The Kingdom of Baikal: October 2011

Greetings everyone

9 days from png to indonesia,we had a good sail for the first few days but as we left the torres strait the wind dropped off so we were floating along at 2 knots and weren't pushing it too fast as we didnt want to arrie on the weekend, we ended up getting to saumlaki on sunday afternoon and what a suprise it was to see our friends we met in port moresby, a french and venuzualean couple. So we have been cruising in company these past couple of weeks.
The sailing in indo has been anything but pleasant,already we have done 100hours motoring thats 500 miles.. lucky diesel is cheap here. about 70cents a litre delivered to the boat. laptop is stuffed will write more when i get new keypad currently we are at an island a few miles east of Bali, just ate a yummy seafood mie goreng for 3 dollars, fantastic
will add more photos later gotta go snorkelling

clown fish and friends

Arriving in Saumlaki on a sunday we organised to clear in the next day, little did we know just how corrupt quarintine were going to be.The official decided that we had to clear in and out on the same day and it was going to cost us 300,000 rupiahs (30AUD) we decided to pay him 250,000 rupiahs to take our paperwork back that we had given him the previous day so that he did not ever meet us. We left to clear in at flores island, thus giving us a couple of more weeks to travel the long distance across this country without starting our 60 day visa !You should of seen this guy though,when we first met him, he was sweeping the floor and made us wait for like half an hour, then he went behind a door to put on his very official looking uniform with polished buttons and turned into an asshole! Several anchorages and 2 weeks later we arrived on the west side of Flores (Google earth it) Labuan Bajo where we enountered some very nice officials,we paid only 7AUD for everything. And then we all went out for nasi goreng (fried rice, egg and some yummy seafood) to celebrate. Yeah baby this really is kiwi heaven. The islands so far have been baron, arid, rugged savannah land with volanoes. We sailed the next day to Rinca, a national park island with komodos and more corrupt officials who wanted to charge us harbour fees and a fee according to the size of the motor in your boat a fee for ourselves,our camera, the government tax. oww yeah and pay to snorkel and kayak pretty much everything.The offiial said, 'how did you get here, by boat?' (well yeah its a friken island) 'oh weeeeellll tut tut tut (as he pulls out a invoie book from his drawe) that will be more money'. So our french mate got feisty with him, 'what, so now you want us to pay for your chair, this desk, your pen, your shoes it never ends does it!' this made for an entertaining show as he went around the room picking up things that we should pay for. While this was going on I snuck outside and found a tour group looking at the infamous komodo dragon, and proceded to take photos with my camera that 'shock horror' i didnt have a permit for. A few minutes later I got yelled at by the asshole himself, 'you dont have a permit for that camera you cant take photos!!'.... so we all walked back to the boat with the tour guide leading the way, ensuring we asked him as many questions as we could think of about the komodo dragon. We then spent a quite night in an anchorage further away from 'officialdom' snorkelling for free, spotting water buffalo, monkeys, deer and komodos on the beach and surrounding hills.The next day we found the komodos ourselves and took lots of photos on our cameras with no permits.
. The Indonesians are generally very nice people when they arent trying to sell you something. On our journey west along the archipeligo we spent an hour or so snorkelling at south komodo and did a 2 night sail to Lombok where we managed to watch the All Blacks win against France at a resort. We also got a surf in at ekas bay which was fun, we saw monkeys everywhere. All the straits between the islands have fierce currents, boils, eddies, and overfalls which we experienced a few times motor sailing at 7knots through the water and only doing 0-1 knot over ground! frustrating. It is hard to pick which way the tide will flow as the tidal overflow often lags the high or low tide by 2 sometimes 3 or 4 hours?!!? The local fisherman (and theres a shitload of them!) know, so we ask them. We have been very unlucky on the fishing front, the last one we caught was on our way into Indo, and that was a small mahimahi. We have had to resort to BUYING fresh fish off the small fishing boats that ome upto Baikal. 3dollars for a mediu size fish. We were anchored at a quaint wee fishing village yesterday. It was like taking a step back in time, children carrying the washing on the heads, men on horses going to get water,one is only reminded that its 2011 when you hear the sound of the motorbike hooning on past. In most of the villages there are motorbikes everywhere - maybe only one or two pushbikes. We are now at Lembongan island a few miles off Bali. This is a place where tourists come in by the boatload during the day and leave in the afternoon. But there is also accommodation aplenty here so there are a few that prefer here to Bali. There is surf here but at the moment its not happening so we are off to Bali today to have a look around, running low on cheese so hope to find some good western supermarket there.And some nice cheap clothes.
We have tried the local beer bintang -definately not anywhere near the alcoholic content of our home brew. Just put another brew down the other day, this time its apple cider...
We are also running low on water so hae been making some at 6l an hour..slooww. No more fresh showers for us, its a tough life. Its a great change to have the water temperature down to 26degrees instead of the bath water 30degrees, you actually step out feeling refreshed!

sunset

fisherman in flore

We arrived in Bali, Serangan Island, where we stayed 3 days. We hired a scooter and went with our friends from Colourazul to the rice paddy fields north bali (Ubud) and tried to go to Kuta but got lost in the afternoon traffic! We went to a monkey forest that was so much fun, a monkey climbed up Dudley's bag to try and get his drink bottle, cheeky things.
We had a mission trying to get diesel, apparantly its illegal for us to get diesel in large quanties. We put our jerry cans into the back of a bemo (van) and we had to bribe the man at the petrol station to fill up our tanks, in the end we gave him an extra 5 dollars so we wouldn't get in trouble with the police. We hired this bemo and driver for the day on an agreed price and at the end of the day we paid the man what he wanted and he wasnt happy. In Bali we tended to get this alot.
We went to the local market in Bali and the people were trying to sell us things at ridiculous prices. One lady said its cheaper if we go to the supermarket to buy fruit and vegies. And when we did buy mangos again at an agreed price the lady was pissed off when we said thank-you (in indonesian) she said yeah yeah yeah and waved us away. So stay away from tourist centers! I think the locals have all had enough of us tourists!
At present we are in Lombok again further up on the west coast anchored in Sengigi, right by a whole lot of resorts. We hired a scooter for 6dollars for the day.
I am sitting in Mc Donalds, where there is free internet, so much easier to type than on our shitty laptop where some of the keys are stuffed. We have just had a strong coffee (waiting for the mall to open) so forgive me if my writing is crap, I'm buzzing off the coffee. Our friends from Colourazul are now on the norht coast of bali, so we are on our own again.
Today we hope to see some local basket weaving, around here is where they make it and then take to bali and sell it for heaps more..
On our excursion the other day I got some rip curl togs, for 30 dollars, (the same ones but different colour for 90 dollars in Australia) and hooning round on the scooters there are many many many shops which sell goods that you see in shops in New zealand for shitloads more money, there are white people with truks outside some of these shops, and you just watch them load it up with statues, carvings, bowls, and i bet its all coming to a shop near you!!!! Poor kiwis getting ripped off big time in their own country. Tomorrow we will be heading for the three gili islands (we got acosted this morning walking down the beach -'you want ride to Gili?' by about 10 different people) there is supposedly good snorkelling here. Until next time Good bye!