On 3rd of Jan we took the boat to the island of Lombok; our plan was to go east via land and boat to the Komodo Islands, the only place in the world that you can see the famous Komodo dragons. This was to be achieved in around 2 days via the islands of Lombok, Sumbawaya and Flores, and would be our longest journey since taveling south to Kerala in India.

After reaching the mainland in Lombok we headed away from the touts at the dock who always want to get you in a taxi in search of the bus terminal, and who we believed were trying to con us that the sea was currently too rough to reach the Komodo Islands. Eventually, after traipsing around the dusty port town we jumped on a minibus and headed to the town of Mataram, from which we would get a larger bus to the other side of the island. As the journey went on the tiny bus filled with people until we were wedged in at the back and could hardly move; one attempt at a headcount revealed over 20 people on the minibus not to mention the various bags and luggage the locals seems to lug around with them on public transport, and one man on the roof of the bus. When we arrived we ended up on the corner of a small dusty road and were told that this was the bus terminal for the city (it wasn't but we didn't know that at the time). After a brief attempt at explaining our desired destination we hopped onto another minibus and drove about 45 minutes in the wrong direction and to the wrong port! We then had to get the driver who spoke little English to take us back to Mataram, this time making him drop us off at the real bus terminal. Luckily we made it onto a proper bus just as it was leaving when some random men bundled us onto it, this time headed to the port of Lebuhan on the other side of the island. The bus boarded the ferry to Sumbawaya and the next couple of hours were spent on some very choppy seas. The crew seemed fairly relaxed but this wasn't like getting a P&O ferry to Calais!

Glad our first ferry trip was over we arrived on the island of Sumbawaya and for another couple of hours we ramined on the bus until the early hours of the morning, finally stopping at our destination in a place called Sumbawaya Besar. Our plan had originally been to stop here for the night but when the bus pulled over the area seemed deserted and there were no hotels visible in the pitch black. Tired and worn out but wanting to save time, we decided it best to stay on the bus for as long as possible; we still needed to get to the eastern tip of Sumbawaya before we could get our final ferry to Flores. We then spent a frustrating 30 mintues, with the whole bus watching and laughing, trying to convey to the bus driver who spoke no English that we wanted to stay on the bus and would pay. For some reason he still seemed very keen to throw us off but luckily another passenger who spoke some English managed to convince him otherwise, so onward we continued. Our next stop was a town called Bima; along with bad driving over mountainous terrain, poor suspension, air conditioning that kept dripping on us both all night and music blaring we didn't get much sleep. Arriving in Bima at about 7am we were transferred onto another rusty looking minibus which we spent a further 2 hours on before reaching the port town of Sape. From here we planned to get the ferry to Labuanbajo in Flores, but unfortunately this was the point at which our bus/ferry hopping odessey came abruptly to a halt!

After travelling by various modes of transport for the last 24 hours we arrived in Sape to find that the ferry service had been stopped due to bad weather... Both sceptial of touts and cons we went in for a closer inspection, but after speaking to some other tourists came to learn that the ferry hadn't departed for the last 2 days and didn't look to be going any time soon. The only boat leaving was a very small local wooden fishing type vessel which had been chartered to cary food cargo that had been accumulating at the port and was going to spoil. Always looking to make a buck the crew was offering passage at an extortionate price and seemed pretty keen to get us onboard. Indonesia has a fairly bad track record of ferry and boast disasters and while not averse to travelling in discomfort, it took only a quick look at the boat to realise that it was overloaded with cargo and passengers and was laying very low in the water. A brief chat with the crew revealed that there were no life jackets on board and that it would be a 10 hour journey through waters which the Indonesian goverment had decided were unsafe for the much larger and better equipped ferry. At the dock we got speaking to a Croation guy called Fran who was also weighing up the pros and cons of getting on the boat. His mind was made up by a police officer who took him to one side and mentioned that he would be getting on the boat at his own risk and no one else would be accountable for his actions; this soon validated our decision not to go! Instead we decided to book into a nearby hotel for some much deserved sleep, giving it a day to see if the situation changed. We guessed that the whole country was also probably being over cautious with Government run transport after the Air Asia disaster!

We soon discovered that there wasn't much at all in Sape, including accomodation. We checked into the least terrible of 2 hotels to plot our next move and spent the remainder of the day walking along the main road with Fran looking for food and drink in between sheltering from regular torrents of rain, all the time wondering if the small fishing boat had made it. The town itself looked rather run down and stank of fish, that said the locals seemed quite friendly and were very curious of 3 Westerners walking around. After an early night we woke up around 7am to check the ferry situation; predictably there was no change and we decided that our best plan of action would be to get back to Bima. From Bima we could catch a fligh back to Bali, from which we would be able to fly onto Flores and hopefully put the last fews days behind us. After several trips back and forth by horse and cart to a local travel agent and several additions to our group ( 2 french girls and a dutch man who arrived at the port that morning), we headed back to Bima and then onto a flight back to Denpasar, Bali. This was Sophie's first time on a small turboprop plane; luckily the flight was fairly uneventful apart from a lingering smell of sewage that seemed to waft around the plane.

Back in the relative civilisation of Bali and pretty exhausted we decided that we needed to take a day or 2 to recover and decide what to do next. The group of us headed to Sanur, a beach side town popular with an older crowd including many expats. That evening we treated ourselves to a nice meal and more than a few beers before heading to bed. After the exhuastion of the last several days Trevor ended up coming down with manflu which took him several days to fight off. Running a high temperature things reached a low point when the only thing Sophie could cool him down with was a santa hat soaked in cold water on his forehead, it wasnt a good look!

While several days were wasted trying to reach Flores and Komodo we did learn a valuable lesson that the cheapest way to get from point A to B isn't always the best. Even though we have a budget sometimes it iw best to spend a bit more saving valuable time in the process! This thinking led us to decide against going to Flores and Komodo which was due to have more bad weather, in favour of Kalimantan (Borneo)