ESCAPE TO INDONESIA
There is quite possibly only one thing you need to be concerned about prior to embarking on the Seatrek Sailing Adventures eight-day Indonesian cruise – strangers
Holidays are usually the perfect opportunity to escape from the rest of our mostly alien society, not be unceremoniously flung together with possible odd-bods that you’ve had absolutely no part in cherry-picking yourself. Luckily, we get the bonding session out of the way fairly painlessly from day one, as the trip begins with a pick up from a café in central Bali. Once introduced to guides and our fellow sailing compadres, we pile into mini-vans before heading north east to the regency of Karangasem, where the sand gets blacker with every kilometre we get closer to the shadows of the vertginous Gunung Agung.
It’s a fairly arduous yet unexpectedly enjoyable drive north, broken up by much-needed rest stops at some of Bali’s more commercial, yet no less breathtaking, destinations. There’s a bit of a ‘first day at school’ vibe about the whole day, with everyone checking each other out slyly over the nasi goreng. Dating back several centuries, the village of Tenganan Pegringsingan – home to the Bali Aga people (said to be the original inhabitants of Bali) – is the first stop east in our snaking convoy of cars. There, one of the elders, a charming pony-tailed Aga descendent, walks us around the compound, cleverly circumventing feisty turkeys and geese as we learn about the historical legends of the village. Rainbow-dyed cockerels – so dyed by the villagers to attract more custom to their market stalls – vie for our attention.
The Tirta Gangga, a beautiful botanical garden and former private swimming pools of the royal family, is the last stop on what is essentially our transfer to the already bobbing pinisi moored just off the coast in the bay of Amed, a sleepy little seaside strip of traditional fishing villages, famed for freediving and scuba. Colossal carp choking and spluttering on the surface of the ponds, their ‘me me me’ mouths desperate for fistfuls of paper bags of fish pellets, make for a fun and Boomerang-friendly respite from the incessant whirring of the mini-van AC units. It may be delaying the inevitability of being on our magnificent vessel heading towards the horizon, but as far as ‘transfers’ go, this is without a doubt the crème de la crème, and we reach Amed tired but happy.
There isn’t a lot that can prepare you for the first time you see the beautiful pinisi set against the sunrise offshore. As we sipped our Bali coffee with feet buried in the black volcanic sand the following morning – a bunch of complete strangers bound by nothing other than circumstance – the boat came to life like a gigantic wooden animation under a spectacular sunrise spotlight, as if puppeteered by Helios himself.
Settling into the cabins is a seamless affair. Crew are on-hand to store away all the luggage once you’ve unpacked and, before we know it, we’re off, sailing away from Bali on the first leg of our journey east to Komodo National Park, fresh juice firmly in hand and feeling rather like the Grace Kelly of the Lombok Strait.
Our first stop is the Gili Islands, where we drop anchor just off Gili Meno and almost the entire boat wastes no time launching themselves head first into the crystal waters below. If the first day on dry land broke the ice, then our first sunset aboard The Ombak Putih most definitely set the precedent for what was to become our daily ritual as a gang: to see a green flash (so called because as the sun hits the horizon a phenomenon occurs in which part of the sun can be observed suddenly and briefly changing colour), complete with freshly-shaken salt-rimmed margaritas in hand. The
beauty of this cruise is that although most of it is spent at sea, you do get the best of both worlds with increasingly Indiana Jones-esque adventures added into the itinerary every day on dry land. We soon learn that this isn’t your average tour, on your average boat, and most definitely not with your average crew. Each night the crew and tour guides settle down in the large open salon to give a briefing, explaining where we will be sailing overnight, as well as where we will be moored the next day by the time our eyes glimpse the first rays of sun peeking through our portholes.
Seatrek operates two traditional two-mast wooden vessels: The Ombak Putih, our boat and the larger of the two, and a smaller pinisi called the Katerina, perfect for private charters. Built by the highly-skilled seafaring peoples of Borneo and Sulawesi, using hand tools and traditional methods of construction, the design has been adapted and passed down from generation to generation for centuries.
The Ombak Putih’s keel was first laid down in Kalimantan in 1995, before becoming fully operational in 1997, with both boats undergoing major refits in 2014 and 2015. The hull looks similar to that of a dhow and interestingly the pinisi fleet still forms the massive bulk of Indonesia’s cargo network today. At 42 metres long, with around 400 square metres of public space divided over two main decks, there’s plenty of room on The Ombak Putih for everyone to spread out and relax, and the feeling of both space and tranquility is surprising. If we did want to get off, there were two ribs constantly on hand with a crew, to whizz us off across the ocean, whether it was to snorkel with giant oceanic mantas or pop ashore one of the 18,000 islands in the largest archipelago on earth (during this trip we would be visiting a mere 17 of them).
Seatrek Sailing Adventure cruises are as far removed from large capacity cruise ship tours as you could possibly get. Forget about 1,000 or more perma-tanned geriatrics vying for the daily themed buffet and happy hour pina coladas. The Ombak Putih sleeps only 24 people with a crew of 14 under the steady control of Captain Agung and every single element of the itinerary is designed meticulously by the two tour guides onboard, Nita and Anas. It is almost completely off the beaten track, fully and completely culturally immersive, and with a sustainability drive that shows these are people who really care about their country. But also it’s about educating everyone who sets foot on their boats how truly exceptional this part of remote Indonesia really is.
Climbing north to the far reaches of Lombok and Mount Rinjani on day three, we were able to see this sustainability commitment in full swing. Led by Carni, a delightfully funny young woman from The Women’s Guide Association of Senaru (meaning light, because of how close to the clouds they are), we visited one of only two traditional Sasak villages left on the island, learned all about the ‘run marriage’, where girls in the village literally run away to their sweethearts’ homes and hide or get married with the quiet acceptance of their parents in order to avoid paying the dowry, and chewed betel nut, which practically every man, woman and child in Senaru seemed to be an expert at, before winding our way down hundreds of ancient steps to Sindang Gila, a roaring 40-metre tiered waterfall. The waterfall is a meeting place for the local people and we were lucky enough to spot the Javan Lutung, or Ebony Leaf Monkey, a very rare and endangered breed of langur surveying us from above as they flung themselves from branch to branch.
The Women’s Guide Association was set up to give the women a way to financially contribute to society and you can see how proud these young girls are to have worked hard to not only empower all of the women in their village, but to support their families financially as a direct result.
If the first few days of the itinerary had been about embracing education and environmentalism, day four was firmly designed to step up the adrenalin a notch or two with visits to Moyo and Satonda islands, where on the former we walked four kilometres through the traditional stilt-housed village to a waterfall and swim hole, where we took it in turns to throw ourselves, literally, from a slippery rock face hanging only blithely to a makeshift rope into the ice-cold jet black water below. This was followed by kayaking and paddleboarding across the 900-metre wide crater lake of the latter as the sun started to drop from the sky on Satonda Island. The sunken crater
of Satonda was filled with saltwater when nearby Mount Tambora erupted in 1815, causing a tsunami of seawater that flowed into the crater leaving the mystical eerie lake, although the volcano that contains the Satonda crater lake itself is said to have last erupted more than 10,000 years ago. What was overwhelmingly apparent was that we were experiencing something that, really, so few get to see.
More than half way through the trip, we visited the remote village of Bontoh on Sangeang Island to witness the traditional pinisi being built by carpenters and boatmen – mainly from Sumbawa island close by – entirely by hand. Even while incomplete and raised on giant stilts midway through her construction, like an actress without her final stage make-up, there is something so utterly beguiling and grandiose about the pinisi, with all of her bold curves and naked polished beams and even the giant nails that hold her together like a jigsaw are hand carved meticulously from wood. There is a strong sense of community in this village devoid of running water or electricity, with grubby giggling naked toddlers playing at her bow and women weaving traditional fabric on giant looms nearby to hustle the occasional passing dive boat, while shooing away the occasional wandering cow. Life onboard the Ombak Putih is as simple as it gets. You get up, you watch the sunrise with a Bali coffee firmly in hand, you eat, you adventure, you watch the sunset, you sleep. And each day you get to do it all again. And perhaps this is its appeal, the simplicity and routine of boat life that we found ourselves slipping easily into. There is no pressure to join any of the daily adventures trekking up volcanos, through waterfalls or across the jungle terrain. Although of course we all did. But you can be as active or as relaxed as your heart desires with your every whim catered to.
Of course the main draw of the trip is undoubtedly it’s title star: the dragon. And Seatrek saves the best for last with the last couple of days almost entirely dedicated to the Komodo Dragon and visits to both Komodo and Rinca to trek and see them in the wild. There’s nothing that can really quite prepare you for your first Komodo. That we’ve sailed hundreds of miles to see them makes this epic enough, but the briefing by the rangers on Loh Liang (the islanders’ name for Komodo) puts their foreboding reputation as one of the world’s deadliest animals very much into perspective. One bite from a Komodo can render the victim, well, very much dead, so we stay close to the rangers at all times on both island hikes. There is a total Jurassic World vibe about the whole trip, especially when entering the Rinca park under a giant arched sign on foot, being told to keep our eyes peeled at all times and not wander away from the group. We of course comply.
The Komodos grow up to three metres long and weigh in excess of 100kg, their thick tails designed to knock down their prey, which incidentally as omnivores includes their own children, who cleverly leave home at just a few days old to avoid being mama’s next appetiser. It’s a sobering experience to see this many up close and the perfect wow moment to end the trip.
Hundreds of flying foxes, giant oceanic manta rays, traditional Caci dancers, wake-boarding on a paddleboards, snorkelling in secluded bays, beach-side barbecues, killing-machine Komodos, and endless upon endless games of Uno later, our new little boat family sailed sadly into Labuan Bajo, the capital of Flores, bringing us to a very emotional end to a holiday of a lifetime. With it dissapeared any misgivings about being on a cruise with the aforementioned dreaded ‘strangers’, many of whom would now be friends for life, including the guides and crew. It must be hard to please everyone on a mixed cruise, but Seatrek managed to do just that. From the sustainable outreach programme they have in place with local fishing communities, to the ridiculously knowledgeable guides, not to mention that we were in some of Indonesia’s most remote island enclaves and stepping where so few have the opportunity, this would now be a holiday almost impossible to beat.