Haven’t updated in a few days and a lot has happened so this one will be quite long.
Had an early breakfast in Jakarta, which was very tasty but interesting to say the least. The main constituent was nasi goreng (a type of egg fried rice), which is usually only eaten for breakfast at uni if there are no other options. Battered spiced fish complimented the nasi goreng along with chocolate fruit fondue and other similarly strange foodstuffs to find yourself eating at 6am. After a short bus ride to Jakarta airport we caught the internal flight to Kendari with Batavia airlines. This was one of the airlines that until recently had been banned from operating by the Indonesian government due to heavy internal corruption and the forcing of pilots to fly un air-worthy planes (wing tips falling off/plane cabins disintegrating mid-air, you know). I noted that Batavia’s slogan was ‘Trust Us To Fly....’ which didn’t ease my fears either. Apart from some heavy turbulence and a slightly wobbly landing we touched down safe and sound in Kendari around 2pm and got a 40 minute taxi ride to the hotel, just when the monsoon season decided to begin. Usually I hate rain in England because it encompasses wind and coldness but in Kendari it was totally the opposite - we still managed to sweat a during a torrential downpour! During a walk to an ATM we were relentlessly mobbed by the Kendari locals. Everyone we encountered was amazingly friendly, breaking into a big smile, waving, and shouting ‘selamat sorè’ which means good afternoon. Most younger people were taking pictures of us on their camera-phones and nearly everyone wanted to be in a picture with us. We were later told this is because of the unusualness of white people in eastern parts of Indonesia (especially white people over 5 feet tall!). I got up early the next day to have breakfast with Rosie, Louise, Jess and Lottie and to see them off to the forest site, then later on at 1pm caught the speed-ferry from Kendari to Bau Bau which took about 6/7 (choppy) hours.
Arriving in Bau Bau in the evening, we dropped our bags off on the pier with the local harbour porters and then went for a meal at a restaurant 5 minutes walk away. I played safe and had nasi goreng with battered chicken with chilli noodle soup as I didn’t want to risk food poisoning before even getting to Hoga. During dinner I experienced my first proper Indonesian toilet, consisting of a hole in the ground, a small bucket of dirty water to flush your business down said hole, and a big tub of freshwater to rinse your left hand in after you’ve finished wiping....
After dinner we caught the 9pm overnight ‘slave boat’, so called because of the 2 vertical layers of mattresses on wooden platforms present on each floor of the boat. Despite diesel fumes, a group of locals who came along to marvel at the white people, free-to-roam chickens, free-to-roam rats, and a bloody awful and bloody loud Jean Claude Van-Damme film, it was actually very peaceful, with the sea breeze and gentle rocking sending me to sleep fairly quickly. At 5am I woke to watch the sun rise as we were approaching Wanci, where once arriving at 8am we seemed to exchange our old local stowaways for some new local stowaways, and then departed on our final leg of the journey to Hoga!
At 11am upon sight of Hoga, we moored about 500m off shore and jumped across a big hole in the boat to some smaller boats that ferried us across to the most pristine, whitest beach I have ever seen. Up until this point I had been feeling a bit down as I was missing parents and Div and was anticipating the 6 weeks to go slowly. However as soon as my feet hit the cool clear water of Hoga’s beach, I’m glad to say my worries were immediately swept away. We were given a glass of iced orange juice, a lecture on medical facilities and dangerous animals to avoid, and were then taken on a tour of the island, followed by the assignment of our accommodation. The wooden huts consist of one room (which may or may not have electricity), a balcony, and an outdoors toilet/shower called a ‘mandi’. A mandi is a shower that comprises 2-3 small scoops of cold water. It takes some getting used to but now I can mandi with less than 2 and a half scoops. To get fresh water to the island, locals have to transport it over in huge plastic vats, so the less we can use the better. I’m sharing with an Irish guy called Jim who seems nice. Dinner was very good, and has been very good every day since arrival. It largely consists of rice and tuna, but they give us vegetables and various other side-dishes which are all very tasty. After dinner on my first day we had a PADI diving lecture and then it was straight to a very welcoming bed.
Waking up on day 2 we had a shallow dive at 7am, where we got used to the SCUBA equipment, then had a couple more PADI lectures. Week 1 for me is PADI week where I’m attempting to get my Open Water qualification. After lunch I had another, deeper dive and then went back to the hut to discover we had electricity!
Right now it’s 6.40pm (and dark) and I’m sitting upstairs in the main Hoga base station with the Week 1 coral reef ecology students studying for their after dinner exam. Dinner is in 20 minutes so I’m going to sign off. Tomorrow I have my first open water dive and more diving lectures so fingers crossed I don’t drown.
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