Making memories today

Well, I have escaped the tourist bubble. There are still tourists here on Flores and in Moni, but not nearly as many as on Bali or Java.

Today was a travel day and it made a few memories. I was scheduled to fly from Denpasar to Labuan Bajo and then to Ende. It was a jet prop plane with about 70 seats in it, about the size of the planes I take to Boise.

Labuan Bajo was...windy. There was a tail wind and a lot of gusts. The first approach to the runway got us down to about 200 feet and the plane was bucking real hard and we couldn't show down because of the tail wind so the pilot cranked the throttle and we went back up. My first ever aborted landing! Pretty amazing I have made it all those flights without that happening before. So we circled around over the water for 5 minutes and then tried again. This time we never got below 1000 feet. My second aborted landing! The pilot went full throttle and we climbed in a spiral and then the abovementioned/announcement was made that we were going to Ende where the weather was "...good." this would be great for me, but bad for all the people on the plane going to Labuan Bajo. The landing in Ende was fine and without events.

Stepping out of the airport I found about 40 cab drivers offering me a ride to Moni for about $40. I decided I wanted to take the bus. And boy did I make the right decision for the life experience. This was some epic clown car bus action. Just epic.

I'm not even sure where to start...Maybe some bullet points...
*there were 22 seats on the bus
*there were 31 people on the bus at peak capacity
*there were also 5 large burlap sacks of something in the passenger area because they were too heavy to go on the roof
*they had invested in after market stereo upgrades. The bass was thumping.
*said stereo played about 1/3 country music. Really twangy stuff, not Taylor Swift or something. Though there was a lot of pop music and rap and Christian music (Flores is a Catholic island and not Muslim like much of the rest of Indonesian)
*because I was one of the lay passengers to get on in Ende...I started up as a standing passenger in the doorway. Thankfully that only lasted about 30 minutes.
*at one point the conductor got tired of standing in the doorway and kicked two girls up to the roof so he could sit inside

Just an amazing experience.

Moni is a beautiful town in the mountains near the volcano I'll be hiking up for another damn sunrise in the morning. Then tomorrow I'll be getting to get to Bajawa, a town west of here to see some native villages. I'm also hoping to see the cave where they found the hobbit fossils in a couple days!

Right now, I'm going to eat a 4 course meal that the chef is cooking using only local spices and cooking practices. Thankfully, dog is not on the menu.

Picture of Moni below.