The distinctive stench of  clove cigarettes was the first thing I remember as the bus opened its doors at 6am the next morning. Upon sitting in the billowing cloud of stale spicy-scented smoke our second alarm was blasting music that could only be described a Polish speed-polka. For the next 8 hours we "enjoyed" this and other local Flores bands as they exploded through our ear drums discharging very unpleasant electrical impulses in every location of our brains. Later in the afternoon when we finally made it to Mony we could barely string together our sentences, much less breathe. Again we rented a motorbike and at dawn the next day we headed up Kalamutu– straight into a fog bank. You could barely see your hand in front of your face much less a volcano crater. We went back down and toured a bit and went back to our hotel to rest. At noon the manager of our hotel ran over to us and told us to get up the hill NOW! As it seemed like we had no choice in the matter, we did. Along the way up we zipped by defeated hikers who were sluggishly hoofing the 13km back to Mony without having seen what they came for. We ran up the hill (being chaced by the clouds) to get up to the craters where the sun was still shining, but within 10 minutes the winds kicked up and it was socked in again. Back in Mony we steered clear of the hikers in fear of getting pelted with dirty socks on our announcement that we saw the lakes. The 3rdd photo shows the variance of lake water color that can happen within moments. The 4th and 5th show a 30 second time delay between shots. Literally within minutes we couldn't se the lakes through the fog.

Helen and I were essentially spending 4 days of travel time for 30 minutes of volcano time, so we decided to extend our stay and bop around Mony for a few days by motorbike. Our last night in there we met Ewan, a young guy who owned the Bamboo Restaurant. He spoke very good English so we asked him about magic and Christianity. The general rule in Flores is that when on the church grounds you’re protected by God. Once the threshold is passed, magic and animism rules everything else in the world. I don’t quite think this is what the Portuguese missionaries had in mind when colonizing this lovely island.

By this time we’d had an overload of clove cigarette smoke, Polish speed-polka and speeding buses in general, so we hired a car and driver to get back to Labuan Bajo. On our way through Ruteng, Vincent, our driver, stopped to ask a cop directions. Well, that was an open invitation for trouble. The epauletted jerk hauled us to the police station and took poor Vincent into an interrogation room. After half an hour of negotiations we paid the $5 bribe because Vincent didn’t have 2 cents to rub together. The poor guy was terrified. It was a 20-hour trip that was done in 12; you do the math. At least the vehicle had safety belts to hold us tight if we took flight from those 300 ft. cliffs! The center picture is a couple chickens tied to the back of a truck. Now, it's no secret that I really don't like chickens, but to do this to any anmal for 14 hours this is just plain cruel. We also had a live pig strapped to the top of our van during one of the 10 hour trips. The poor thing would go bezerk at every stop. Coming down the mountains to see the islands surrounding Labuan Bajo was spectacular.

Our flight the next day was interesting. Upon check-in nobody from the airline told us what to do so it was kind of like a scrum or a line for a train in India. Two things made me nervous about our flight: 1. Would they calculate the aircraft balance correctly so we could fly in a straight line (they weighed us and our luggage and they were moving people around the plane once we were boarded) 2. Could they clear the goats off the runway in time (a prop driven plane – could get ugly). We mad it off the ground to see Komodo from above – spectacular!