August 9-10 Labuan Bajo, Flores

Labuan Bajo (Ba-Jo, Gwen, not Ba-ho a la español!) is a town blending Indonesia realities with the influence of tourism. It is the gateway for tourists drawn to the attractions of Komodo National Park: the famous dragons and reputedly good diving. As such, it has more services, and the harbor is full of atmospheric schooners -- any one of which looking like a stand-in for Johnny Depp's Black Pearl -- that carry adventure travelers on multi-night excursions to the Komodo Park.

We pulled into the anchorage off the beach to the south of the town of Labuan Bajo proper. Our "cruising guide" -- 101 Anchorages in Indonesia -- promoted this as a peaceful alternative to downtown. No mosques in sight. It also hyped the cruiser friendliness of the Bajo Komodo Eco Lodge, where, if I can paraphrase from memory :"You can sip a glass of chardonnay and enjoy the view over the fresh water pool." Something like that.

A group of four Rally boats was here ahead of us and already had refueling in the works, so we jumped on that right away. Several guys (plus three children) took our fuel jugs off to the depot and returned them that afternoon. It doesn't get much easier than that!

In the evening we went ashore to the Lodge for dinner and found it as charming as advertised. It's the little things that truly feel like luxury....a table with a table cloth and linen napkins (instead of toilet paper-weight squares in the warungs!) We joined up with the other cruisers -- generally a British Isles group -- for drinks, before sitting down to a nice dinner.

In the morning, our early taxi was NOT waiting for us at 7:30am, so we were forced to have a nice breakfast at the lodge while we waited where we made the acquaintance of two single ladies just arrived traveling together, one from the US and one from Norway, a friendship forged originally in Peru!

Finally a car arrived and the driver Michael expertly conducted us on the sequence of our errands: the fresh market (what a warren of stalls!), the Telekomsel office (in a private residence on a hilltop with an awesome view of the harbor!...and no, they couldn't do anything about the speed of our wifi modems! -- we'd have to drive four hours to Redeng to fix that!), the dive shop to arrange a dive rendezvous in Komodo, the harbormaster for our Komodo Park permit, the "supermarket", a craft shop, the post office, and finally Mediterraneo, a truly lovely rrestaurant, for lunch.

And here I sit! Five hours later. I have died and gone to heaven! After a fabulous lunch (our breakfast friends happened to arrive after us and joined us again!), I moved from the table to the loft where bean bags and low tables are arranged for those who wish to use the WiFi! For five hours since lunch I have sat and sipped watermelon juices, visited with other travelers, all whilst managing to post dozens of photographs and all this text to the Blog! Don, Tom and Bette Lee will come back to the restaurant after naps for dinner and to retrieve me (I hope!)!

And I am about to run out of juice...battery juice that is!