Tues 7 Jan
Part 1
Part 2
Part 3
Part 4
Part 5
Part 6
Part 7
For a whole bunch of reasons today is a bummer. Everyone has left; we’re killing time before our flight out to Bali in two days time. It rains all day – big, viscous drops that splatter onto the warm tarmac when we eat lunch at the Sunshine Hut. That morning, we sat on the smooth warm stones of the hot springs – one pool for men, one for women – and watched the locals walk the terraces around us. The weather’s close, everything is wet – even the pages of my book – and the temperature sucks you dry, all you can do is sit still, slowly eat pasta and drink Coke.
On our walk back, the owner of the Bintang pulls up in his minivan and offers us a lift. He’s with his son – a boy of about seven or eight, who hangs from his neck and swings around to stare at the two strangers in the back of the bus.
Back at the Lodge, the owner’s wife sits on the brand new sofa that’s just been delivered. She explains carefully all about her new furniture as her son starts to climb all over her. She asks us to leave our boots in our room as she’s just cleaned the floor in preparation for tonight’s prayer meeting. There is no church in Moni; instead the congregation take it in turns to play Church meetings. ‘It won’t be long, only around 40 minutes. I have to set out the chairs soon.’
She plonks her son down and retreats to the family room to nap. Thick cloud falls down the hill. We head back to our room as the Lodge’s two scruffy dogs run onto the veranda. Lying on the bed reading, I hear all sorts of snarling and yelping. Outside, the dogs have found a foam mattress stored at the back of the space and enthusiastically eviscerated it into small yellow fist-sized chunks and scattered them across the clean floor. The door of the owner’s room opens and the larger dog, knowing what’s going to happen, scatters leaving the white dog wagging his tail in anticipation of what his master’s going to say about his work. The owner’s wife shrieks and grabs a broom and starts to whack the yelping white dog.
She sits back down on her new sofa and waves us over from the doorway. Sighing, she explains this will the last night she’ll see her husband for two months. He’s leaving Flores to work in a gold mine on Ambon. ‘Then he’ll be back for two weeks.’
Wednesday 7 Jan
Our last day on the Trans Flores Highway is fairly uneventful. In fact it’s surprising just how quickly I’ve got used to spending hours travelling not very far at all. Maumere, our final destination and roughly around half-way along the TFH, is not the rubble strewn hole, as promised by the guidebook, but a ramshackle port town with wide, tree-lined streets.
We end up at another hotel called the Gardena, before walking down to the port to watch the thunderstorms hit the hills behind the town and eat fiery seafood and rice.
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