I happily agree. I turn around and head back maybe a kilometre, to their house, where I meet 3 generations of family. They are all incredibly welcoming, feeding me a local dish of papaya and banana blossom cooked with coconut, offer me betel nut to chew, a cup of tea, and even some Sopi. They totally understand when I just take one glass of the sopi, explaining I still have to drive back to town.

They are none of them camera shy, so we all take lots of photos on our phones and nice cameras. Then I get back on the bike and head home.

The road skirts the coast the whole way back to Kalabahi. It passes Sebanjar beach, good for snorkelling, and Alor Kecil, where the boat to Pulau Kepa goes from, then turns south bordering the strait between Alor and Pantar. There are a bunch of other islands in the strait, including the Sopi producing island of Pura, all of which you can visit, with a boat of course.

I arrive back in Kalabahi just as it's starting to get dark. I made it!!

And then there is Alor

After a little over a week on the beautiful friendly island of Lembata, I took another ferry further east. This one was a car ferry, and left from a port south of Lewoleba, necessitating the taking of an ojek through the night to get there. Once on the ferry I found myself a space on the vehicle deck to throw down a mattress (provided by the ferry company for an extra 20,000Rp) and make myself at home. I'd brought some sate and rice for dinner, so I ate that, and then went to sleep. It wasn't that hard, though I could have made it a little more comfortable by unpacking my bag a little to fashion up a pillow, and when, at 3 in the morning it became just a little chilly and everyone else used their sarongs as blankets, I too could have if I'd bothered to unpack it. Instead I tucked my shirt in and managed without.

The ferry was slow. We left Waijarang on Lembata at 8pm, and arrived in Baranusa on Pantar at 6am. We then waited there about an hour before heading further east, arriving at Kalabahi on Alor around 1pm. But the scenery was superb, particularly the sunrise as we headed in to Baranusa.

Once in Kalabahi I took an ojek to Cantik Homestay, a small place in a leafy suburb just up from the hospital, very central but still quiet and away from the traffic on the main road. The rooms are set around a courtyard, are air conditioned and cheap, and the cooking is superb. Perfect for sleeping away the rest of the day, and washing all my filthy clothes before heading out for a massive meal of baked fish down at the night warungs by the harbour.

My plan in Alor was to do some sight seeing before heading off to Pulau Kepa for a couple of days of diving. But I hadn't booked a room on Kepa, and they were full, as the diving season has already commenced. The next ferry wasn't for another week, so I had all the time in the world to relax and get to know the island and its people. And if I thought Lembata was friendly, Alor is even more so.

So what did I do with my days?

I slept in, drank coffee and chatted with other guests at the homestay. There's James, from Singapore, running a game fishing charter boat business, there's Kennedy, from Manado, and his wife Isobel, looking to start up a dive business. There's Pak Khris the owner, his wife Karolina who is a fantastic cook, and Deddy and Yanti who work at the Homestay. Everyone is friendly and relaxed, and evenings over dinner and some Sopi (the local palm wine brewed on the nearby island of Pura) with great conversation in a mixture of English and Indonesian, are something to look forward to.

During the days I wander around town or further afield.

I find a funky little cafe just down the road, opposite the hospital, which sells souvenirs as well as some delicious cocktails made from Sopi. It's run by a fantastic lady called Mika, who becomes my friend. More about her and the work she is doing on Alor in another post.

I visit the Museum Seribu Moko, which has a collection of mokos, ancient brass drums used for making music but also for dowry, ikats from around the island, and various old ceramics and historical paraphernalia. I make another friend, Razta, who offers to take me to the traditional village of Takpala.

samurai swords from the Japanese occupation during WW2

Mokos

the models have conspicuously white skin and features

irate detail

I hire a motorbike for a day and do a circumnavigation of the birds head peninsula of Alor, which involves some rather dodgy roads through the mountains and getting caught in a massive downpour. And meeting a very friendly family of three generations.

I drink more cocktails at Mika's cafe, and on Sunday we go for dinner at the local posh restaurant of Resto Mama, built over the water with drop dead gorgeous views of the sunset. The food isn't as good as Ibu Karolina's but it's a great location, only spoilt by the Karaoke that the restaurant also offers.

I buy more ikats and souvenirs, too many to keep with me when travelling, so I head to the Post Office to send them home. It's cheaper to send them from Kupang, so Mika offers to do it for me when she goes there in a week or two.

I go down to the port to confirm where and when my ferry to Atapupu, on the eastern end of West Timor leaves. My research told me Tuesday night, but Pak Khris and the port security guys tell me Wednesday.

I spend a night at Mika's house and the next day we head into the interior to distribute shoes to needy school children.

And then I miss my freaking ferry!!

All these stories next...well soon anyway....