Indonesia: Flores island overland crossing
- Where To Go Next By I&P
- Nov 28, 2022
- 4 min read
Updated: Dec 2, 2022
As we were leaving Labuan Bajo, we were joined by Chris, our interpreter, and Rutje, our extremely young but skilled driver, to start our journey across the big island of Flores, from Labuan Bajo to Kelimutu National Park.
This overland crossing would take 4 days by car through winding roads, tall mountains and wet jungles, palm trees, rice fields, bamboo forests, accompanied by the deafening noise of cicadas. Luckily, we also had a great playlist by Chris featuring western country and modern music, but also some Indonesian music (country-like, Hawaiian-like, reggae...). Several songs from Ivan Nestorman represented Flores island well. There were some Christmas songs as well - it was weird to hear such songs in a place where the landscapes are so green and it is so hot.
We passed a lot of villages and individual houses everywhere along the side of the road, showing how spread out Indonesians are on the island. Between the towns, there is mostly untouched jungle, with the occasional rice fields in terrace and the farmers' homes.
But one particular rice field, in Cara Village, is arranged in the shape of a spider web (we had to pay 25k IDR/pax to see the fields from above).
After the rice fields, we wanted to see traditional houses from the region of Ruteng. At Pu'u village, there were 4 houses displayed with the traditional cone-shaped roofs. Not really a village and not worth the 20k IDR/pax "donation", from our point of view.
We reached Ruteng at the end of the day, the biggest city in the region, famous among the locals because of the view of the mountains surrounding it, especially around our hotel.
The city itself is not really interesting, but we still went to see the Cathedral. Chris said there were a lot of Christians on the island, as it was an ancient Portuguese colony.
The next day, we left Ruteng to go to our second stop, Bajawa.
We started a very long descent of at least 3h, where we kept going down at a pretty fast pace until we reached the ocean. It wasn't until that moment that we realized how high up in the mountains Ruteng is.
After a lunch break at a local restaurant (gosh, in the moment, we really hoped we would not get sick after eating there 🤢 it's not that the food wasn't good, it's just the level of cleanliness wasn't great), we started to go up towards Bajawa with a beautiful yet partial view of Mt. Inerie volcano, the highest mountain in Flores.
Before reaching Bajawa, we made a stop in Bena, a traditional village in the region of Bajawa, on the flank of Mt. Inerie. There were more than 40 houses laid out in U shape, with ceremonial altars in the middle. The village was built on multiple levels, with, at the top, a space dedicated to the Virgin Mary with a stunning view of a valley below, all the way down to the ocean.
The entrance is only 25k IDR/pax but totally worth it, as you have a great view of Mt Inerie and you can meet young and old villagers, from whom you could buy some handmade scarfs (a little bit pricey though).
The houses' roofs were also interesting and representative of the region: a high roof finished by a ridge made in straw with sometimes a small figure/mini house on top. It is so representative that we noticed even the modern houses in Bajawa had the same kind of roof (but made out of metal).
To end the long day, we went to relax at the So'a hot spring, north east of Bajawa. The entrance was 20k IDR/pax and gave you access to a nice garden with a natural hot water spring that feeds a river and a pond, where anyone can go bathe. The water was a little bit too hot for us but we still enjoyed it, and hoped that the sulfur would be good for our skin.
After spending the night in Bajawa, we left to go to Moni, a small village on the flank of Kelimutu. On the way there, we had a beautiful view of Mt Ebulobo, another very tall volcano on the island of Flores.
And after a 2 hour drive, we could see the ocean while approaching Ende from the mountains. Villagers there like to decorate their side of the roads with colorful flags.
We continued going down the mountain until we arrived at the Blue Stone beach. As the name suggests, most of the pebbles are blue, even inside.
After a break, we arrived at the port town of Ende (the second biggest town of the island of Flores) where we had the opportunity to meet Chris' grandmother and sit down with her. An 88 year old lovely lady that is still very active after a life of traveling and 12 children. 😳
We then continued our journey up the mountain to the Kelimutu National Park.
Once we arrived at our hotel in Moni, we were finally able to relax in front of a sublime view before having dinner (I tested tempeh which is a byproduct of soybeans), and resting for the night as we needed to get up at 3am to go up Kelimutu and watch the sunrise.
However, we didn't get much sleep as the villagers of the tiny village of Moni apparently love football and went on screaming the whole night for their teams during the Fifa World Cup games, disturbing not only us, but the whole town of Moni, roosters and dogs included.
At 4am with barely any sleep, we left towards Kelimutu National Park. As soon as we arrived there and paid the fee of 150k IDR/pax, we followed the completely dark path to reach the Kelimutu viewpoint as the sun was rising.
We could finally admire two magnificent volcanic crater lakes with light blue water and a third one with black water.
The water of the 3 lakes changes colours and sometimes all 3 have different colors: blue, black and red. Chris mentioned a local myth that if the lakes were all light blue, it meant that an eruption was imminent.
We were very lucky that they were not all light blue but we were not lucky enough to see the red lake. But we did see a monkey that agreed to pose for us.
After Kelimutu, we drove back to Ende to rest and have a glass of watermelon juice by the beach.
It was the "Ende" of the Overland crossing! 🙊
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