Lucky Dip

The primary school fete is buzzing with activity. A generator blasts air into a jumping castle while several hyperactive kids do their best to expel it with all of their energetic leaps. A fallen toffee apple melts a sticky trail into the neatly trimmed lawn. A small boy hands his last dollar coin over to the volunteering mum who is running the lucky dip stand. A huge basket of small wrapped parcels, blue for boys and pink for girls, beckons the boy who's imagination is running wild. He tests a few mystery gifts and selects his prize, his lucky dip.

In a similar way, our travels through Indonesia are somewhat of a mystery and we are never quite sure what we are going to get. This uncertainty is exacerbated by our limited navigational aids, and lack of information about local tide, current and weather conditions.

Our best map, in fact our only map, is a 1:2,400,000 miniature of the entire Indonesian archipelago. Double sided and laminated, the entire nation has been compressed to not much more than a flimsy A3 sheet. Huge islands like Lombok are just a few centimetres across, a whole day's paddling is sometimes only a (somewhat demoralising) centimetre on the page. At this magnification the detail is appalling. Huge bays are barely shown as an inlet, islands are not marked, vast rivers are not recorded, towns are not listed and those that are, with the roads that join them, are in completely the wrong place.

Second in our arsenal is the trusty GPS. This battery powered magic machine somehow knows where we are, or at least I assume it does. Hopefully the string of numbers that I upload to Google Maps roughly correlates with a coastline somewhere. Unfortunately, the digital map that Garmin so expensively sold me for this area, with great promises of the accuracy of the data, is hopelessly flawed. The pinpoint accuracy of the satellite receiver does not match the simplified angular coastlines of the map. Most of the time the digital map is about 970 metres out of whack. The waypoints of each campsite we have recorded are set either a kilometre inland or somehow hundreds of metres off shore. The GPS map allows us to work out rough distances between two spots, and the approximate distances we have covered each day but it is far from a perfect navigational tool.

Stuffed somewhere in my kayak is my trusty old iPhone, with some awesome apps that map the marine charts for this area. The Navionics charts show much more detail than the digital map on the GPS but the GPS device in the phone is not nearly as accurate at locating where we are. The iPhone maps are however, easier to use and show greater detail than on the GPS. For instance, today we paddled past a string of islands, several of which were over a hundred metres high and at least ten hectares in area. The paper map showed nothing. The GPS digital map showed nothing. The iPhone at least showed a shallow reef roughly in the area of the islands, suggesting that the rocks were exposed at low tide.

On each of our deck bags, small water resistant bags with a wide zip that we use like a glove box, there is a small kayaking compass. These compasses are made by a reputable brand (Silva) and are a quality compass, actually pointing to magnetic north. The problem is that the mount is a flexible bungee cord system, and our deck bags do not sit quite square on the deck (to make way for the rolled up sail on one side and the sea anchor on the other). The result is that though we each have a compass, they are not aligned square on our boats and we appear to be heading in different directions. If we were both to paddle due east every day we would end up in different countries.

Travel guidebooks like the Lonely Planet are popular with exactly the sort of tourists we hope to avoid during this adventure. Although they might contain some useful info about certain places I can bet my last litre of drinking water on the fact that these books would barely show a listing for most of the places we have visited. Even if we had brought a guidebook (which we never would) it would have been used as firelighters or toilet paper long ago.

So why don't I just check the details on the web? Great idea. While I somehow have the magic to update the blog through a satellite phone, the technology does not allow the transfer speeds needed to just zoom into Google Earth. Wouldn't it be nice.

Moons tell us the tides, or close enough and winds vary inconsistently from day to day. There are plenty of fishermen who claim to know the local waters but they tend to travel no further than the end of their local beach and asking for the conditions of the current in the next strait is like asking them for an accurate ski report for some Japanese mountain resort.

And so we are like the little boy at the school fete. Every day is a small mystery gift wrapped in exciting crinkly paper. We find our way, and the gifts in the box get more exciting every time.

Photo: Lain discussing local conditions with a group of friendly fisherman.

Eating Sumbawa

After paddling for many hours, running low on supplies, and desperately hungry, we spy on the horizon thin wisps of smoke rising from among a stand of extremely tall coconut palms. Could it be a village? As we paddle closer the spidery silhouette of several fishing boats appear on the horizon and the first of the rough, red tiled roofs appears between some lush banana leaves and an enormous jackfruit tree, heavy with fruit. Aha! We have found our salvation - surely in this village there will be a rumah makan (restaurant) small warung (foodstall), or even a pedagang kaki lima (typhoid trolley) eagerly willing to pry way too much money from these weary travellers for a simple, hearty meal…

While Australia might be a multicultural haven, complete with the nightly dilemma as to which restaurant to visit - Thai, Indian, Vietnamese, Greek, Italian etc, as well as a seemingly endless number of denominations of religion (pick a God, any God), Indonesia is the reverse. There are more than 220 million inhabitants of this archipelago nation and despite the presence of Hindu temples and the occasional Catholic church, it is the Mosque that rules the skyline of almost every village, and Islam that rules the lives of perhaps 95% of the country.

For the most part there are just a few differences to the general flow of life that one needs to adapt to over here. The blaring cry of the call to prayer, boomed out from oversized PA systems is a charming alarm clock, at 4:30am, and then at multiple times during the day. Lunches are long as people must fit in a prayer or two (and I suspect a good kip) at the same time. Fridays are difficult as it is extra prayers on Friday, so not much gets done on Friday afternoons - even some major roads may be closed for an hour or so if they are too close to a large mosque at prayer time. All this would barely affect the carefree kayaker, except at during Ramadan. Every Muslim in the country (indeed the world), for the 30 days of Ramadan must fast between sunrise and sunset. No food, no water, no cigarettes, nothing is to be ingested all day, rain, hail or shine (well, shine, shine or shine!).

The swarm of villagers welcome us as we scrape our kayaks onto the pebbly, rubbish-strewn beach in front of our lunchtime destination. We wearily flop from the kayaks to the paparazzi snap of multiple mobile phones and the hounding questions - 'where are you going?', 'where are you from?' and 'how much is this little boat worth?' etc etc. After the inquisition we mention that we are tired and hungry and ask about whether any food is available in the village. The crowd falls silent as sunlight glints off the shiny domed roof of the tallest, biggest and most beautifully decorated building in the village.

"It is Ramadan, we are fasting." A hushed voice whispers from the crowd. Clearly we are not the only hungry ones here. The momentary awkwardness is broken as a friendly (and entrepreneurial) villager confidently steps forward and invites us to his shop. "I have food" he says, giving some extra sensory command to his mother who scrambles up a rickety ladder into the tiny house to prepare us a meal. We'll put up with the constant stares of the growing audience as we really need a good, hearty meal, fuel for our paddles.

Finally the ageing mother nimbly balances down the ladder, pots, plates and cutlery masterfully teetering as she descends. Like a chef in a fancy restaurant lifting the silverware to reveal today's speciality, Madame Villager raises the dinted aluminium lid to reveal…rice and two minute noodles! The very reason we even approached this village in the first place was that the meagre supplies remaining in our kayaks, and therefore the sole ingredients for our every meal for the last week, are almost exclusively just rice and two minute noodles. "Mmmm, enak (delicious)" we both proclaim loudly to the crowd as we tuck into our not so hearty meals.

Ramadan has made our last month more like a strict diet than a religious experience. We may have finally lost the excess kilos that we layered on before the Archipaddlo expedition began but we are fit, healthy, and looking forward to the post-Ramadan feast.

Photo: Lain checking whether the local 'supermarket' might be able to cook up a meal for us.

Certain Death

Had we been unfortunate enough to paddle the narrow straights between Moyo Island, Satonda Island and Sumbawa in 1815 (I forget the exact date), then we would have suffered a rapid and excruciating death.

Mount (or Gunung) Tambora is a massive bulk of volcanic deposits, roughly circular but with a gigantic caldera at its head rather than the pointed triangular peak similar to the volcanoes of Java and Bali. In 1815, however, this colossus erupted with a force never before or since recorded, this was the biggest volcanic eruption a human has witnessed. Nearly 70 years later a much smaller eruption, that of Krakatoa, was much better remembered not for it's size or death toll but for the power of the media and it's newly built telegraph cables (but that is a different story).

Back to certain death. The first rumblings of the eruption would have likely set off a series of small tsunamis ricocheting around the surrounding waterways, catching the unsuspecting kayaker in a washing machine of dangerous swells and currents. We could have kept our cool during these rumblings and, being several kilometres off shore, may have felt somewhat safe from the billowing clouds of smoke and ash that would have begun towering from the summit.

Our death however, would have occurred with a terrifying boom, louder than anything we had ever imagined, and the screaming hot pyroclastic cloud of superheated toxic gasses, ash, rock and dust that would have suddenly spewed from the belching summit. Floating in our kayaks, we would have watched the rapidly building cloud racing towards us and we may have had time to decide to leap from our kayaks into the water, using the water to protect us from the onslaught. Unfortunately, our fate would have been sealed as the pyroclastic flow would have boiled the sea water and all that was in it to a depth much greater than we could swim (despite our new freediving skills).

Even if, by some fluke of nature, we had survived this initial explosion, the sheer volume of blasted rock that was blown from the mountain would have undoubtedly slaughtered us. Boiling rocks the size of suburban shopping malls would have hurtled from the sky as if thrown with angry force by some heathen god, crashing in the sea around us. Tsunamis raged in the boiling, dark sea. There was no hope. We were incinerated.

Today things are a little more comfortable in the deep blue straits of northern Sumbawa. Coral clad shores line Moyo Island, a serene crater lake lies hidden in the heart of Satonda Island, huge marlin leap from the rich waters (we saw one today!) and villages are crammed with many happy fishermen whose children chase chickens and flick bike tyres down the street with a stick. The bedrock of this region may hide secrets of an ancient cataclysm but life here in this tropical haven at the moment is peaceful, happy and calm.

Sumbawa may have a volcanic backbone but there are no signs that history is about to repeat itself. For now at least these kayakers are safe!

Photo: In a tiny village below Mt Tambora the villagers happily welcomed us.

Superb Sumbawa

Lain here...

One week in after starting again from Gili Trawangan and we are back in the swing of what we came here to do. We have had such an incredible run so far as we have headed east from one side of Lombok to the other, across the Alas Strait and now we are about a third of the way around the northern side of Sumbawa. Sumbawa is absolutely stunning! As we are paddling along over reef for the most part of every day it is so hard not to stop every kilometre or so just to have another snorkel! Hence our way around this is to just get in 5 or 6 times a day and tie ourselves to our boats as we can check out the wonderland beneath us without the rigmarole of landing on beaches all the time.

Although we have seen astonishingly beautiful reef and gorgeous white sand beaches we have also had to deal with a bit of current and headwind here, but who is complaining when the rewards are so high! We hit a very strong head wind a couple of days ago so pulled up onto a very quiet looking black sand beach. After assessing our surrounds we decided that as there was a road about 50m away we would leave the boats to fend for themselves whilst we head off to load up on a few essentials (water and some more 2 minute noodles)! We made our way to the road and met 2 dudes hanging out smoking cigarettes who assured us that a public bus would come by eventually. Eventually it did and as we clamoured aboard the rickety old machine we certainly surprised a few locals as to why 2 'whities' just got on a death trap of a bus seriously in the middle of nowhere on the side of the road! (We actually had scaled through prickle bush fences around farming fields to even make it to the road)!

Anyway, apart from the fact that the bus was so rusty I could see the road whizzing past my feet directly under my chair, we made it to the nearby town (Badas - yeah pronounced Bad Ass) and disembarked. Job done... we toped up supplies and had managed to fill 40L of water bladders as well. Now to find another bus. We were befriended by a few locals as we stood again on the side of the road waiting for our return lift but the locals assured us that a bus would not be coming for many hours as it was now too late... they did however spot an opportunity and that was to load us and all of our goods onto the back of 2 scooters and deliver us back to our random spot on the side of the road. We had an absolute ball cruising along with our 2 new friends and enjoyed the opportunity to travel with the wind in our hair at greater than kayak speed!

The day after our supplies top up we then headed over a big stretch to get us to Moyo Island and here again is where we have found our little slice of heaven. Reef, rainforest and monkeys on the beach! We have spent a rest day here just to take in the beauty as long as possible... or maybe it is that our hammocks are just too comfortable!

Tomorrow we load up and head off again and as we truly live this adventure for every glorious second it gives us who knows what is around the next corner...

Lombok in the back yard.

In a steamy jungle somewhere a jaguar's coat of dappled spots renders it invisible to its prey, the clumsy rotund capybara strutting back from the edge of a waterhole is oblivious of the cunning hunter. Wrinkled into a submerged cave a wobbegong shark's gelatinous whiskers and carpet-like skin allow it to ambush fish without detection. On a black sandy beach in the sweaty heat of dry season at dusk, the midge is the undisputed ruler, camouflaged perfectly against the sticky black sand grains, this parasitic hunter feasts gluttonously upon its ignorant prey, the puffy white flesh of two exhausted sea kayakers.

Despite the occasional midge attack Lombok's northern shore has proven to be every bit as exotic and beautiful as we had imagined paddling in Indonesia would be. Crystal clear water , a deep dark aqua that cannot be printed on paper, nor captured in stained glass shimmers in the bright sunlight while allowing a glimpse of the coral gardens below. Fish leap from the water teasing the hungry fishermen in their spidery boats, impossibly narrow hulls held upright with thin bamboo outriggers resembling bugs on the surface of a pond. Small children nimbly monkey up the towering coconut palms, collecting a cool snack for themselves and their miniature mates. Quaint villages nestle into the farmland, mosques blare out the call to prayer, and everyone waves and yells greetings as we slowly paddle by.

The weather has been kind. Apart from a headwind that forced an early departure from our paddling plans yesterday we have been blessed today with what has felt like a distant memory - a tail wind. With our sails billowing, the one square metre of plastic and nylon arched across the bow of our boats takes the pressure away from every stroke. We scream ahead, maybe picking up to 4 knots or even 5 in the occasional gust. These might not be speeds worth reporting to Guiness but for us the change of pace has been literally a breath of fresh air.

Thoughts of home are never far from our minds. The bark of a dog makes us long for our puppies, the mention of a juicy steak in one of the books we are devouring teases us into memories of oversized feasts, and almost anything sends us into reminiscent spins about family and friends. Today however, Australia came to us!

On the horizon behind us we could just make out the tall mast and white hull of a yacht that seemed to be heading our way. LIke stealthy pirates we hugged the shoreline timing our attack perfectly. As the catamaran approached we excitedly chatted about the possibility of who was on board, where they were going and whether they might wish to trade places. Corky II's 45 foot hull ground to a halt as the skipper cut the motor and drifted towards us. One brief greeting cemented the fact that we were chatting with Australians, "G'day!". Before we could respond a hand reached out bearing two green cans, condensation rapidly forming on the icy cold receptacles. "You want a beer?" Pangs of Aussie pride flooded through our veins as we cracked open our chilled beers and guzzled them down.

Brian and Cordelia, retirees from Sydney were as amazed to see us as we were them, and we laughed as we briefly swapped stories of our adventures. "Most of our mates were moving closer to the hospital so we went to Thailand, bought this boat and started to sail home. That was three years ago!" There is definitely a breed of Australians who share an adventurous spirit and, from kayak to catamaran, we all saw the sparkle in each other's eyes. As the cat cruised away Lain and I munched on the packet of salty, crinkle-sut potato chips and finished the beer we had been generously provided, feeling like we were at a mate's BBQ, in some suburban Aussie back yard.

Photo: Giving a mate a cold beer on a hot day - the Aussie spirit is strong in the waters north of Lombok.

Time to relax.

It is not often one finds themselves in tropical paradise with no real agenda, or any pressure to leave. And so we stayed, at least for a few days.

Our visa run went smoothly enough although the short trip to Singapore still managed to inject enough jet-lag into our bodies to cause several days of exhaustion. Lain only just managed to convince the scowling customs officer in Jakarta to smear blue ink across another page in her passport.

Two trusty kayaks, dusted in casuarina needles, were waiting for us on our return to Gili Trawangan. We had depleted several small supermarkets in Kuta of their stocks of nuts, dried fruit, chocolate bars and oatmeal and dragged these supplies on the fast boat back to 'GT' (as the locals call this little island).

With over 7 weeks until our next visa run we were quite happy to take a short break from the Archipaddlo expedition and its associated red tape wranglings to actually have a short holiday. Although we are now somewhat accustomed to white sandy beaches, coconut palms and tropical sunsets, Gili Trawangan is one of those blips on the map that wraps these essential elements all up like a present for a child on Christmas morning.

The water glistens with the electric blue of a butterfly's wing caught in a flash of sunlight. Schools of fish dance across the surface, shimmering with a silver that cannot be polished. Turtles gulp lungfuls of air before casually joining the many snorkellers for a relaxed cruise over the endless reef. Grass roofed bungalows nestle into the palm trees while the fish of the day simmers on the many beachside barbecues.

Bali, especially Kuta, has unfortunately been overrun by sweaty, loud, overweight, tattooed, drunken Australians - all wearing their Bintang singlets like it is the uniform for a yobbo army. Gili Trawangan, on the other hand, attracts a different crowd and could easily be mistaken for somewhere nestled in the south of the Meditteranean. Suntanned, muscled, European hunks, mostly French and Italian, flick frisbees and volleyballs across the beach to attract the glances of the slim, sun-bronzed, bikinied beauties slung over every banana lounge. Swim up bars, glass bottom boats, horses being ridden bareback through the shallows, and ice-cold drinks served to cane lounges overlooking the beach at sunset. Yep, for a few days of holiday, we had found our spot.

The names of days have no meaning here - everybody is on holiday, and every night is Saturday night. Bonfires on the beach give a focus for the boozers while fire-twirlers dance to the strum of some traveller's guitar. Fireworks crack occasionally overhead, briefly adding a spectrum to the thousands of stars burning above. Bars overflow onto the beach and psychedelic skinny-dippers giggle in the shadows and marvel at the rising moon.

Lain and I have never been the sort to lounge in the sun for long though. The idea of island resorts always looks good on the brochure but there is only so much to do once you get there. We have packed up our scratched boats and have left this friendly utopia behind us, in search of greater adventure. In our trusty tent on a sandy beach on Lombok's western shore I can still hear the fireworks cracking off in the distance.

Well rested, with the memory of fun times with new friends, with bellies full of good food, we are ready again to take on the world, or Lombok at least to start with.

Picture: Juz, Lain, Kate and Clint (and his French chick) quietly relaxing after a tough day.

The delights of the deep.

Bali's northern shore is a campur (mixture) of tiny fishing villages juxtaposed alongside enormous, oversized and undoubtedly overpriced tourist resorts. The main road across the island acts like an artery, the pulsing blood of commerce surging along it at great speed, avoiding numerous chickens along the way. We have experienced it the way almost nobody else has.(although we heard of another Aussie couple who paddled a double kayak there about 5 years ago).

By far the jewels in the crown of this stretch are the coral-lined coasts of Pulau Menjangan in the west and the scuba divers havens of Tulamben and Amed in the east. The enticing wreck of the USS Liberty, which sank there in WWII, lies just metres off the shore within easy reach of the snorkeller. Making the most of this region, and stopped in our tracks daily by the wind, we explored this underwater realm with delight.

Weighing heavily on our minds as we paddled this exciting coastline was the crossing to Lombok. I was really keen to push through the significant risks of attempting this dangerous crossing but, as always, we roll with the punches and pick our battles. Finding a fast boat that could take our kayaks and coordinating the loading and unloading of our heavy boats onto this small vessel ended up being quite a mission in itself, but one that paid off handsomely. Jumping the deep ocean trench that marks the Wallace Line where, essentially, Australia collides with Asia, the conditions turned out to be much stronger, windier and more dangerous than I had expected. I sure was glad to get a lift over this stretch of water.

To continue our paddling adventure we need to make a visa run at this stage which involves getting to Bali, flying to Jakarta, Singapore, Jakarta again to organise a visa extension, and then back to Bali, Lombok and Gili Trawangan. This will give us 60 more days in the country before we'll need to repeat the process. Our kayaks and all our gear therefore needed to find a home for a few days while we complete our international dash, and Gili Trawangan has turned out to be the perfect spot.

Trawangan is the tropical paradise that first time visitors to Bali probably expect to find the minute they walk off the plane. White sandy, palm tree-lined beaches surrounded by rich coral gardens are jammed to the waterline with sun-bronzed, muscled, carefree backpackers ogling at the scantily clad bikini babes soaking up the rays while sipping on a freshly cut coconut.

With a couple of days to spare before our international jet-setting we enrolled in a free-diving course and spent two days learning how to sink ourselves into the depths with no more than a mask, a pair of fins and the breath of air in our lungs. This sport gracefully combines yoga and relaxation with heart thumping adrenaline and we both managed to descend at least 20 metres into the deep. Seeing as we have two more months of paddling along coral lined shores coming up before our next visa run we figured we had better learn a few tricks about how to get the most from this incredible environment.

As I tap out these last words our plane is descending past the craggy peaks of Java's vast volcanoes into the dense smoggy miasma choking Jakarta. With thoughts of coral lined paradise fresh in our memories (and our bodies nearly recovered from a fortnights hard paddling) we can't wait to get back into the kayaks, back on the water and back into this grand Archipaddlo adventure.

Photos: 1. Lain paddling past one of thew many sea temples lining the coast of north Bali. 2. The wreck of the USS Liberty in Tulamben is a diver's dream. 3. Juz and Lain enjoying the dawn, and a bowl of soggy muesli, somewhere in paradise. 4. Lain explores the depths.

Orangs, Angin, Arus dan Ombak

Orangs = People. Plenty of them. In fact, after a week and a half I suspect we have now heard "Hello Mister" from several hundred thousand children and received looks of awe and surprise from hundreds of their fathers and brothers as they busily overfish the fertile waters of Bali's north shore. Our every movement is absorbed by an audience, eager to find out more about these crazy Australians. Breakfast can be ogled by an army of fishermen - never before has a bowl of muesli been so interesting!

The forces of nature have also become primary concerns to us o ver the last few days. Angin = Wind. Three days ago we turned a corner around Bali's northern most point and, like flicking a switch, the wind decided to turn on us. The following morning at 11:00am sharp the pressure valves were released and all the wind the atmosphere could dump on us thundered headlong into us. We were stopped in our tracks, contemplating how to deal with the next element in nature's arsenal.

Ombak = Waves. We turned to shore in a desperate effort to find a suitable spot to land and despite the glorious backdrop of overhanging coconuts, jagged volcanic skylines and the tempting smell of roasting chicken from the local village, our escape route was blocked by a wall of surging waves crashing onto a beach of black boulders. The wind was too much, and as whitecaps broke and whipped our nervous faces we battled into shore through the maelstrom.

The villages are beautiful. This is the Indonesia that is not written into the Lonely Planet guidebook (although we don't own a copy - in fact we barely have a map!) and is lighthearted, raw and abundant with smiles and laughter. By the time we can walk from the beach to the main road to find a meal the owner of the rumah makan (= restaurant) already knows who we are and how we arrived - the bush telegraph seems to be operating on broadband here.

As we continue southeast the last of the ocean's weapons has also been unleashed upon us, Arus = Current. Like the wind, every point we round seems to concentrate the forces of the water and the air. The waves chop up, breaking over the bow and, wind or otherwise, our progress is dampened to a crawl by the pressure of the surging water rushing northwest along Bali's shore.

Ever since our debilitating crossing from Java to Bali a week ago we have both been nervously seeking information from every fisherman (and his seven children) about the conditions we might expect crossing from Bali to Lombok, a distance nearly double that that shattered us recently. The intelligence is unanimous - don't do it. Whatever hint of Angin, Arus and Ombak that we might have experienced up to this point is child's play compared to the strait.

Mixed into this cauldron is the fact that to avoid the worst of the wind we would have to start paddling at about 10pm, just after the moon sets, to have any chance of arriving before the beastly Easterly wind slams into us at dawn. Our early morning stealth paddles in Bali have been OK, but out there in really deep water with no way out, we are not so sure.

And so it was with great relief (and no doubt some comfort to our parents) that today in Tulamben we managed to procure the services of a boat to transport us and our kayaks to Lombok. Tomorrow we'll test this new method of transport and who knows, we just might like it.

Photo: Lain attempting to chow down breakfast with a full Indonesian audience.