Hi there,
I feel that I have so many stories to tell and adventures to share but the world is showing me constantly his magic and beauty that I end up with no time…
Anyway today we are on our way to the Malaysia side of Borneo, so officially we will be leaving Indonesia and I felt it was time and I could not leave Indonesia without writing you. I am writing on my phone, on a 8h bus journey from Pontianak to Kuching so the conditions are not ideal but I will try my best 🙂
Sulawesi is one of the regions of Indonesia that probably a lot of people never heard about(including me) but to describe it in a single post is a “mission impossible” and very unfair so I will write more about some specific stories later on but now I will try to put in words what Sulawesi meant to me.
The jungle was an overwhelming experience in Buton. I loved it so much, to be part of that conservation project, in such an unique environment, working side by side with the crazy, “nerdy”, passionate scientists and incredible human beings from around the world that inspired me so much… My vision of the animals and the nature changed a lot as well as my awareness of the environment. I felt lucky to have the chance of seeing and experiencing what it was to live and work in the jungle side by side with so pure nature…
After that I knew Sulawesi was the direction…I wanted to see more, to explore deeper, to meet more people, to share more stories and be part of their lives. I was again extremely lucky to have an amazing, sweet and such good person joining this adventure with me. I think to share this with Cayley, such a good friend and perfect travel buddy made this trip even more special.
We decided to do Manado to Makassar by land and sea and explore what we were finding on the way. Makassar was our entry point to civilization and we really enjoyed the city. We strolled around, spend some time relaxing in a coffee shop, visited the Fort Rotterdam and waterfront and ate all fish we wanted without the need of fighting for seconds ( jungle joke).
We flew to Manado, our second city and the start point of this land adventure and even if the city didn’t have many thing to visit, we still enjoyed to explore the markets, visit the buddhist temple “Kienteng Ban Hian Hong”, lose ourselves on the streets and smells, tried different flavours and we even end up discovering a Japanese cave from second WW that a gentle lady guide us there.
But the beach was calling and Pulau Bunaken was the destination. We stayed with Barri on his homestay with his family and we had a great and relaxed time in the island, snorkling, swimming, chatting about life, walking around, enjoying the sun and his sunsets and being genuinely happy.
Well rested we return to the main island and the “Montana girl” was missing her mountains so we had up to Tomohon to try some vulcano hikes.
We had our first experience with couch surfing in Indonesia and what a happy surprise we had 🙂 We stayed with Vien and his mum Non that open their house and lives to us and share everything they could with us. We felt so welcome with them, really part of the family… we explore the city, we saw the extreme market where you can buy any type of meat, we did a short hike to the Gunung Mahawu and we made a million of selfies with locals. It was the flower festival so on our second day we send the day enjoying the music and parade, that looked like carnaval smiling and taking pictures…we decided to count the number of selfies we were asked to take and on that day we had around 75 photo requests… we never stopped smiling to these nice people.
The next destination was Gorontalo, and after a full day of travel with a Indonesia tecno music playing for 12h we arrived to our second couch surf experience. Dewi open her house for us and shown us in 24h the best of Gorontalo. We went for sunrise on the Portuguese Fort Benteng Otanaha, we had breakfast with her mother in law and family, we tried and see whale sharks, we visit his son school, we help her cooking lunch, we even decorated her door house with the Indonesian Flag for Independence Day… It was short but so sweet our time in Gorontalo…
I now realize that this one post summary about Sulawesi was ambitious and that I didn’t manage to write it all before crossing the border to Malaysia and losing the signal…to write on my phone didn’t help too …lol So I am actually already in Malaysia in Kuching and I think Cayley is ready for a big Malaysian breakfast and maybe some abs work out? (we had this brilliant ideal yesterday between beers that we should start doing the 15 min abs from P90x everyday and today is the starting day….lol I will tell you later on how successful we were on that…) so I am splitting this post in two, I think will be better and will leave you guys curious about the second part of the wonderful Sulawesi that made us so happy.
Until then
See You Around
Glu