A good place for a village

After what will forever be known as “Maumere-gate” or “Seamus being incredibly thick”, we finally met up with Neil and the crew of the Electric Guitar Fish, a 38ft Wharram Tiki catamaran built in 2000 by some daft brothers and now owned by a Byron Bay based Plymouthian who sells icecream.

Electric Guitar Fish
Larantuka Harbour at Dawn

Ben and Wolf had been on the boat since Bali a month before, a Californian Lawyer and a German working as a Royal Flying Doctor out of Perth respectively. Paul and Haley, Canadian couple on the way to work in Oz, had gotten on in Labuan Bajo, Western Flores, 4 days previously. A quick Bintang and off we headed to our tiny berth to settle in for our first night on the water.

We left Larantuka at dawn, planning to clear Flores that afternoon and head overnight for Atapupu in the Indonesian side of Timor. Crystal clear water, dolphins, flying fish, fresh air and good food. Perfect. To expedite the sorting out of crew permits and passports we hopped off at Atapupu and made our way by moto and ancient taxi to Dili, where we spent a few quality days soaking up the tense but fascinating vibes that permeate the place. The locals get fairly rowdy on a Friday night in town, what used to culminate in pickup parades through town with AK-47s now manifests itself as a crazed frenzy when the DJ fires on “La Bamba”.

After fueling, watering, and flooding up the boat we set off again for the Eastern tip of Timor. We set a few lines off the back and after the first day we're setting up camp on a remote beach cooking up fresh Spanish Mackerel, a 4 ft specimen hauled in and chopped up by Ben. Before the fire is even lit we're engulfed by police and army pickups with forces from Sri Lanka, East Timor and African Nations. What are you doing out here? Fair question. After contacting HQ and the area commander we were promised that we'd be looked after for our stay with rotating shifts of soldiers close by and a contact number for the commander if we needed anything. Fantastic bunch, can't wait to get the photos from Haley.

Our second night on the move we pull in to Lautem farther east from Dili on the northern coast. Poverty and decimation from the Indonesian withdrawal in 1999 are very evident. No power, no infrastructure, nothing to do for some people except break up small rocks into smaller gravel by hand and wait for somebody to drive up and buy your pile of pebbles. Our industrious assistant Dino tracked down Benzine and Bintang for us for a small commission, fair play to him. We spent the night anchored off the beach and set off again at dawn, waved off by even more police on the beach.

Piglet and Puppy

We sailed across the Timor sea for 4 days and 3 nights, taking 3 hour shifts with 3 rotating teams. Not good for sleeping patterns. Waking at dawn to see 20 dolphins playing in our bow wave makes it all worthwhile. At some points we were seeing up to 50 dolphins in one area, with up to 20 of them jumping at the same time. Breathtakingly beautiful. Sea snakes, giant bats and even a whale were all sighted at some point. Our lines bagged us a few tuna at dawn which made for some sashimi and a serious steak dinner. Doesn't get much fresher than that.

Seamus and Neil keeping watchBen, Wolf, Tuna

Dolphins, Timor Leste

As the sun rose on the 4th day we spotted some land in the distance, Bathurst Island at the northern tip of the Northern Territories. By nightfall we were approaching the lights of Darwin and settling in for one more night on the boat before we could clear quarantine and customs in the morning. Fingers crossed that they would let us in.

By midday we've been given the immigration thumbs up and off we go to track down a kangaroo burger and some croc-on-a-stick. Darwin is a funky little town, aimed mainly at tourists with everything concentrated in the middle of town, a short hop to the beach. A room at the cheesy Travelodge will provide air con, a shower and a proper bed for a couple of days. Bliss.

The obligatory night out in the local Oirish Bar does not disappoint, with pints and grub in Shennanigans the onwards to every club we could find until the posse ended up at Throb, home of some very interesting dancing she-males. Seamus is glad he wussed out early and headed to bed.

Now that we're sort of Australian, for 12 months at least, we set about the boring tasks of opening accounts, getting tax numbers, Ozzie mobile phones and all that stuff. Mostly we're enjoying the sunshine and sat around soaking up the ambiance and whatever else was going. Our shipmates, except for skipper Neil, are all heading their separate ways, back to the US, Perth or onwards to Melbourne. New crew are required, the boat needs a hose down and the galley needs some serious stocking for the next few weeks. The plan is to head east across the Gulf of Carpenteria then south along the East Coast through the Whitsundays and Barrier Reef as far as Byron Bay. Onwards from there in new car hopefully, to Sydney, Tasmania and Melbourne as our final destination.

www.flickr.com/photos/seamuswalsh

Shipshape

A furious hotel spree in Singapore and we're off. Batam, one of the Indonesian Riau Islands south of Singapore, beckons with its promise of further luxuries and a boat onwards to Java. Our ride to Australia has made it as far as Flores with the next stop being East Timor. Time to get a move on and overtake them.

Our hotel in Batam wins the inauspicious award of being the most hideous, tacky thing on the planet. A full scale concrete model of a ship with a small gunboat beside it. The "Greek Mythological Inspired" decor, porthole windows and gilded Titanicesque windows contributed to a bemused thumbs down. Thankfully the staff were able to help us arrange tickets on a Pelni ship heading to Jakarta, even if they couldn't help us get decent food or a nice Margarita.

Thirty miles of bumpy road later and we're piling into what can only be described as a giant cattle shed with 400 other souls, all waiting for a ship that may or may not be arriving today. Oh dear.

Just as the rain is beginning to pick up, the ship arrives and we all pile on, elbows and shouting being the preferred means of heading up the rickety gangway. Bye bye Batam.

We settle into our little cabin and prepare for 30 hours of waiting to get off the boat. And waiting... And waiting... A mere 5 hours laters that schedule the ship heads off into the night, just as we're tucking in to a dinner of dry rice and cold tofu with fish heads with our new friends, the only other westerners on the ship who have been forced to make our acquaintance as the crew shepard us all towards a table laden with cloudy water and something approximating chicken bones.

Naturally, the Australia couple are doing almost exactly our trip, London to Brisbane (instead of Cork/Dublin to Melbourne) and after 5 months of Trans Siberian, Chinese and Southeast Asian delights are on the home stretch. They have similar notions of ships around Indonesia, perhaps a brief jaunt to East Timor then onwards, somehow and on something that floats, to mainland Australia. We wished them luck, but we'll try to keep a bit of that luck for ourselves.

On reflection we're had to trim and chop our itinerary for a number of reasons. We traded 4 fantastic months in Vietnam for the honour of spending less than quality time in Northern Thailand, Laos and the Thai and Malaysian Islands. We were disappointed not to have had a chance to see Fiona's uncle and his growing family in Pattaya and missed meeting a contact in Singapore by a day because we were rushing to get these boats to Indonesia. We also didn't have a chance to get to Bali, Lombok and Komodo on this trip or to catch up with Eoin and Caoimhe in Bali due to shipping schedules, and we might not have a chance to experience a full month of Ramadan in Indonesia, all that fasting and prohibition we were so looking forward to. All of this and more has gone out the window for the sake of the over-riding mission, to blaze a trail to Flores and board a catamaran that promises to take us around Flores, onwards to Timor and across the Timor sea to Darwin, maybe even around the coast as far as Byron Bay. Not the most harrowing trade-off we've ever been forced into. And anyway, we'll be back.

Still on the ship to Jakarta we've just been treated to another wholesome meal of cold rice, tofu, burnt fish and some sort of green past. Dessert was a view of the sun setting over the equator off the starboard bow. Picking our way back to the cabin over the hundreds of bodies littering the deck, we wait patiently for the evening call to prayers to boom over the intercom. Our fellow intrepid travellers had tried to avoid the 1st class option and opted for 2nd class closed cabins with 6 berths. "No" said the Pelni ticket office. Apparently women are not permitted in these cabins. Best not to ask any more.

A couple of thrilling taxi rides later and a decadent club sandwich in our Jakarta hotel, we were ready to head off again into the big blue, but the boat was leaving in an hour and we weren't sure we could survive 5 days on pot noodle alone. 20 minutes of supermarket sweeping later and the pantry looked thusly...

Off we go.

The 5 days on the Kelimud from Jakarta to Surabaya to Sulawesi to Flores isn't hard to sum up.

Day 1
Fish and Rice. Hollow man on HBO.

Day 2
Fish and Rice. Perfect Stranger on HBO. Our walk on deck was only mildly interrupted by a thump from a salivating girl chained to the deck railing. Pelni, moving people around Indonesia around Indonesia like cattle for donkey's years.

Day 3
No fish. No rice. I think we've been forgotten about. Hollow man on HBO. We made our own Sudoku puzzles from scratch to pass some time.

Day 4
Fish and Rice. Perfect Stranger on HBO. Getting sick of "Heh, mister", "Hello, mister", "Marijoowana, mister?". Where you work, where you from, where you wife, give me cigarette, no cigarettes sorry, oh no no give me cigarette, where irlandia? The ship pulled into the port of Makassar on Sulawesi and we once more stood witness to the chaos and mayhem of unloading and reloading with everything from onions to people, vases to coffins. We leave Makassar severely overloaded. No longer possible to leave the room with the amount of people on the floors.

Day 5
No fish. No rice. Hollow man on HBO. The cockroaches and screaming babies are getting to be a bit much. We met a Catholic nun at dinner, we think there might have been a call to prayers for the Jesus-folk. A screaming erupted on the deck outside our window, lots of screeching and hair pulling, lots of laughing men enjoying the show.

Midnight of day 5 we finally arrive into Larantuka and search for an open hotel with something soft to rest our weary heads. Hair-raising moto ride later and we've checking into a "VIP" aircon room at Hotel Fortuna I, feels like a small slice of heaven after the confines of the boat. Here's hoping that catamaran shows up.