Sunday 12 October – mini festival at the dive resort

We were woken to the sound of conch shells being blown, beating drums and singing. Looking out the cabin window we spied the cause, a small cruise ship had arrived and they were being welcomed ashore. Ahmed had told us to come in at 10am to join the celebrations which is what we did. Until then we sat up front on the trampoline catching a nice little breeze under the awning listening to their lovely singing. Profasea and Arka have not dropped their dinghies into the water, always much harder on the monohulls, so we have become the taxi service picking up everyone before heading to shore. The singing/dancing troupe were all beautifully dressed up in traditional clothes and seemed to be loving every minute of it. it turns out it is a smallish Australian cruise ship, Ahmed and Julia organise to take them to the Japanese WW2 sites, and obviously some craft stalls are erected to try and sell their goods. The cruise liner departed by midday, only ashore for a few hours, but great business for Ahmed and Julia. They get the cruise liners about 4 times a year. There was not a lot of particularly good craft, rudimentary carvings compared to the Solomon’s and cheap jewellery tat. The only thing I liked were the headdresses, which are made with Cassowary feathers, which are an internationally protected bird, Lonely Planet Indonesia says that you could be in real trouble taking these into foreign countries, so I resisted the temptation! The feathers are a very indifferent black feather, but they are a real feature here, you see them on the taxi aerials, boat flag poles and headdresses. We saw Renee and Don the S African couple, who are so cheerful and exuberant about everything.

We headed back to the boats for the heat of the day. Returning around 5pm to go for a walk when it was a bit cooler. Ahmed insisted we take a security guard on our walk, we wandered further down the road in the opposite direction to town, where all the fishing boats seem to hang out at very dodgy jetties with endless wrecks about. We couldn’t go that far and the guard was adamant we couldn’t go down certain roads, so not much of a walk. He did take us back through the village which was full of people out on the narrow scooter tarmac road, so many scooters everywhere, such a contrast to the islands we’ve been through where I don’t remember seeing a single scooter.

We had supper at the food stalls, and managed to order better food this time, although sadly the chicken we really wanted had run out. Gary and Kim love their beers and I think find it quite hard not having a beer with their meal. We made up for it having wonderful fruit drinks, soursop and bright pink dragon fruit.