Indonesia has been an adventure. After two years in New Zealand and Australia, it’s been a fun change visiting a new country where we don’t speak the language. And sprawling Indonesia offers new cultures and languages, or at least dialects, on almost every island. From Darwin, Australia we travelled to Kupang, on the island of Timor. Indonesia is a very big country, and we’ve only visited a small section. While traveling from Timor to Lombok, we encountered amazing animals, met friendly people, and ate delicious food, all part of our Eastern Indonesia highlights.
Our Route in Eastern Indonesia
Unlike our excellent sailing conditions in North and Far North Queensland, we had no wind after Darwin. We motored for the 4 days to Kupang and then for the almost 700 miles from Kupang to Lombok. When the wind wasn’t on our nose, it didn’t last, so we motored the whole way. All of our trips, aside from the first jump upon leaving Kupang, were day trips. We only sailed overnight from Kupang to Sagu Bay because we had no choice, as it was too far to do in daylight.
Boating at night is dangerous in Eastern Indonesia because of the many unlit and unmarked boats, fishing moorings, and other obstacles. Even sailing during the day is an adventure! We have to always be alert and on the lookout for the profusion of nets and other unmarked fishing paraphernalia in the water, but at least we can see.
Our route in Eastern Indonesia from Kupang went north to Sagu Bay on Palau Adonaro, then west with several stops along Flores Island to Labuan Bajo. We continued into the Komodos, on to Sumbawa and finally, Lombok, which gets its own post. It’s been a fun time finding our Eastern Indonesia highlights.
Introduction to Indonesia
Indonesia is a huge country, composed of over 17,000 islands. In three weeks travelling from Kupang to Lombok, we only saw a few. These islands are lush and green, many with hills and even high volcanic peaks bursting out of the sea.
Some islands are uninhabited, but many are bustling, with people. Indonesia is the fourth most populated country in the world. Wait until we get to Jakarta, the world’s largest city, with almost 42 million as of November. Indonesia is not just full of people. We’ve also seen cows, horses, dogs, cats and more animals just on the beaches.
Meeting the Locals
From our official check-in to the country in Kupang, to our stops the whole way to Lombok, meeting the locals is one of our Eastern Indonesia highlights. The customs and biosecurity people who boarded our boat were so friendly and took so many happy photos with us.
And that was just the beginning! Ever since we landed, we were greeted by smiling Indonesians, welcoming us to their waters, villages, shops, and cafes. We met children who swam and paddled to our boats looking for snacks, and lots of adults willing to get us groceries, fuel, and laundry. To one and all, we say Terima Kasih, thank you.
Anchorages
One of the best things about living on a boat is if you don’t like a place, you can move (as long as the wind and weather are on your side). We found a few really nice anchorages where we spent a few days. For most of our time cruising to Lombok, we had our buddy boats from Lizard Island, and it’s more fun with buddies. And, we started to meet new boat buddies, world cruisers like us. It’s been a while!
Palau Tangil
One of our favorite early stops in Eastern Indonesia was on the north coast of Flores, we called the anchorage Palau Tangil. Our highlights from the visit were the super friendly children who “helped” us beach our dinghies ashore, and the excellent restaurant, Menu Fitri.
We visited Menu Fitri in the early afternoon, where we placed our orders in advance. Since much of Indonesia is Muslim, they don’t always have beer or alcohol on the menu. Still, we asked and one of their staff drove somewhere else to buy us some big Bintangs to accompany our meal. That’s service!
BULE beach/gili bodo cruisers hangout
Bule Beach was an uninhabited area on Gili Bodo. Previous visitors made this beach the perfect cruiser destination. Using whatever they found on the beach, they crafted sitting areas and added decorations to create the coolest beach hangout we’ve seen in a long time. We were so impressed by the furniture, the excellent crafting, and how much work they put into creating such a nice space for following sailors.
It was a good spot to put your feet in the water, have a few adult beverages, or just relax. We enjoyed watching the sunset with our buddies from this slice of heaven, one of our Eastern Indonesia highlights.
Sylvia Bay
Sylvia Bay is located north of Labuan Bajo, a major tourist centre of the Komodo district. While Labuan Bajo harbor is big and busy, we opted to anchor in Sylvia Bay, more protected and with a cruiser friendly resort.
This was a great location to enjoy some resort life, like the pool and restaurant, with easy access to the city and all that has to offer. From Sylvia Bay, we took taxis to great provisioning shops and to arrange a dive trip.
Diving with Giant Mantas
Our first scuba experience in Indonesia was epic! We booked through one of the many dive shops in Labuan Bajo, all advertising “Komodo diving.” You won’t see any komodo dragons while diving here, but there’s a chance of seeing giant mantas. We were very late in the season, just before rainy season, and we got to see loads of these magnificent marine animals, many times bigger than we saw in French Polynesia. I will always remember these dives, one of our Eastern Indonesia highlights.
Coming upon the mantas, who were at a cleaning station, reminded us of arriving late to a concert. We could have jostled our way through the crowd watching these mantas swoop and swim through the water. Instead, we swam around the outside and individual manta rays came to us. It was a wonderful experience.
Komodo National Park
Komodo National Park is among many visitors’ Eastern Indonesia highlights. The chance to see the world’s largest and deadliest lizard is a key reason, and this UNESCO World Heritage site has more animals on land and in the sea.
The park itself covers a large area of three big islands and over 20 smaller ones. Rather than visit Komodo Island itself to see the dragons, we anchored where we had the highest likelihood of spotting them: Rinca island. We stopped there one afternoon and booked ahead for the first tour the next morning. It was amazing! Our guide led us and our friends from Roam1 on a 2 hour tour, spotting the dragons, water buffalo, and monkeys.
Swimming with Whale Sharks
I have seen whale sharks a couple of times, both very briefly: once on a dive in Fakarava’s North Pass, and once while scuba training in Utila. There is an area of Eastern Indonesia, Saleh Bay in Sambawa, where whale sharks visit so regularly you can swim alongside them. When we realized we were anchored a day sail away from Saleh Bay, we acted.
choosing our tour
Our options were to sail down to the anchorage where the whale shark boats pick us up, anchor there, and hop on a tour the next morning. Otherwise, the hotel where we were anchored would take us at the early hour of 3am for a faster trip on their powerboat. It cost more to go from the resort, and we had to wake up early, but it saved us from moving our boats there and back. It turned out to be a great decision.
eastern indonesia highlight: whale shark
Since we started out so early, we arrived before sunrise. We tied up to a fishing boat platform, where they fish for anchovies and squid. The whale sharks come to the platform to feed. They eat plankton, tiny fish like squid and anchovies , and fish eggs. The nighttime lights on these fishing platforms attract the anchovies, which attract the whale sharks, which attract the tour boats like ours.
The benefit of being the early bird is we got to spend about 45 minutes alone with the whale shark.
While sometimes multiple whale sharks swim to these platforms, we only got one. One was enough! We and three from our buddy boat were the only ones in the water with this massive creature. The whale shark swam up to and past us several scarily exciting times – it was so big. In fact, the whale shark is the largest living fish. Mostly, the creature was feeding and not interested in the five of us. Still, sometimes it did swim quite close. A couple of times I could have reached out and touched it, but I make it a practice to not touch wild animals and watched in awe and admiration.
After almost an hour of having the gentle giant to ourselves, the tour boats started arriving. One after another, full of people ready to swim. By the time we left, there were about 15 boats and maybe 60 people in the water. We had our private time with the whale shark and we were very happy with ourselves for getting up so early in the morning. It was worth it!
Cute Cats
One of my favorite things about Indonesia so far is how much the Indonesians love animals. Every village has dogs and cats, who are well fed and loved. Many restaurants, and even some shops, have resident cats or even kittens. For the restaurants it makes sense to keep out the mice. We’ve seen some cute cats in Eastern Indonesia.
The cats here are friendly and clearly loved. They have cute stubby little tails, which appear to be an inherited characteristic. We look forward to seeing more of them.
I know we will only get to see a tiny fraction of this scattered island country, but we enjoyed our Eastern Indonesia highlights. Have you been to Indonesia? Share your top spots in the comments.
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Unbelievable! What a magnificent trip to Indonesia! Your pictures and commentary made me feel like I was there! Thanks for sharing the experience! From cute kitties to whale sharks!
Thank you, Pat! It’s been better than we imagined!