Day 106, Year 3: A Day in Riung
Date: Hari Sabtu (Saturday), Bulan Agustus 23, Pada Tahan 2008
Weather: More Flores Sunshine
Location: Riung, Flores Island, Nusa Tengarra Province, Indonesia
The Portuguese named this island Cabo das Flores or ‘Cape of Flowers’ for its beautiful underwater coral gardens that looked to them like flowers. Today we went out to the offshore islands to see some of those gardens. We couldn’t get a guide because all were taken with a large group of Italian tourists, but we did find a nice patch of coral and enjoyed our snorkeling adventure. There are more than twenty-one little islands offshore but the government calls this the “Seventeen Islands Marine Park”
to tie in with the August 17 Independence Day. Whether seventeen or twenty-one, the little islands are beautiful. Safina, Shirena, and Windbird left the snorkeling island and stopped by another island with a beautiful white sand beach and some little thatch-roofed huts to have lunch in the shade. Scot Free continued snorkeling and then headed back to the anchorage. Donna’s underwater camera bit the dust today. Her camera is the same Olympus that we “had” but that bit the dust underwater at Kroko
Atoll. Unfortunately, this is Donna’s only camera and she is quite depressed. Her son, Klinton, who is sailing with them right now, does have a good camera and she still has a video camcorder, but like me, she loves taking her own pictures of wildlife. And since we are headed to the Komodos it is particularly upsetting not to have an underwater camera. The snorkeling there is supposed to be wonderful. Shirena has the same Olympus, so it looks like we are going to have to “hire” them to take
the underwater photos and share them with us.
Earlier in the day, before our snorkeling adventure, we took a walk through the Muslim Bugis stilt-house community to get some pictures and we were on our way into town to go an internet caf� and to the market. Klinton went ahead to scout things out and then called back on the portable VHF to let us know that everything in town was closed. Things here are open on Sunday, but not on Saturday. So we turned around and went back to the dock.
After returning from the snorkeling adventure, Donna and Gerry of Scot Free came over to talk about future travel plans. We all have to be checked out of Indonesia by the end of October because that is as long as the government will allow us to stay. There are so many wonderful things to see here but no way to see them all, so we constantly have to plan ahead and make those hard decisions about what is in and what is out. Mark spent the remainder of the afternoon fixing the pump that drains our
shower water and I did laundry. Riung has been a nice stop with a very calm anchorage, but we must move on tomorrow. We will go as far as we can make it toward the northwest tip of Flores and then in the next day or so, make our way down to Rinca Island in the Komodos.
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| 080824 Day 106 Flores, Indonesia–Riung to Inca Village |
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| 080823 Day 106 Flores, Indonesia–Riung |
