A Quiet 9/11 - Medana Bay, Lombok Island, Nusa Tenggara Province, Indonesia
Harmonie
Don and Anne Myers
Fri 1 Oct 2010 03:48
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08:21.698S 116:07.700E
We hopped over to Medana Bay, site
of the next official Sail Indonesia rally stop, from Gili
Air on September 11th. We admit that we held our breath on that
day, hoping no new nastiness would erupt on nearby Bali Island or anywhere
else in Indonesia or the world for that matter. Luckily, all was calm and
even the call to prayer didn't seem as loud as usual that
evening. Medana Bay is a beautiful spot with a perfect view of
Lombok's mountains, including the huge brown rain clouds that develop every
afternoon in the peaks and sometimes slide down over the bay. The local
family running the Medana Bay "marina" had it all going on. Well,
mostly. They paid the local kids to clean up the beach for our arrival
(knowing how much we foreigners hate a trash covered beach), put in a
sturdy dinghy dock (quite a step up from the scary rickety contraptions
we'd unloaded ourselves onto previously), and put in a bunch of
moorings. Most of the moorings were too close to shore and too close
together for the average 45 foot rally boat, but we appreciated the thought they
put into the moorings as we anchored a fair distance away from them.
The marina owners also constructed a pavilion and small kitchen where local
ladies prepared a set menu for dinner every day at the low, low Indonesian price
of 25,000 rupiah, or $2.50. We had the best nasi goreng ever there -
sticky fried rice and crispy green beans flavored with shallots, hot
pepper and garlic, all wrapped up in a thin layer fried egg, and surrounded
on the plate by decorative splashes of several different very tasty
sauces. Local artisans and hopeful sellers of trinkets were allowed to set
up stalls on the beach between the dinghy dock and the restaurant pavilion, but
all must have been told not to pester the boaters too much because there was no
hard selling going on. Even the kids must have been told to stay away from
the boaters' dinghies because although they spent every afternoon jumping off
the dinghy dock into the water, they left the dinghies alone. Medana Bay
was a very nice spot indeed. We stayed only three nights - long enough to
go on a short tour and catch up on boat jobs. We didn't stay for the
official rally festivities because we wanted to maximize our time in Bali, our
next stop.
Picture 1 - Medana Bay with Lombok Island's mountains and
afternoon rain clouds in the background.
Picture 2 - The local market. Aha! So this is where all
the fruit and vegetables have been hiding. Lombok is a very fertile
island slathered with lots of good volcanic soil, so the produce is
plentiful - a nice change from the barren Komodo area. In this picture,
Mohammed, our tour guide, is helping Sue and I pick out the best
tomatoes. He assisted with the bargaining process too, but we're pretty
sure we paid the top tourist price anyway. Not that top tourist
prices amount to anything more than a dollar or two, but someday we'll have to
find out what the locals pay for a kilo of tomatoes, just for
grins.
Picture 3 - Plowing the fields the old fashioned way.
Our tour took us to the northern part of Lombok Island where there were
plenty of farmers doing lots of plowing without the luxury of
tractors.
Picture 4 - A traditional Lombok Island mountain
village. The 400 people of this village support themselves through the
cultivation of cashew trees as well as other crops. This village
is one of only a couple purely traditional villages near the north and
west coasts of Lombok. As you can see, their homes are constructed from
bamboo and pandanus fronds. Each family's home consists of three
structures: the parent's hut, a communal eating pavilion and the
children's sleeping hut. The row to the right contains the parents'
huts. In the middle are the covered raised platforms where the
family eats and socializes together. On the left (not shown) are the
children's sleeping huts. Everything was very orderly with straight dirt
paths separating the parents' row of huts from the eating pavilions, and
the same on the other side separating the eating pavilion from the children's
sleeping huts.
Picture 5 - Our village guide standing in his hut next to the
kitchen where the remains of a cooking fire sits on the floor in the corner, and
hand carved wooden cow and goat bells hang from the rafters.
Picture 6 - The honeymoon suite. This structure stands
in the center of every parent's hut. It is a raised and enclosed bed
chamber, used only by newlywed couples. What it's used for the rest
of the time, we aren't entirely sure.
Picture 7 - The cashew fruit and cashew nut from a cashew
tree. First the cashew pod is extracted from the cashew fruit, then it is
dried, boiled and subjected to a third process that none of us can
remember. At any rate, the process of producing a cashew is arduous and
time consuming. No wonder we pay big bucks for the final
product.
Picture 8 - Our miniature kid parade in the traditional
village. Miniature because there weren't many kids and because
their size was so tiny. Cute, as always, just tiny.
Picture 9 - What's a reunion with Storyteller without at least
one visit to a very fine resort? We reunited with both Storyteller and
Priscilla for the first time since Wakatobi several weeks before. Lucky
for all of us, this resort was a short walk down the beach from where our
boats were parked in Medana Bay. John and Sue, and Suzie and Tom opted to
spend a day or two at the resort, but we went for the brief cocktail hour
instead. This was the first "real" resort we had seen in Indonesia (with
plenty more to come later in our travels on Bali). From the left is John,
myself, Suzie, Sue and Don.
Anne
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