Flores, Indonesia

After island hopping so many tiny islands we have a big change with Flores Island.  We have been here a week now and still not made it down its length.  That said, we are no longer doing overnight sails as there are just too many unmarked and unlit hazards in the waters around this area...

They call these things FAD’s or “Fish Attracting Devices”.  I’m not sure how many fish they attract, but I am sure if we hit one at 6 or 7 knots, we would sure know it...

As for fish, we have been dragging lines behind us for a week now and haven’t had so much as a bite....  we have colected at least 5 lbs of plastic garbage though.  This part of the world is literally covered in garbage.  And sadly, no one seems to care.

We stopped at Maumere, the largest city on Flores and reprovisioned.

This was the first place here in Indonesia where we found frozen chickens.  We have not seen pork or beef yet.  Good thing we like fish...  we did meet a wonderful man, Mesak, who drove us around for our banking, provisioning and helped us find some boat bits....   After all that work we celebrated with lunch... Much more expensive than we are used to... It was $25 for the three of us...  life in the big city I guess...

The market was very interesting.  Along with the regular fruit and veggies you would expect to find, there were vendors selling local “wine” (I use the term loosely), tobacco, and honey.
The wine tasted strong enough to strip paint.  So we bought some...  We can’t wait to try it out on some unsuspecting cruiser the next time we get together for “Sundowners”.   The tobacco didn’t look like anything I ever picked when I was a teenager, but they seemed to like it... One lady even ate some, to show good it was... We passed... And the honey still had bees in it.  When we got back to the boat we strained it and it tastes great!

Before and after a first taste....

Local Tobacco!

We also bought some local rice.  It was very tasty.

From Maumere we made our way to the 17 Island National Park.  This is an area that is supposedly protected from fishing where marine  species can thrive... I knew it was an overstatement when we were pulling in and a guy was bringing in his fishing nets from one of the “protected” reefs...  That said, we did what might have been our best snorkel ever this morning.
We saw critters that we have never seen before and we saw fish that usually live beyond the reach of most snorkelers.  It was very cool.

A Lionfish in it's "NATURAL" habitat.....  No need to kill them here...

In the next few days we should arrive in the Komodo National Park were we will pay for a guide to take us to see these famous dragons.  Can’t wait.  More soon...