Continued from yesterday”¦ It was time to go. We braved the scary mountain road, bumping and bouncing along. Not too far after the road became relatively nice pavement, we turned off down another road to go to the Niki Niki market. The area we were in is mostly rural villages, and once a week they all came together to trade their goods. It is also a big social outing, where young people look for perspective dating partners. In the village of Boti, they have a day of rest every ninth day. Today happened to be their day of rest, so they had to miss out on the excitement of market day this week.

As we approached, we saw the street was so jam packed with bemos, busses, scooters and people walking around that traffic was not moving. The market itself consisted of long rows of vendors with their products displayed on tarps on the ground. There were also tarps strung overhead as sun protection. The walkways were narrow and there were so many people that you were smooshed by the crowd. The various vendors sold anything and everything. Here is a shot of the mystery vegetable we had at lunch yesterday. We still don’t know what it is called, but we suspect it is a variation of eggplant.

Eric had opted not to go in with his eye not feeling too great. Christi was only inside a few minutes, feeling a bit overwhelmed by the number of vendors, the crowd, and the amount of attention she was getting as the only white person in sight. We hadn’t eaten breakfast yet, so she bought some donuts, deep fried pancake looking things, and deep fried battered banana slices for all four of us. Total cost was less than 50 cents USD. She also bought a big bunch of bananas for less than 50 cents USD.

We headed back the way we came. When we got to SoE, we turned off onto another road going north. After a relatively short ride, it started to look greener, with grass, small bushes and more flowers than ever. We stopped off at another Oehala Waterfall Park. Oehala means “peace water” and got its name because in olden times that is where the warring tribes went to make peace. There is a trail from the parking area that parallels part of the fall. It is a pretty steep descent and a relatively long hike down. The waterfall is beautiful, with many terraces. They are in the process of building a hydroelectric plant and there were a couple of guys there working on the construction. It was one heck of a hike back up to the car!

After the waterfall, we continued north up farther into the mountains until we got to a scenic viewpoint at the top of one of the peaks called Bola Ralelo. This spot is so green compared to a only few miles south, with rolling fields dotted with grazing animals and endless breathtaking vistas. It looks like England.

After a few minutes enjoying the scenery, we made a U turn and headed back to SoE. We stopped at the same restaurant for lunch. Being as we had no adverse side effects from yesterday’s meal, Christi was adventurous and tried a couple more new dishes, barbeque chicken and an egg dish that looked kind of like thin pizza bread.

We took the same road back to Kupang that we came up. For some reason, the drive back seemed to be much, much longer than coming up. Ony lives a few miles out of Kupang right off the main road we were traveling on, so we made a quick stop at his house to meet his family. He and his wife have a four year old and a one month old baby. We didn’t hang around, as we were worried that Eric may have pink eye and we didn’t want to pass it to the kids.

We arrived back at the beach exhausted and ready to relax on board Kosmos. Napa met us at the beach and proudly reported that we were cleared with the military and harbor master and were now 100% checked into Indonesia. Yay!

The wind and current was strong, making getting the dinghy launched a challenge. As you may have noticed from the photo in “Welcome to Kupang”, the fishermen tie their dinghies to trees and poles on the beach and trail long lines from the beach into the water. We had a hard time getting the dinghy launched in the first place, and once freed from the sand, we couldn’t get the motor started. We blew into a nearby dinghy line, and as we tried to free ourselves from one line managed to get ourselves entangled in another line. We didn’t have enough hands to row and untangle both ropes all at once, and we were frantically trying to get ourselves cleared from the obstacles. We must have provided good comedic entertainment to the onlookers on the beach and in the fishing boats moored nearby. Eventually we got ourselves untangled and rowed into Kosmos.