Chilling in a beach bungalow for a few days

The extreme humidity here in Flores is quite sapping. I'd expected that we would be at the tail end of the wet season by now but it isn't the case this year as it started late and the locals tell me it is normal to still be raining through to April. Note to self, try Maluku at this time of year instead.

After 4 nights staying at the increasingly decrepid but convenient Gardena Hotel in Maumere I jumped on the only bus I could find heading west. It was Palm Sunday, the Sunday before Easter, and a Public Holiday, so there wasn't much traffic on the roads, but this bus to Larantuka was just about to leave so I squashed in and got dropped off near Wodong. Unfortunately I'd got off at the wrong sign to Sunset Cottages, something the owner could easily remedy by removing the sign. But since he was home, he gave me a lift to the new cottages, further down the beach but no longer with a sunset view. Apparently the landowner wouldn't continue to rent him the land, so he had to move.

The new cottages are three in total, made from wood and bamboo with thatched roofs. They have attached bathrooms with a shower and western toilet, but no cistern so you still need to use a bucket. Since I don't bother with toilet paper whilst travelling in Indonesia, preferring to wash my arse with water the local way, this is totally fine by me. It's the squat toilets I struggle with, due to tight achilles tendons and dodgy knees.

Each cottage has a lovely covered verandah, and two are very close to the water's edge. The third, a family sized cottage, is set back a little. There's a covered restaurant area and nearby kitchen, a beach at our front door, and that's it. There isn't 24 hour power as the electricity company is yet to connect the property with the grid, so Mr Henry runs a generator for a few hours during the day and in the evening, meaning it's still possible to get your electronics recharged, but the internet coverage is dreadful.

The meals offered by the kitchen are pretty minimal as they stock very little food at this quiet time of the year. It's mostly fried rice or noodles, or vege curry. Despite that, all cottages are occupied for most of my stay. There are also alternative cottage accommodation either side of us along the beach, including the more upmarket Ankermi.

There is a German lass staying here long term, who has started a reading and drawing class with the local children. She spent a week at Nita village learning about how to make ikat, and was a mine of information about things to do locally. She'd also had a bad experience at Gardena, worse than mine: bedbugs!!

I had planned to climb the nearby Gunung Egon, but it's not safe at this time of year during the wet season, so instead I mostly chilled by the beach. The views were just stunning.

One morning a German couple and I took a bemo up the road to the small village of Nangahale. Here they make boats from local timber sourced from the forest, each boat taking about 3 months to complete.

Old women boil sea water in shallow baths to extract salt.

There's even a small fish market, where we buy some tuna for dinner. Each fish costs a dollar. One man has a stingray for sale.

The kids are outrageously friendly, and follow us around. The German couple haven't been to non touristy parts of Indonesia before, so are really enjoying having a wander and I encourage them just to smile and be friendly and interact with people. It's not hard!

We return to the cottages on a bemo stuffed to the eyeballs with school students, luckily we have seats. It's an eye opener to the German couple, Alina and Kristof, and they later tell me they wouldn't have done that trip without me. I realise how easily I now can interact with people, can ask them questions and learn about what they are doing, and can tell people about myself. It does make travelling in foreign places a lot easier when you can speak the language, no matter how limited it is it's better than none.

Our barbequed fish was delicious, and an incredibly welcome change after the boring meals otherwise on offer, though they always came beautifully decorated with smiley faces.

That evening I am sick, with diarrhoea, and later fever and headache. I spend the next day just lying around, drinking water and having numerous cold showers, and catching the sea breeze. It's not such a bad place to be sick. The staff are concerned, and make me ginger tea, while Mr Henry offers to take me to a doctor if I want. I'm not that sick, and I had no plans anyway, so resting, reading, and watching videos is a fine way to spend time, sick or otherwise.

By the next day the fever and headache have resolved, my bowels have settled down, and I am ready to take on the next adventure. I message my couchsurfing host in Larantuka to let her know I'll be on a bus there in the morning.

That's next...

Ikat Hunting - Maumere region

So what are ikats?

Ikats are hand woven material, usually sewn into a cylinder, which men and women wear as a sarong wrapped around their waist or like a sari slung over one shoulder. These days they also wear a western shirt on their upper body, but they are the traditional clothing of the people of Flores, Timor, Sumba and most of the other islands of Nusa Tenggara. Traditionally the ikats were made from scratch, growing and spinning the cotton, dyeing it with natural products from their immediate environment, and weaving them with intricate designs specific to each village and region. These days most ikats are made from milled cotton and synthetic dyes, but the painstaking work of dyeing the warp and weaving by hand is still done by thousands of women throughout the archipelago.

Lio ikats

My first foray to the weekly markets at Nita revealed a number of women, and a few men, selling ikats not only from local areas, but also from Alor and West Timor. I interrogated each seller as to where the ikats came from, disappointing them all as at this stage I wasn't interested in buying, but simply learning about them. In particular, I was interested in seeing the process. I met a lady from Ledalero, just up the road, who invited me to visit the women's collective which she was involved in, but not for a few days as she had markets to attend. As did I!!

Yanti with her kids

Walking the couple of kilometres between Nita and Ledalero I spied the sign to the Nita women's collective. They were all at the market too, so I wandered around looking at unfinished projects before heading back along the road again. Nita is one of the few weaving collectives still using traditional dyes, which probably doubles the time required to make the finished product. This also doubles the asking price!

Back on the road I visited the Ledalero museum, and took a picture which maps the different ikat designs throughout Flores for future reference.

A couple of days later I returned to Ledalero to visit Yanti and her weaving collective known as Kelompok Korosang Manualu. The name is in the Sikka language, and manualu means "8 chickens", being the traditional motif usually weaved in to the ikats.

see the chickens?

The collective has only been in operation for a year. Previously the women weaved alone in their houses, but this way they can share the workload, send one person to the market to sell the wares, and also attract tourists to see the process. The Nita collective has been doing this successfully for many years, and even offers a homestay for people interested in learning to weave, so I presume the Ledalero ladies have learnt from their example.

Nita ikat in progress

Yanti showed me a beautiful traditionally dyed ikat which her mother had made. It had a dragon motif and it was obviously very special to Yanti, and definitely not for sale. They showed me the leaves used to make the indigo dye, and also how they wrap the twine with rattan in the design they wish to make, before it is dyed, often in multiple colours. They do each section in turn, so when you see the finished ikat it can be any width dependent on how many sections they do, and can be any combination of different designs.

Once the painstaking process of dyeing the yarn is complete, the warp is threaded onto the handloom and the weaving begins. This is incredibly hard work, as the women take up the tension using their own bodies as a fulcrum, with a backbrace and their legs. Working all day, it takes at least a week to weave the irate. And yes, they all get sore backs.



After showing me around and showing me such hospitality, including lunch of fried bananas and a really yummy salad, I felt it would be rude not to purchase an ikat. So I did. I also learnt that there is definitely a top and a bottom to an ikat when worn.

never mind the socks

So, should you decide to visit the Museum at Ledalero, I'd also recommend crossing the road and asking for Yanti or the Kelompok Korosang Manualu. Her house is opposite the road to the Museum, towards Nita. If you get the wrong house someone will show you the correct one. It is expected that you offer a donation to the collective for their time showing you around, whether you purchase an ikat or not. The ladies are so friendly and helpful, though very little English is spoken. Yanti has the most English, but that's pretty minimal, so for the best experience some knowledge of Indonesian would help.

Markets, ikats and churches

Maumere. A scrappy little town 2 hours' flight from Bali towards the eastern end of Flores. A dearth of decent hotels, I settle for a clean enough room in a hotel close to town where the included breakfast is not only a joke but requires repeated requests for it before it even appears. Or doesn't. The tariff was equally a joke.

My reason for staying in town rather than the beach cottages east of town was to explore places west and south of town without having to take three or more buses just to get there. The town itself is quite easy to walk around in, with some nice restaurants selling baked fish, the usual smattering of padang food restaurants, and a big row of food stalls by the rubbish strewn river selling food from all over Indonesia.

Sate Kambing (goat)

rendang

My first 2 days I visited nearby weekly markets, first at Nita, on the road to Ende, and then at Geliting on the road to Larantuka. Both markets have a staggering array of fruit and vegetables, seafood, clothes both new and second hand, hardware, washing products, jewellery, cosmetics, shoes, hand forged knives, livestock including pigs, chickens, horses and even dogs!

Besides loving markets for their photographic potential, I was there to see ikats, the locally woven sarongs the women make for wearing and for sale. Each village and region has its own designs, so it's a lot to take in. Most now purchase the cotton already spun and use synthetic dyes, but a few still use traditional dyes made from natural products sourced from the local forest.

Wandering around town I met a young man name Theo, who offered to take me on his motorbike to a few places, so on my third day we headed out. First we went to Nilo, an insubstantial village up a steep and winding road in the hills just south of Maumere. Atop a hill looking out over the town and islands is a giant statue of the virgin Mary. Damn fine views too.

Second we visited a women's weaving collective in Ledalero, but more on that in another post. Ledalero is home to a large catholic seminary, serving 500 students from all over Nusa Tenggara as well as East Timor, and even a few overseas students. It also houses a small museum, with a mish mash of objects from ancient times, skulls, bones, ikats and traditional instruments of trade and religion. it's badly arranged and there's no signage, so you really have no idea what you are looking at. The map of the regional ikat motifs was worth a photo though.

After a very enjoyable couple of hours with the lovely ladies at Kelompok Korasang Manualu we headed on past Nita to the south coast at Lela, which has some lovely palm fringed beaches, and along to Sikka, home to a Portuguese designed church and a small contingent of the Sikka ikat mafia.

We popped in to Theo's house on the way back, for fresh coconut juice from his garden, and met a few of his rather shy but curious neighbours.

We then headed back in to Maumere and along the north west coast to the Bajo village of Wuring. These are seafaring people who live in stilt houses over the water, having a stronger affinity with the ocean than the land. Lots of boats, cramped living conditions, and a mosque at the end of the road. There's also a port serving the small phinisi cargo boats trading between the islands.

On my way home from dinner Saturday night I heard people singing, so followed the sound to the steps of the nearby protestant church to find the choir practising for the following morning's service. They invited me to join them, and after listening to them for a while I left with promises to join them at church the next morning, which I did. Personally I thought they sounded better on the steps of the church than inside the building itself.



After church I failed to raise the lazy boys running the hotel to prepare me breakfast, so packed and headed out of town for a few days in a bungalow by the beach.

But next, a story about ikats.