Maumere and Riung S08 36.742 E122 13.157
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In these parts of South
Indonesia Christians and Muslims live harmoniously in the same towns and
villages. The anchorages always include a Muslim community and the mosques seem
always to be near the harbour or the beach. This causes a bit of a problem for
us as at 4.30am we are awoken to the sound of the Mullah calling the faithful to
prayer. During Ramadan this often went on for much longer than usual. The
cockerels do not seem to respect night time at all. In Maumere we had a Muslim
helper who went by the name of Aladdin and proved as good as his name whisking
up some cheap diesel and water quickly and efficiently...between his 5 visits a
day to the mosque.
We had to stop a few days in Maumere to sort out a problem with Visas and whilst there also had another taste of the Indonesian love of bureaucracy. We had been told by Sail Indonesia that there was no need to check in and out of each port as you had to do once. However, the harbour master Mr Dona had not heard of this rule change (apparently dating from 2004 ) and said we had done something very serious by failing to report in and out of our previous ports. Fortunately I had my phone and the number of our local Indonesian representative and he reassured us that there was not a problem...but the harbour master still insisted that I return after the weekend to collect the right piece of paper. When I returned on the Monday it was obvious that my papers had not moved since I was last there, however he proceeded to process them and there was no charge...but I did struggle to retain my good temper. I pointed out that none of the other 120 boats in the rally were reporting in and out...but he just said they were all breaking the rules too! As they say in Indonesia about rules and regulations, “another field, another grasshopper”. Of course, all this bureaucracy meant we had to find our way across the town. In Indonesia this is achieved by ojek.......or motorcycle taxi. Young lads ferry people around the town for trivial amounts of money. On the whole they drive well but with the odd heart stopping overtaking manoeuvre. A fellow cruiser who thought he could do it himself had a nasty accident on a hired motorbike and burned his leg on the exhaust so badly that he has eventually had to fly back to Australia for a skin graft. Anyway, we achieved our aim of getting Lorraine's visa renewed for another month and now know to keep away from harbour masters with too little to do. We were lucky to spend an evening at a local hotel where the local people put on an excellent evening of music and dance, similar to some of the dancing we had seen elsewhere but with much more interesting singing and music. The band played various instruments including some strange flute like instruments, a single stringed double bass and a range of bamboo drums. We sailed west to catch up with the other boats and had yet another welcome dinner and entertainment at Riung. This is the local store down at the busy harbour settlement:
The local administration also organised a fleet of boats to take us out to some of the islands near Riung, one of which has another large bat colony.
We made a difficult landing on a steep beach to climb to a hide where, in theory we would see a smaller relative of the Komodo dragon. Sadly we spent 40 minutes crouched in a hide with 30 other people looking at a dead goat hanging in a tree.
The first people there were lucky enough to see this creature.
However, we had a good snorkel from a wonderful beach and we know we'll be seeing the full-sized thing when we visit Rinca and Komodo in a few days time.
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