Day 119, Year 3: A Day in Pulau Medang
Date: Hari Jumat (Friday), Bulan Sèptèmber 5, Pada Tahan 2008
Weather: Another Beautiful Day, Very HOT
Location: Pulau Medang, Sumbawa Island, West Nusa Tengarra Province, Indonesia
I love hot weather and will never complain, but I will say that things are getting hotter. The temperature here is about the same year round, somewhere around 84 degrees F, so I don’t know why we feel it is getting hotter as we head west. It just does. Some cruisers have taken to sleeping in the cockpits. We are not there yet, as it does cool down at night and we have great little fans. With those, we would not survive, so I sure hope we have no fan malfunctions. Today was made even hotter
by bread and granola baking. But those are essentials in our diet, so some days just have to be dedicated to “hot boat.”
We made contact today via cell phone with one of the tour agencies in Borneo. A young man named Gilang has a company called the Prince of Kumai Eco Tourism Organization and we reached him by cell phone today. We had emailed him earlier and gotten no response, but when we talked to him we found that he actually uses a different account for his daily email. The one we emailed was something he only checks once in a while. But the good news is that we are going to be able to reserve our river trip
on the island of Borneo to see the orangutans. Since our son Justin and his wife Jo have to fly out of there and back to Bali to connect with their flight back to the US on October 14, we needed to be sure we had reservations. Since everyone in the rally will be on the same time schedule, I was afraid to wait until we got there to take our chances on a tour. Seeing those orangutans was originally one of the main reason I signed on to the Indonesia tour, so I sure don’t want to miss them. I now
realize that there are many, many, many wonderful reasons to tour Indonesia, but it didn’t look that way from afar to me. I think I must be blind.
Mid-day we went ashore with Robert and Tina of Shirena to walk the white sand beach here. Mangroves intersperse themselves with the sandy beaches. Just behind the beach there are areas that look like they might be fish farms. The land is divided like in rice paddies but salt water is brought in from the sea. So all we can figure is that they are raising fish. When we walked further, we came to grazing land under the palm trees for goats and cows. Eventually we got to the land at the end of
the point and could see the light house on the north side of the island. It was a nice walk, but a very hot one. Next time we’ll do this in the early morning or late evening and take water. We are slow learners.
There are now fourteen boats in this anchorage and all of us are headed to the same place-Gili Air on the northwest coast of Lombok. There’s not room there for that many boats, so we might have to do some juggling. First we sail to Gili Lawang on the northeast coast of Lombok tomorrow. That is about 45 nautical miles from here. We will spend the night there if there is room in the anchorage and continue on the next 45 miles to Gili Air the next day. If there is no room at Gili Lawang, I guess
we will overnight it to Gili Air. We are hopeful that we will be able to anchor at Gili Air and spend two or three days chilling out (activity wise, not heat wise). Gili Air is a major tourist destination. There are no cars on the island and you can walk the entire perimeter morning and evening. There’s great food at very little cost and beautiful white sand beaches and turquoise water. There is snorkeling, but very little coral at snorkeling level. Cyclones and global warming have destroyed
the shallow coral but they are trying a new process to get it growing again. I guess we will just have to get there and report on the real conditions first hand. After spending a couple of days in Gili Air, we will move about three miles to coast of Lombok and do some inland touring. On September 13th we will attend the Lombok Sail Indonesia Rally welcoming ceremony and then head off to Bali. Time runs through our fingers like water.
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| 080905 Day 119 Sumbawa, Indonesia–Walk on Pulau Medang |
