Thursday was island tour day, (although, since Timor is a very large island, an "island tour" here is nowhere near an "island" tour, but rather a tour of the area around Kupang city) but everybody seemed to have different plans. It's an odd thing about Sail Indonesia's planning: no one is exactly sure what the plan actually is! Several things seemed to be in the works: There was a bus tour organized by "the girls" ( with no indication who "the girls" are! ), there was a tour that our friend Robin of Endangered Species was recruiting for,, which we thought was that same bus tour but turned out was not, and then there was our inclination to go small with our own "facilitator" Ayub....which, of course he was eager for us to do!
In the end, that is what we opted for, and we think we made a very good choice. The four of us (five with Ayub) were able to enjoy the comfort of a six-passenger air-conditioned taxi along with Ayub's undivided attention. (Can't totally say the same for our driver. His attention was divided between the road, his cell phone, and a video playing on a screen in the dash!) We did, however, pick up the itinerary for the bus tour, and used it as a reference for things we didn't want to miss out on.
To start we headed east out of the city. Just the experience of driving along is, as we have already mentioned, an e-ticket adventure, plus there is a kaleidoscope of images to process as you whirr along. We tried all day to capture pictures out the car windows of motorbikes with families of four or loads of cements bags or lumber; the tree-limb scaffolding used in construction, not to mention interesting houses and intriguing businesses.
Out in the countryside, the houses fell away to rice fields, dotted here and there by heavy-horned cattle. On the flat coastal plain, these were not as atmospheric as the terraced rice fields we will see in Bali, but still it is exciting to see something first hand you have only previously seen in National Geographic!
Abruptly there was a strand of small roadside stands selling sacks of salt that the locals harvest and sell for cooking and salting fish. We had to stop and buy a bag.
Our objective, however, was the premises of a virtuoso sasando musician. From the nearby island a Roti, the sasando is a unique Indonesian instrument. It is hard to describe: At the center is a wooden cylinder, studded with frets over which steel strings are fitted and tuned. An ancient sasando on display had about six strings, but more modern ones have up to 48. A special palm leaf is wrapped halfway around the cylinder to form a sounding board of sorts. It has the neat feature of pleating closed and then un-pleating to open, like Chinese fan. It is sort of a cross between a guitar and a harp!
Reigning over the shop (they also make dozens of small-scale sasandos for souvenirs), was an elderly gentlemen who, seeing us coming in, disappeared out back only to reappear in full performance regalia of ikat sarong, and ikat scarf over his shirt, plus the most outlandish hat you can imagine. It is sort of like a straw sombrero with a slender spiky crown that thrusts up and back. Don and Tom both tried one on, but mercifully didn't buy one to bring home. Bette Lee and I were sufficiently stunned not to think to ask what the history of it was.
This gentleman played the ancient sasando (said to be from the 16th century) for us producing a very pleasant, if slight tinny Asian style tune. His charisma was magic. He was followed by a younger man (son? student?) who then played a concert of modern pop tunes on an amplified 48-string version.
Interestingly, we were not the sole audience. Also in the shop was a platoon of about eight or ten policemen. They listened and snuck pictures of us with their cell phones. We took pictures of them back, and they were thrilled! Later, they set to playing a gamelan in the other corner. A gamelan is a set of roundish gongs played percussively with sticks. The elderly gentleman and I danced together, which earned me an ikat scarf. It was a fun time, especially as we got out without either a sasando or a hat, although we did buy the CD!
Back in the city, we next went to an ikat factory. Ikat is the handsome cotton weaving the area is famous for. Every island hereabouts has its traditional styles. Bette Lee, who has been to Bali twice before, is a bit of a connoisseur. This was a good thing, because Ayub's English might not have otherwise covered it!
In the back of the house was a huge area with four or five looms to demonstrate the process. Traditionally the cotton is grown and spun by the women of the house. The strands are then wrapped with dye-resistant bands in a mathematically precise calculation so that the strands themselves can be pattern-dyed to contribute to the final design. Traditionally, of course, the dyes used were natural ones derived from plants. Nowadays, chemical dyes are often substituted. Then the loom is strung with the patterned threads, and the weaver proceeds to run the shuttles of prescribed colors back and forth to produce the final piece. Sometimes, the finished ikat is further decorated with gold paint, as several girl were working on off to the side. A modest-sized hand-done ikat is produced, we were told, in about two-weeks. Nowadays, machine-produced ikats are endemic.
Ikat can be worn as a sarong or shawl or be cut and sewn into skirts, shirts or jackets. Bette Lee has several skirts made of ikat, perfect for dressy Indonesian occasions. She found a piece of very fine, very colorful ikat she fell in love with. With a tighter budget I thought that something I could wrap or wear as a shawl might be more flexible and more affordable. Some clumsy inter-language bartering later, and Tom and Don successfully negotiated our purchases.
The next stop, after a quick pass through the market for some bananas, was at the end of a long drive out into the country to see a very nice waterfall. The river drops several tiers cutting through the forested ravine. It was very pretty, and one can only wonder at what it must look like in rainy season when, as Ayub says, there is "plenty water."
However, the best part of the trip out there was seeing how people lived outside the city. Houses are mostly concrete block -- some painted, some not -- with very pretty wooden windows and doors and lots of flowers. Some had elbow room, others were crammed in tight. Roads are narrow but paved, although in several places they were interrupted by alternating lines of piled rock or brush. We kind of assumed these were meant to slow speeding motorbikes, but later learned it was a sort of grass-roots protest against planned government road expansion! The roads are barely two-lane, so we guess the issue must be that the existing houses are already so close to the road that expansion would wipe them out.
Even out in the country, there are plenty of people, walking or buzz-buzz-buzzing around on their motorbikes. Seemingly at all times of the day there were uniformed schoolchildren coming and going. Ayub said many must walk up to five kilometers to and from school. We saw many such groups, and at least they seemed to be having a good time with each other. Only in the deep dry woods on the last kilometers to the waterfall was there stretches of road with no activity!
We were only out of the city less than an hour, but coming back into the traffic was like facing an onslaught of noise and chaos! Yikes! But never once did we see any evidence of an accident, (which is more than I'd be able to say for Florida!)
On the way back to the boat we stopped for a late lunch at a well-reviewed seafood restaurant on the beach. We had a lovely meal of soup, steamed fish, a bit of curry and a huge colander of steamed rice. The restaurant was surprisingly spacious and open and right on the water, another hiatus of calm.
Comparing notes with other cruisers on the beach confined our opinion that we'd made a good choice in our tour. By taxi with our own guide, we saw more, in more comfort with more information than the other larger groups, and in the end for just a little less than the $25 ahead for the bus! Plus, we had the one- on-one connection with Ayub. The only thing we missed from the bus tour that sounded interesting was an orphanage for some 90+ children (many who lost their parents to recent floods!) run on a shoestring by a single couple! We subsequently bundled up some school materials we'd brought and a monetary donation to contribute to the cause.
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