Thursday 13 November – impressive ancient rock art

It was a blue sky start to the day so we got in the kayak and went for an explore around the maze of islands, so often it is white-ish skies. We have a lot of places marked off on the app to go and see, but it is quite an effort to work out where you are amongst all these islands. We also did not want it to be low tide and get stuck in some of the areas, which are really shallow. We finally found the first cave, it was really tucked away and not obvious at all. We had to get out to enter it, thankfully it was very shallow at the entrance, as getting in and out the kayak without tipping is quite an artl in deep water. Luckily I had brought a torch, it was quite a big cave, with impressive stalactites and stalagmites. We saw some small bats and were just looking around when I realised there was an enormous hornets nest. We have just read about a father and son killed by hornet stings, so we rushed out, it certainly was not worth risking. A lot of these caves you can walk through to the water on the other side. Not really my idea of fun! We kayaked further and found the site with rock paintings. Quite a few hand images like at Pef but also lots of art work, with dolphins and fish easily visible. We read up they are about 4 thousand years old. The hand prints are higher up and may be a lot older. They claim the art work is high because the rock has risen up higher out the water over thousands of years. So sad we have no photos, we are being so careful with our phones. We plan to go back in the dingy and then we will be able to get onto the pontoon, which stops people getting too close. At least they are being well protected.

Suddenly the sky turned dark and rain started, so we paddled like fury back to Polepole, at least we had some good exercise. I spent the afternoon baking as we are out of bread and cookies. Rowan had managed to book us into the only homestay around that offers good food to outsiders. We left during day light to see where we were going. Amazingly the Homestay was full of people mainly young backpackers. We sat on the jetty and watched the most spectacular sunset with all the youngsters, making us feel very old! It was a very fast dinner with the usual fish dishes, coconut veg, delicious aubergine and beef rendang. We loaded our plates, as we are very low on fresh provisions. We believe there is a little village not too far away with a market that we will try and get to next week. It was quite something finding our way back to PolePole with just the torch, the islands all looked the same in the dark. It is pitch dark where we are anchored there are no Homestays or homes anywhere near us. The nights are wonderfully noisy with bugs, frogs and a few bird noises. Later while we were watching James Herriot on Rowan’s iPad we heard some strange snorting noises in the water, we saw something big in the water and we both think it must have been a dugong.