Bali to Singapore Day 1-2

Our visa expired on Tuesday, so we absolutely had to leave. Monday was one of our typical get ready to go days. Eric changed the transmission oil and oil filter, which he describes as a “messy job”. Lots of oil spills, but easy to contain with oil aborbant pads. We went to the nicest grocery store in town, The Carrefour, to stock up on food. The Carrefour in Tahiti was one of the nicest grocery stores we have ever been to nicer even than Gelson’s. Like the Carrefour in Tahiti, it is inside a new, modern mall. The mall here is much bigger and nicer than the Tahiti one, which set up high expectations for the grocery store. We are disappointed to report this one wasn’t nearly as good. This one has a nice bakery, like the one in Tahiti. But there was no beautiful selection of cheeses and dairy products. The selection of western foods is somewhat limited. The eggs are lying on a table, and you take as many as you want and put them in a plastic bag, like produce, and they ring you up per egg. And, believe it or not, there was even less selection of frozen heat and serve foods here than in Tahiti. Good thing we had stocked up in Australia. It was raining really hard, causing traffic to virtually stop going both directions, so the trip to the grocery store took much longer than planned due to long transit times.

Tuesday morning we were planning to leave at 1100, trying to time it so we were on an outgoing current. Everyone had warned us it would be a very rough ride all the way to Singapore since Continue reading

Goodbye Ende – Off to Rinca

Last night we found four little black flying bugs in our room. They looked like they were small enough to get through the screen. Argh. This explains why we have been getting bitten when we have been so careful to use the bug spray when we go out. We have some noseeum netting aboard, which is finer meshed screen, so Eric put that on all the windows we like to leave open.

This morning was an even more upsetting Continue reading

Rock Stars in Ende

This morning we managed to sleep through the 0430 prayers, but we were awakened at 0600 by another loudspeaker. There was an announcer of some sort talking away, with a few songs played in between his monologues. There were also short snippets of music played now and again while he talked. It sounded like there was some sort of contest going on in a carnival type setting. We begrudgingly dragged ourselves out of bed and looked out the windows. There seemed to be something huge happening along the waterfront park area. There were tons of people out and a lot of activity in an area where there was not much happening when we had been there a couple days before.

We merrily went to shore, excited about our luck to have been in Ende for this big special occasion. We were shocked to see the crew was hard at work on repairing the dock. It is Sunday. On shore, the streets had been transformed. Every single shop was open. Yesterday many had been closed. The sidewalks were completely taken over by an endless row of vendors sitting on the ground with their wares spread out around them. They were even lining the alley ways. They were selling all kinds of non-perishable goods. The street was absolutely jam packed with people and scooters.

We made our way down the street to the waterfront park where we had seen all the activity from Kosmos. As we turned the corner, Continue reading

Selemat Jalan (Goodbye) Kupang

Last night when we got back to the boat, it was rocking so much we felt like we were on passage in the South Pacific. This morning when we got up we were still undecided as to whether we should leave Kupang today or tomorrow. On the stay side was: after 8 days at sea, it would have been nice to stay anchored longer. There were more sights we could go see in Kupang to entertain ourselves. Eric’s eye was looking better after using some drops we had on board that soothe irritation, but it wasn’t completely healed and could need a different medicine. On the con side: it was rocky on board, the beach landings were not fun, and we were more interested in seeing sights in other places.

We headed to shore at noon where Continue reading