2/14/10-2/15/10 - Moni Moni. I said yeah. YEAH! yeah. YEAH!

After a serious dark corner mafia style haggling meeting with a van driver, and saying goodbye to Canada (Wes, Ashley, and the two French Canadian girls whose names I never learned) and Scotland (Mike) we were off! Some notes about out van ride across Flores:

1. Our "ten hour" ride was fifteen hours... fifteen... NOT ten..

2. The random Indonesian men (whom we assumed were friends of the driver) that we kept picking up on the side of the road seemed to think it was supper fun to climb up and sit on the van roof. while the van was moving. fast. up a mountain. on tiny roads. We are all shocked they're not dead. Amazing.

3.Our driver had a very broad taste in really, truly, horrible music - played at top volume...for fifteen hours.

4. Forward: goats and street dogs darting across the road. To our right: vans and motor bikes FLYING past us up the mountains on itty bitty roads. To our left: a cliff... Steff and I tried to close our eyes and nap as much as possible.

5. It was so interesting driving across this part of Indonesia. You can really see how poor the country is the further you get away from Bali. The villages had tiny 1-2 room houses. These little homes were made of simple wood or bamboo, with either a rusted metal roof or palm tree thatching. Everyone bathed in the rivers. Most people seemed a little surprised to see us driving by. We became instant attractions where ever we went. Lots of stares and giggles. A few people tried out their English, asking us where we were from. Stephan pulled out the Lonely Planet phrase book and we tried out hand at Indonesian with some children who gathered around us. I think we need more practice.
FINALLY arrived in Moni! No ATMs. No Internet. We introduced ourselves to the 300 bugs we would be sharing a room with and went to sleep.

The next day, Michael, Stephan, Rich, Steff and I walked into town to get a ride to the Crater Lakes. We stumbled upon the "Monday Market" that sells all the local goods of the towns. With in 2 minutes of walking around we were approached by a man named Johnny (I have no idea what his name was, I just made that up) who said he runs a restaurant in town called "Bamboo." He went on a very long enthusiastic presentation about preparing us a wonderful authentic meal that night. We agreed, and signed the rest of the League of Nations up for the meal too.

We then found a half toothless, man named Jeff, to take us up to the Lakes. We decided that Jeff was awesome and became a hero in our head for the rest of the trip. "If only Jeff were here..."

First thing we see when starting our hike to the top: a large red caution sign telling us not to climb up the side of the hill. We then climbed up the side of the hill. This started a trend for the day of us thinking "This is a bad idea" and then doing it anyway. The reason the sign said not to climb up the little hill was that it lead to the edge of one of the HUGE craters. We verrrrrry carefully climbed back down to the path.

Steps.. steps... steps.. Top of the view point! The Crater Lakes are three lakes neseled in giant craters that formed after a volcanic eruption. The draw to this is place is that the minerals from the volcano turned each of the lakes a different color: Bright blue, a greenish blue, and black. They looked like little pools of paint. We relaxed, enjoyed our potato chip sandwich, and enjoyed watching the mysterious clouds roll in over the lakes.

On our way back down to the hot springs and waterfall (editors note: we never found the hot springs), a "guide" (random man selling things) took us on the "shortcut" down the mountain. The "shortcut" was a teensy path through the hillside farms and trees. This turned out to be: amazing, beautiful, fantastic, ect... and... really hard. You would think that going downhill is the easy part..but no. Walking straight down hill at a 90 degree angle for 40 minutes through farm land, bushes, and mud while everything was EXTREAMLY slippery = challenging. Knees shaking and 200 curse words later, we made it to the bottom in this guys tiny village. We sat down.

After a rest, coffee, and purchasing ikats (hand-woven scarves) we, again, set off for the waterfall. The rest of the afternoon:

Lovely chatting, walk, walk, walk, walk, walk, walk, walk, walk, ask for directions, walk, walk, walk, walk, a cow, walk, walk, walk, walk, a goat, walk, walk, walk, walk, a bug, walk, walk, walk, walk, village. ask for directions again. saw part of a wedding. gave village children crackers and pens. We have a guide! walk, walk, walk, walk, walk, walk.

We took our shoes off to cross a river (we still got our shoes wet), crossed over a bamboo plank bridge that reeeeally didn't look like would support us across, changed into bathing suits, climbed down rocks, and jumped into the water below the waterfall! We could anchor our feet on rocks and push our backs against the water fall current to make our own jacuzzi. Joy!

We got back to our home-stay, met up with the rest of the League of Nations, and informed them that they had dinner plans. Apparently they already knew! Johnny saw them in town and assumed that group of out of place white people were the other friends of the first group of out of place white people he had spoke to earlier and told them of the plans!

The sign for Bamboo was on the main road, however, we had to have Johnny lead us from there. You see, Bamboo was a bamboo shelter built by Johnny in (what I assume was) his back yard waaay off the main road. Pigs, cats, and dogs ran around the yard around us, it was fantastic. The food was actually excellent and there was even the promised vegetarian food! Good times.

As were getting ready to leave, another couple came down the dark path, cell phone as flashlight in hand (as we had done), saying: "What IS this?!" We were highly amused.