Indoneisa- Pirate ship journey part II

We woke up as the boat started moving towards our next destination, Padar Island.  The sunrise was beautiful.  I relished it because it was also the only part of the day I wasn't on the verge of death by hot climate.  Overall, I would say the views were beyond anything I have seen anywhere, including Prince William Sound and the Nepali Coast of Hawaii.

The last time I was happy for the next few days...kidding...kind of

Padar Island was the next stop.  It was straight out of a magazine, as long as you didn't look too close.  Notice the small text of the sign, "would be more beauty without trash."

It's hard to see, but almost everything you see on the beach is trash and it's RIGHT in front of the sign.  I don't know if it was due to how the currents flow, or if boats waiting for tourists dump trash in this bay.  Either way, it was pretty sad to see in one of the most beautiful places I have ever been.

OK.  Can we talk about sweat for a second, please?  We hiked up to take in some views and water was POURING off of my body!  Was it so hot that water was condensing on my skin?  There was no way all of the water on my body was coming from me!  It was confusing, but Chelsea, being from Arizona assured me that normal people in hot places sweat like this.

Like I said, Padar Island.  Wow.

This is the only picture I took of the youngest crew member/swimming boy.  He did the hike with no shoes and I do not think he was sweating at all.  Incredible.

The next stop was snorkeling at a place called Pink Beach.  Again, amazing, but much more crowded.  When it came time to board the boat again, we found it tied to a mooring between a bunch of other boats.  Our captain put down the ladder on the side where our boat was frequently bumping against other boats.  Basically, it was a great way to get your skull crushed.  We quickly vetoed that idea and swam over to the edge of the line of boats to see if they would help us board and walk across until we got to ours.  Well, that was a difficult idea to communicate while treading water and shouting to people who didn't really speak English.  We must have looked pitiful enough and eventually someone helped us.  With death averted again, we were on our way to the next unbelievably weird experience.

As we cruised through some shallow water, Chels and I were waiting for lunch when suddenly the captain came running out of the wheelhouse shouting BIG MANTA BIG MANTA!!  We could see a slight disturbance in the water fairly close to the boat, and we figured that's what he was talking about.  The crew was frantically pointing and miming us jumping off the boat to swim with the manta.  Due to the unpredictability and safety concerns we had experienced up until this point, we were reticent.  The captain saw this and suddenly he made life jackets appear!  But then we were like wait...what do we need life jackets for?  Are we being left here?

Finally, the least friendly pirate jumped in the water with us and showed us when we were supposed to do.  'Swimming with mantas' involves swimming like crazy people as fast as you can to wherever the crew points from the moving boat, which changed by the second.  It was thrilling but also kind of exhausting to thrash in the water with a big bulky life jacket on, trying to catch something that was actually built to move effortlessly through the water, and you are probably scaring away.

After much expenditure of energy, we did see glimpses of the Manta, which was amazing.  A lot more boats showed up and it started to feel like quite the circus with a huge mob swimming from place to place with tons of boats milling all around.  It did not feel safe, and it did not feel like a good way to view animals, so we decided to get out of there.

Cool experience, weird experience, kind of thrilling, definitely exhausting, probably not good for the mantas.  Oh Indonesia you are just too wild and confusing for words.

Our captain then took us to our final stop (finally), Kanawa Island for the last bit of snorkeling.  

We were pretty tired from...well...everything.  So we were less than enthusiastic when our captain tied to a mooring a quarter mile off shore and told us to swim.  But with a sigh, we complied.  However, when we got over the coral it suddenly became very shallow, such that 1. it was scary, and 2. we had no way to get to the beach.  And we were so tired.  At this point, we were just so tired of everything.  We finally swam around all the shallow scary coral and just sat on the beach for a while.  We saw some baby black-tip reef sharks which were amazing, and once again, a bad experience was worth it.

It was while we were walking on that beach that I felt something snap in my body, and I knew I would be sick later.  I didn't feel sick, I just knew my body had been through too much and I would get sick.  I was so right.

We decided to walk as far out on the dock as we could before jumping into the water to swim to our impossibly far-off-shore boat.  Much to our joy, at the end of the dock a Rastafarian dude was like, hey are you going out to that boat way out there?  I will give you a ride, your captain owes me money.

Like I said,

pirates.

We did not even feel bad about bringing some kind of debt collector with us back to the boat, though the Captain gave us a disappointed look.  We watched them hash out whatever deal they were making with satisfied indifference.

End of the day, so sunburnt.  Tried to hide from the sun in my towel with mild success.

AND THAT'S NOT THE END

We got off the damn boat as fast as we could, agreeing that we had seen the most amazing things of our lives and that we wanted nothing more than to be out of there.  As we walked through the streets of Labuan Bajo people were shouting comments across the street to us about how tired and sad we looked.  We went to the tour office to deliver snorkel gear we borrowed and broke the news to them that we lost one of their flippers.  The guy seemed to protest for a second, then thought better of it, and just waved us on.  Lucky for him because I had a speech ready for how there was no way we were going to replace it after that experience.  Ha!  Revenge is so sweet.

If not a little anti-climactic.

Anyway, we were drinking a smoothie, about to catch a cab to our hotel when Chelsea got a call saying that the lady who ran the hotel canceled our stay a minute ago and now the rooms were full.  As were ALLLL the rooms in the entire town, no matter how much we were willing to pay.  We both about lost it.

After some clever talking on Chelsea's part we managed to squeeze our way back into that hotel and finally, finally had a peaceful night of rest.

The peace would be short lived.