The next morning, we started another day of kayaking. In the middle of the day, we saw a dolphin in the distance. For a break, we chose a rocky indentation to stop at. Mommy, Daddy and I went snorkeling, while Natalia stayed behind with the kayaks. Toward the end of the day, we watched dolphins playing in the distance—they somehow managed to continually stay ahead of us.

We headed to a homestay a mile off of Gam. When we neared shore, there were buildings, but no one was there. We had seen a village not far from where we were, so we decided to get back in our kayaks and check it out. When we reached it, a boy of about six ran up the docks to greet us and helped us pull our boat onto the beach. We talked to the villagers, and with some language difficulty were able to find out that the owner of the homestay had gone on a trip to the market and would be arriving shortly. So we got back on our kayaks and paddled back to the homestay.The boy, Rio, was there before we were. Again he helped us, stopping every once and a while to catch a ghost crab. While we waited for the owner of the homestay to arrive, Rio franticly chased away two nearby dogs. When the owner got back, the family (who Rio, as it turned out, was part of) immediately started getting our rooms ready and cooking dinner. We watched an amazing sunset and then went to sleep.

We didn’t kayak the next day. Instead we went snorkeling and saw the most colorful coral that we’d seen in Raja Ampat. Later in the day, we took a visit to the village store. It was small but packed with packaged goods, mostly food. We brought some very good cookies, and then went on to explore the village. A dog started following us (this was not the first, nor the last, time this happened). We were circling back around to the homestay when we came upon some puppies. Natalia played with them for a couple minutes and then we went back to our rooms. For dinner we had green pancakes and a debate on why they were green.

The next day, Mommy and Daddy went to visit the local church, while Natalia and I stayed home. There were about 40-50 people in church that day, with a lot of children, and the service involved quiet hymns and a lot of speaking by a pastor, an older man in a suit.         After about 45 minutes the pastor came down from the lectern in front of the church, and motioned to the man who had walked my parents into the church to escort them out, while everyone else stayed in their seats.

In the meantime, it started pouring and so we had to delay kayaking. When it finally stopped raining, we went though a crossing and then tried to take a passage though mangroves. However, it was extremely shallow because of the new moon. After navigating though coral that was sticking out of the water (we got stuck a few times) we realized that we couldn’t get though when the current started pushing us back. However, you could see the exquisite coral very closely though the crystal clear water. We turned around and headed along the coastline, just above the coral.When we finally finished our journey around Gam Island, the French man who we had met a week earlier on Kri Island and another French man greeted us. After a good night’s sleep, and cake for breakfast, we headed out on our kayaks. Unfortunately, it started raining, so we had to go back to shore and wait for a couple of hours. Finally, after a long day of kayaking, we arrived back where we had started. We took the same route out of one of the most remote places in the world.

Here is some information that will let you learn more about Raja Ampat in West Papua, Indonesia. To view some of the incredible coral and sealife we saw while snorkeling, check out The Raja Ampat Through the Lens Of:, a gorgeous book about underwater life. We were so impressed by local efforts to preserve the coral reef. You can learn more about conservation efforts by watching Guardians of Raja Ampat, a beautiful hour-long video. One of the things that attracted us to Raja Ampat is the effort by NGOs to create locally controlled sustainable tourism based on accommodations with long-time residents rather than large corporate resorts. There is more information about this project of developing locally run homestays at www.stayrajampat.com.  You can view a PowerPoint Isaiah made of some of the words we’ve been learning in the Indonesian language.

-Isaiah

After our first day paddling we arrived at a terrific homestay (called Kordiris) in the evening. Maria, a nice woman who Daddy had texted with when he was planning the trip, worked there. The food was great—especially the breakfast cake—and we met many interesting people. There was a man who came all the way from Libya who worked as a traumatic injury doctor and had come to Raja Ampat for the amazing diving. He had previously gone mountain biking in Bali. We learn many fascinating things about Libya from him. For example, he said that before the unrest most of his cases involved car accidents, but afterwards they were caused by accidental gunshot wounds. We also met a family from Singapore, who described their city as a “concrete jungle.”

There was great snorkeling, although quite a distance out. There was a vast array of coral and lots of beautiful fish. On the second day, Mommy and Daddy went out kayaking to see the mangroves, while we collected shells and watched hermit crabs on the beach.

On the way to the third homestay, after a beautiful paddle along the coast, we stopped at a local Papuan village. A woman with red teeth from chewing betel showed us around. The village was centered on a school and a church, and we visited a small store before continuing on. The homestay that we reached at the end of the day had three dogs, one of which was missing a hind leg, and a cat (the only one we saw on the entire trip). At one point a cuscus (nycticebus coucang, a small monkey-like animal) climbed on to the front of the dining room. It glared at us before venturing across the pole in the top of the dining hall. One man tried unsuccessfully to get it down. After a while it went away.

After that, Natalia, Mommy, and Daddy decided to go snorkeling. Daddy had seen others take a shortcut though the mangroves, so they headed in that direction. The long exposed roots hindered their progress, and stepping backwards to avoid tripping over the flippers was difficult. After a while moving like this through the shallow water and holding hands, Mommy, Daddy and Natalia finally made it into the open area. A few people were snorkeling in a sandy area—they were looking for nudibranch fish, after which the homestay had been named. Swimming further out to the exquisite reef you could see colorful fish amid the rich and varied coral.

When we got back, Daddy and Mommy went for a walk through the woods to the nearby village. They came upon a church, many houses, and finally a graveyard. The burial plots had roofs built over them, though no walls. Behind the palm trees, the sun was setting in glorious shades of pink, and as they walked back and darkness descended they stopped to talk to a few people who knew words of English and interact with children playing outside. When they returned to the homestay, they chatted with an Australian couple that was sitting by the water watching the sunset. The man was a sailor who worked a month on, and then had a month off, throughout the year. The woman designed jewelry, which was made in Bali. They had previously spent over a year living in Bali.

The dogs fought with each other all night, and a spider wove a web over Mommy and Natalia’s bed, but we still managed to get good night’s sleep. In the morning we tried traditional Papuan food (one of which tasted like a macaroon), which we had never seen before. Nevertheless, it was very good. We set out on our kayaks, and after a couple hours, we came upon beautiful Beser Bay. The owner of the homestay we were headed toward, Daniel, came by on his boat, accompanied by his family. He warned us not to snorkel in the Bay because there were crocodiles, and then proceeded to throw coconuts into the water for us to eat. When he learned we had no knife, he brought his boat around and scooped them back up.

In certain parts of the bay there were ladders to climb from the water onto small hilly islands, and we stopped at one to see where it went. It turned out to go nowhere in particular, although we saw a hut some distance up. But we did enjoy the beautiful views. Coming up and down the ladder was no easy task, but we managed.

We were exhausted when we reached the homestay. It was a far cry from the previous homestays we had stayed in, as it was entirely over the water. It had two rooms, although they were building more, and the rest was occupied solely by a family of three. In Isaiah and Daddy’s room, there was a table with pitchers of water and rice, plus silverware and napkins. Another table had books and magazines that visitors had left there. The bathroom was simply a hole in the wood floor, surrounded by three walls. Instead of eating in a dining room, they brought the food to our rooms. Natalia played with the little girl, whose name was Marsinche. Daniel had a big English-Indonesian (and vice versa) dictionary, which he was using to learn English. Since we had a notepad where we were keeping track of any Indonesian words we had learned (in a addition to an Indonesian phrasebook), we took the liberty to write down several pages of words from Daniel’s dictionary. Indonesian happens to be one of, if not the, simplest languages in the world. It is written in Latin script and has no tenses, plurals, or articles (the, an, a). However, we were not in Indonesia long enough to learn more than a few words.

The next morning, after a snorkel and a Papuan breakfast of fish, we asked Daniel to take us part of the way to our next destination on his longboat. The boat had two horizontal poles stretched out on ether side that rocked back and forth and balanced the boat when it was in the water. We stopped halfway and kayaked the rest. We started by crossing a bay, and then went though a magnificent small winding passage between that and another bay. Along the way, we were lucky enough to see a turtle. We had to fight the current (which sent us turning in circles) to make it through the passage. As we emerged, stunning rock islands came into view.The next homestay was similar, although better developed. Also perched over the water, it was closer to land, with an actual toilet, a shower (an outdoor faucet that poured cold fresh spring water on your head), and a dining room. The owner, a middle-aged man who was managing the homestay by himself, seem to put a lot of effort into making the place nice. In our rooms, there was a sign where he had written English words (some misspelled) and their Indonesian meanings. We had to drink boiled water, which didn’t taste very good.

That evening after dinner, we sat out on the dock and watched the gorgeous colors over the water at sunset and talked about all the interesting places there were to live and visit in the world.

-Isaiah

After a three hour flight on a small airplane (but far from being the smallest one we’ve been on), we arrived at the Sorong airport, a room that was empty except for a baggage claim, bathrooms, an immigration office, and, of course, people. On the east side there were warnings about Ebola and MERS. In the middle of the Ebola sign, it told people not to eat bats or “bush meat.” Then we got a taxi across the city to a ferry. Like in Bali, many people in Sorong rode motorbikes, but, unlike in Bali, some people walked, and many of them used umbrellas to protect themselves from the sun. There were far fewer people than you’d expect in a city.

Then we boarded the ferry.     It wasn’t too different from most other ferries we’ve been on. In the row in front of us, there was a Belgian man who owned a traditional homestay with his Papuan wife, and a German couple who worked for the government but got a year off to travel every three years. Mommy joined them in a vibrant conversation about Papua. Then the Belgian man got out his computer and showed us pictures of his homestay. When we got off the ferry, every man was smoking. The woman didn’t smoke, at least not in public. Papua had a much worse smoking problem than Bali did.

We had to check into the tourist information center, which was, oddly, much bigger than the airport. It had two large rooms, both of which were mostly empty. At the back there were stands with snacks. We brought Oreos and some peanut crackers. Several employees stood around with nothing to do. Two of them were playing a game of chess.

We proceeded to a motorboat that would take us to our first homestay. The German couple from the ferry joined us. Our first stop was a traditional Papuan market, were the owners of the homestays got their food. The market consisted of a couple of tables with food on them. We came in the afternoon, so there wasn’t that much food left, but there still were bananas, cassava, and several other things. People from the surrounding areas also came to buy things. Many had dogs, which were not leashed, but stayed, in the general vicinity of them. We were told that dogs are native to Papua. We did not buy anything because you had to get the entire portion of food, and we only needed so many bananas. However, the people steering our boat got some food from the market.

After dropping the Germans off and watching an amazing sunset, we got to our first homestay after dark. It had dogs, two of which where very nice and slept in our rooms. The first three homestays we stayed at weren’t actually homestays, but rooms made out of coconut trees (indeed, everything was made out of coconut trees) that were for sleeping, plus a place for eating. The other homestays were built on or near the water, had fewer rooms, and were more like actual homestays, being shared with the owners. All of them had mosquito nets, although we saw few mosquitoes. We bought a hammock with us and set it up when we could. The food was mostly fish and starches, with very few fruits or vegetables. Eggs (omelets, boiled, fried) were common, but, oddly, chicken was rare. Every meal had rice.

We were renting the kayaks from kayaks4conservation, an NGO (non governmental organization, of which Papua has many) that made kayaks and made them accessible to visitors. It was located on the island we were staying on, Kri, and so, on our first day, we set out on foot to get our kayaks. One of the dogs from the homestay followed us. Unfortunately, it was Saturday, their day off (we had assumed their day off would be Sunday, because most Papuans are Protestant Christians). So we had to wait until the next day to get our kayaks. In the meantime we met a nice French man who had been living in Germany. He showed us a documentary on conservation in Raja Ampat. The next day only Mommy and Daddy went to get the kayaks, and on their way they saw a giant lizard. The kayaks were very good quality. Later that day, we headed off to our next homestay. The waves were unusually choppy, but we were in our bathing suits and had spray skirts, so it wasn’t too much of a problem. Our plan was to kayak around the island of Gam (not to be confused with Guam, the U.S. territory) and then return to the Kri homestay.

-Isaiah

We spent our third day of biking coasting a very long way down to the ocean on the side of the highway. At the bottom was a tourist area called Lovina (that Natalia hated with a passion – too touristy and full of traffic) and at the very edge of it was a beautiful guesthouse secluded from the noisy town. The pool looked over the open water and a beautiful sunset filled the sky as the sun disappeared over the horizon. Dinner was family style, with the few other guests and the family that owns the hotel sitting around a long table weighed down by food. The owner explained to us that he spent years looking for a place where he could build a guesthouse, a place where people could come and get away from everything out in the world. He wanted it to be a place with no rules. He described it as somewhere where there was “no teaching, just sharing – mostly with love.”

That was the day we reasoned with ourselves that there must be some way to stay two nights in one place. The guesthouses and lodges we were staying at were too beautiful to simply arrive in the evening and leave the next morning. Most of them only had a few rooms and not many guests since it was off-season. We rearranged things to stay two nights at Minabali Bunga ‘lo to relax from the long hours of biking we had done. We basked in the air conditioning and ate bowlfuls of homemade ice-cream (we tried almost all of the flavors – chocolate, dragon fruit, coconut, etc…).

Day 7 of our bike trip we stopped at two different palaces. One was a water palace (Tirtagangga), with beautiful fountains and bridges and stepping-stones over the water. Massive goldfish swam around you as you walked on the small platforms above the water. Statues of four armed people with crowns and masks adorned the far end of the palace. We went on to see another palace (Puri Agung in Amlapura) that was inhabited by the King of Karangasem (one of nine kingdoms in Bali) and his family before he died in the late 60’s. The king was allied with the Dutch who were brutal in colonizing what ultimately became Indonesia. The palace mixed Balinese and Dutch architecture, but was not refurbished in any way, and we were the only tourists there. There were family portraits on the walls and old Balinese instruments stacked in rooms of the main house.

We got to watch Balinese people praying and doing offerings in a traditional temple. We were given sarongs (cloth rapped around your waist like a skirt) and sashes to wear into the temple – a symbol of respect. Everyone was wearing beautiful white outfits, and brought baskets full of offerings. We also took a day trip to a traditional village called Tenganan. A man told us about what ingredients were used to make different colors of the fabrics he sold – turmeric for yellow, indigo for blue, mengkudu for red, macadamia nuts for black, the leaves of plants for green. We met a writer in his 80’s who showed us the wooden scrolls that he engraves with text (there was an article up on his wall that said he was the last person in Bali writing in this style).  

We also visited a local market early one morning. 

On our way back to Ubud we went through Sideman, a rural, rice-growing area high up in the hills.  We spent a lot of time on small (and very steep) roads.

On our last night in Bali we went to a Legong dance performance in Ubud.   

-Natalia