Like last year, we flew Eva Air business (only 120K miles to go to Bali), and while the food and service were still quite good. Unfortunately the entertainment system was unreliable and crashy. It failed for me in both planes....

seabass was yummy :)

good job entertainment system, still didn't work after 2 reboots

very nice HUD

virtual landing

This year, our Indonesian destination was Flores Island to catch the Waow boat in Maumere. We were told that Flores was worth visiting before boarding the boat, so we took 4 days to spend there before getting on the boat. However, you fly there through Bali, so we had a few hours in Bali the day we arrived before taking a plane to Maumere the next morning.

Unfortunately this year it took 1.5h to get through the aiport due to a huge imigration line. Eventually we got out at 17;10, which was barely enough time to meet our driver guide we used last year and go to Uluwatu to have a quick tour of the temple, see the monkeys, and then watch a Balinese dance (actually kind of a play, not entirely unlike Japanese kabuki), and then we were supposed to have suckling pig for dinner, but the place closed for some holiday. Instead, we ended up having dinner on a beach with pick your own fish, we'll grill it :)

new toll expressway to the airport

that night also happend to have a full lunar eclipse

We spent a free night at a nice Hyatt thanks to my credit card, and while we were short on time due to our flight, we did a quick tour of the grounds with Arturo .

After a flight from Bali, we arrived in Maumere, where we got picked up by our guide and driver:

After arriving, we had lunch at a local restaurant, before heading out to the other side of the island:

After getting to a lodge close to Mt Ende, and after a quick nap, we went out for dinner where I got to catch this nice moonrise :

After a long drive across the island (and it was the short way across, but driving in Indonesia is so attrociously slow), and sleeping close to our departure point, we got up bright and early (actually it wasn't bright at all yet) at 03:00 and took our tour car towards Kelimutu National Park. We drove almost all the way to the top and only hiked a mere 20mn at most.

Watching sunrise there was not better than Haelakala in Maui, but it was still very very nice. One interesting thing is that the 3 lakes routinely change color depending on the volcanic activity and what ends up in the water.

After this nice excursion, we got back to our lodge for breakfast, packed and went on the road to visit some villages and markets:

One of the villages:

cool tree

traditional houses

We got a visit in one of the traditional houses in exchange for a tip :)

and I found another little chick that needed to be picked up :)

rich people had different houses

And then more driving to back to Maumere...

busses are full

taking the pig to the market

We got to a restaurant by the beach for lunch:

somehow another little chick ran into my hand :)

And we finally arrived to our lodge by the beach to rest and go to bed very early for a 02:00 waking up the next morning:

As part of our quick Tour of Flores Island, Indonesia, we got up at 02:00 (argh!) for a scheduled departure of 02:30, but it ended up being 03:10 due to our driver being late. He drove us to the trailhead which we barely reached with our 2WD car on the pretty bad road inside the park (we had to back up and run through holes and rocks a few times until we made it through without being stuck in the sand, or stalled).
The drive there was supposed to be 30-45mn, but it actually took 1h10, so by the time we started at the trailhead, it was already 04:15.

We booked a local guide who was a gazelle in flip flops :) (i.e. he was super fast on rough slippery terrain with crappy flip flops which don't offer much traction). We started at night with flashlights and got to the top 20mn after sunrise (sucked that we missed that, but the view from the top didn't allow for seeing the sun rise anyway).

After a mere 1h35, we made it to the top (normally they budget for for 2h30. It was only 3.5km (1.9 miles), but very steep climb (800m/2700ft):

we finally got to the top

To be honest, the view was only so-so, but eh, it was still a good climb.
Going down took longer (1h40 after subtracting out the picture breaks I took) because the terrain was treacherous and more dangerous when you're going downhill:

After the climb up Egon, we got down by 08:00, so we had plenty of time to go back to the museum we had tried twice and was closed twice. They had a fair amount of prehistoric artifacts, and as I write this, archaeologists just found cave paintings in Indonesia that are allegedly 40,000 years old.

Japanese-Dutch money from the Japanese occupation

After all this, we were still back to the hotel by 11:00, way in time for lunch. I let our guide see the photosphere pictures I took with google cardboard for an immersive experience:

I had a hard time picking Indonesian food I was ok with during each meal, so for this one I thought I would live dangerously and got a cheeseburger just to see what it would be like. Arturo and Jennifer spent a good time laughing at me when I got spam and a very thin slide of unmelted cheese :)

We mostly spent the afternoon resting, and looking outside a bit:

After breakfast, we went to the beach during low tide, we saw people fishing and we looked at the low tide sea life:

Next, we drove up to a Maria statue with view of the area:

water village we saw next

We then went down to the water village:

low tide

kids wanted us to take their picture :)

Last, was the market:

And then lunch before boarding the Waow for our diving trip.