Tag Archives: Ampana

The Ampana kingdom far far away

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March 14th

Morning for the sun and snorkelling weary vacationers begins unusually early. The first group gets up and eats breakfast 7:00. Then the captain by a boat on the calm sea carries them to the port in Wakai. The second group, which we are in as well, their breakfast of rice receives at 8:00 and are waiting for the captain with the boat to get to the port from which a speedboat would get us all to Ampana. Suddenly rises a great wind, the sea begins to billow, palm trees are shaking in the wind, flowery curtains in the chalets flap like flags. Our boat is severely delayed, finally we spot it swinging in the waves. For some reason the boat at a high speed passes our bay. It turns out the big waves make it impossible to drive up to the shore, so the boat is taken to a quiet bay behind the horn at the side of the village. The captain refuses to take us to the port in a storm, because waves can damage the boat. We begin to fidget, because we need to get in time for the speedboat that will take us to the Ampana to the cars. We are ready to offer the captain additional fee of 100,000 rupees, that is certain to inspire him for heroic deeds. We say goodbye to the hostess who was feeding us with delicious food all the four days. Also the captain rushes to say goodbye to his wife and for the safety on the sea brings a son-in-law. We ask Antonio the Catalan, who remains on the island, to pray for us so we arrive without issues. We are worrying all that we won’t make it in the time for the speedboat, going on the foaming sea. It seems that we cannot really get further away from our hospitable island. The engine puffs silently and slowly pulls us across the waves forward. Towards the harbour, the waves subside, and since the further ride is on a downwind, we realize that we will come in time – 10:00 precisely.

But when we arrive at the port we learn that the speedboat is delayed because of the storm. Boringness at the port building begins. We walk around the local shops, market. We are taking pictures of goats, rosters, dogs and the fish put up for sale. Ināra purchases a bright, flowery dress. Now she feels like the most beautiful girl in the village. Some storm survivors get some cold Bintang beer at a local hotel and for a moment feel a small surge of happiness. We buy cooked, warm eggs for lunch. We learn that because of the storm the speedboat will not come at all today. We are stuck in the islands. Some kind locals offer us to arrange a boat right here on the spot. Begins haggling for the fee. For a giant price (3.5 million rupees per boat) we are offered to be carried in two boats, one of which would be very slow. Then, after Agnese’s trip with the local official on a motorcycle there appears another better option – an offer to take us for a slightly lower price, and all by a single boat. Only this will happen much more slowly, like with a ferry. We understand that this is estimated as 4 hours. We take 6 other foreign tourists with us on the boat.

We leave at 13:05. As we will later need to conclude, we will be on the way more than 6 hours instead of the 4 hours. For a long time it even seems that the ship is more roaring in our ears, than moving forward. Landscape among the islands remains unchanged for hours. We don’t notice any waves in the sea, so it is not clear why the speedboat was afraid to come. We are lying criss-cross on the plank floor. An association arises with the Syrian refugees in boats crossing the Mediterranean. All the way we are tossing about, changing postures. Somewhere we get squeezed one way or another. We play a “board game” – “No, thanks” for a bit – as if there is no table it can not really be called a “table-top game”. While the engine is roaring we also try to waste time by a game – Silent Phone – in which one to another whisper in the ear the 8 titles of Latvian University museums which are well-known to Ilgonis. Only three museums remain and return to Ilgonis – the History, Oceanography and Literature, of which there actually only the first one exists. Still lying on our backs we wave our arms and legs for a bit, but after that continue to be located in a horizontal position, stunned by the the boat engine and stiff. A new association rises with the cartoon about Shrek, when Shrek with his beloved Fiona and the Donkey were sitting in the chariot and went to Princess Fiona’s parents to the kingdom far away. Donkey completely bored asked every minute – Have we arrived yet! – Shrek tired to answer him and shouted to donkey – Hold your tongue!- After keeping silent for a little, the Donkey found another entertainment. He blew up the mouth and time by time puffed loudly very close to Shrek’s ear. Also we like such donkeys were tossing and turning in the far way to Ampana and to ourselves quieter or louder asked – Have we arrived yet! – I guess someone also made the the annoying mouth-pops in between, just the engine of the boat was louder and no one heard.

Finally, already in complete darkness (around 19:30) we arrive in the shores of the far-away Ampana (60 km from Wakai) in the same spot where we left the cars. With a great pleasure we get back also our repaired car – the grey one. We fill the petrol, shop for groceries and go on to the winding road through Poso to for us already known hotel Victory in Tentena. At 1:00am we are kindly welcomed and given 4 in rooms for 3 people in each. Finally there is also a warm shower, as well as enough time to spend sleeping. From the top someone gives an indication that the breakfast will be at 7:30 tomorrow. When lying down it feels like we were still on the ship as everything is swinging a little all around. Someone whispers quietly in the bed – Have we arrived yet! –

Agnese’s notes:
The price of the speedboat Hercules was 150’000IDR per person but we got the money back when it turned out that it won’t come. Initially we chose the speedboat as the ferry is not going from Wakai to Ampana on Mondays and we could not wait till Tuesday.

The light day after the Big Eclipse

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March 10th

It seems that after the big eclipse, the car problem and the night drive in 2 teams of 6 people all the possible in Indonesia has been fulfilled. However it is not so. The adventures won’t finish, the mechanic from Luwuk will come to help. After all of that we wake up in the morning at Ampana ferry pier in different places – some in the cars, others in the ferry waiting room on the stools. Like some seals.

In the terminal on the floor the ants eat up the remainings of the dead cockroaches. Toilet, as fitting in a public place, is rather “criminal”. Roosters are singing, next to the small cafe’s near the pier dogs ar chasing chickens. For the breakfast we have avocados that we bought yesterday in the market – big, dark, ripe and delicious. For the tea ordered in the local cafe the sugar has been added richly, not easy to drink from it, more similar to syroup. However warmth and some joy comes from it. We buy 12 tickets from Ampana to Wakai, each for 58000 rupees. We leave the cars at the pier to wait for us returning from the small islands.

On the ferry we make ourselves comfortable in the economic class – some on the chairs, some on specially designed sleeping-shelves. We decide that 80% Indonesians are smoking as there is smoke smell everywhere. Meanwhile in the business class there is an AC, feeling like in a fridge. As guests we get some karaoke songs dedicated to us. All the songs are like “schlager” [pop songs usually about love associated in Latvia with German culture] – melodic and similar to each other. We get happy about the Bintang (Indonesian word for star) beer cans in the fridge of the ferry cafeteria. In the water there are unknown long fish swimming, visible are many schools of little silvery fish. Sometimes some flying fish disturbed by the ship flies by. Everyone sleeps for a long stretch of road to renew the sleep resources “sweated out” during the night drive.

After 4h of journey we notice islands. When we get out of the ferry we arrive in a considerable scorch, the hostess Irina is waiting for us, divides us along 2 boats and brings us to a lovely corner of paradise on the Togean island. Palms, white sand, small houses on stilts, hammocks, warm sea. Some warming up in snorkelling. Wonderfully delicious dinner with fish, rice, fruits, the palm wine bought the previous evening. We introduce ourselves to 4 Finnish people and sing some songs (Ai Sulavesi stūru stūriem, Maza zaļa vardīte, Anders’ solo about frogs in Swedish and some more beloved Latvian songs).

After the dinner we hold an improvised disco on the beach in the light of shining plankton. Suddenly around 20:30 the generator breaks down. In a complete happiness we go to sleep. There is no light, no TV, not possible to charge the electronics. Nothing is disturbing our tender sleep – neither in houses, neither in tents, nor in hammocks. Only the she-dog Lucky steals the wet clothes hung out for drying (especially Rudolf’s) and chews them at the trunk of a palm with much care. Some bigger crabs get found and involved in a photosession. Silently are lulling and singing cicadas. In our camp and in Indonesia all is calm.

Agnese’s notes:
The ferry is named Tuna Tomini and it goes several times a week from the harbour east of Ampana.
Some of us took the mattresses for sleeping from the business class on the ferry. It seems to be fine, just need to pay 10’000IDR for the “rental”. If you want to sleep – absolutely worth it!
The electricity gets switched on at around the sunset time around 6pm and off at around 11pm in the Sunset Beach “resort” normally.
The boat cannot accommodate 12 people plus the captain and Irina at the same time, so we had to split.

Hier kommt die Sonne (Rammstein)

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March 9th

They say the sleep is better in a fresh air. This seems to be not the case this time. I wake up several times during the night. The history keeps silent on whether that’s the noise of the Molucca sea waves or the firm sleeping place which is not letting me sleep till the moment when the others are also waking up. It’s rather the firm sleeping place as I have foresightedly left the mattress at home…
Here one has to explain that we set up the base camp on the previous evening on the sea side – some under the mosquito net, some in the tent like me, some just in sleeping bag.
So I am looking through the net of the tent entrance and see that the Sun has risen quite above the horizon. Nothing has been missed and the camp is waking up bit by bit, our travellers’ group is gathering the sleeping accessories and preparing for the Big Event. Special glasses get distributed, cameras with light filters get set up and everyone reserves the nicest square meters of the beach for themselves.
Our activities are also observed by several Indonesians which arrived on the beach in the morning with their mopeds. They are, however, shyly sitting in the bush and our contact does not happen.

At 7:30 IT starts, first as a slight gap in the Sun’s puck that looks like someone would have bitten a round biscuit. Later it becomes similar to the protagonist of the classical computer game Pacman till around 8:44 we await a moment when for 3 minutes the Sun gets lost from the firmament. No, in fact it is not getting lost anywhere, just the puck of the Moon gets in the front of it with its broad back and in these latitudes, where we have come to not in the most easiest way, a strange twilight sets in for a moment. With the diminishing of the Sun’s light it gets noticeably colder. There were some clouds in the sky since the early morning which, when the eclipse was approaching, tried to cover the Sun, but they didn’t have courage to spoil the most important moment.
Meanwhile the first Indonesian group gets replaced by some other young generation Sun observers who have the special glasses as well in their inventory.
To describe the eclipse itself nothing suitable comes to the mind. It is indescribable by words.

When the brightness of the Sun comes back a photo of the united Latvia-Sweden eclipse observers’ group is made. The last joy in the water on this coast and we get ready for going back. After the Indonesian boys have shown us their tricks in the water, they climb palms and get us more than ten coconuts for which they get a small but fair fee. The coconut water turns out to be very refreshing.

At 10:30 we start driving with an aim to reach Ampana during this day – a place from where it is planned for us to go to Togean islands. Since it is a hot day, the crews crave for another swim. A half-suitable place gets found on the seaside and the heated bodies refresh in the warm sea.

We continue our trip for a bit more than an hour and then our bright and important day is, however, darkened by a “cloud” – we get a phone call from the crew of the third car with a message that their car has broken down and does not move. Since we are quite some stretch of the road in front of them, we return to evaluate the situation. All the signs are showing that the car has got left without a clutch which has not managed to withstand the stress of the several days in mountain serpentines. There are no tools and solutions initially, but we must do something. In the closest village using the “rich knowledge of Indonesian language” a durable rope gets bought and we pull the defective car to the Salodik village. The previously acquired new acquaintance Ipin gets called who promises to come and help.
Of course, this turn of events changes our plan considerably.

After a long discussion and involvement of several Indonesian “specialists” the solution is as follows – we trust the car to the locals together with a set sum of the many-zeroes money which would be necessary for its repair and also leaving in this car a big part of our belongings so everyone could move to the two other cars (luckily they are seven-seaters after all). In this way we would continue our road to Ampana, but the car after the repair would be delivered there by the locals and we would get it back after returning from the Togean islands. The risk, as a matter of course, rather great, but we don’t have any other acceptable options at 11pm.
Then the most complicated starts as after the already long day we still decide to go to Ampana where we arrive in the ferry terminal at 3:45am. The previously planned schedules have failed so we without pleasure choose to enjoy the not-so-comfortable hotel named “car” till the departure of the ferry.

The day of the first bath

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March 7th

Today we wake up in Poso – the second biggest city in Central Sulawesi region if I am not mistaken. We slept on the last floor (3rd floor by Latvian standards, 2nd by UK) and it was one of the highest buildings around. There is no wifi here, but a good reception for mobile data, so I upload Ilgoni’s article before heading out.
The breakfast is arranged at 6:30 and incuded in the hotel price, but instead of fried rice that they had promised us for breakfast just before 7am we get some jam sandwiches and cream buns, plus tea/coffee. The receptionist can only say ‘sorry’. But I’m not surprised a bit. Everything happens slowly in Sulawesi, and likely the rice would take even longer time to be prepared.

We head out, get some petrol and then continue in the direction of Ampana, that is east. After a couple of kilometers we can see the Celebes sea on our left side and it will stay there all the day. It looks lovely and soon after we cannot stand to stay in the cars anymore. We stop and most of us get in the water which is very warm. Much warmer than one gets in Latvia at any time. I could perhaps stay in the whole day. After the first impression some people go to get their snorkeling gear and only then I realise that we have been swimming above a real coral reef. The corals are perhaps not the most beautiful I have seen, but there is still a big diversity both in the shape and the colour. And there are many nice and diverse fish among them, I like the stripy ones the most. After we head back to the cars we notice a motor-cyclist has stopped to ask us for a selfie. We have got used to this by now…

Near the town of Marowo we ask the locals for hotsprings. Air-pana is the Indonesian word for it, directly translated as water-hot. The locals say it’s about 7 kilometers ahead. Unfortunately when the locals arrange some motorcyclist to show us the way, he hears ‘Ampana’ and leads us 30km ahead to that town. Well, we will try to find them again on our way back, I guess…

In Ampana we find some bigger shop to get some supplies for the next 3 or so days (bigger than a kiosk several of which can be found in every village and considerably more in every town along the roadside of the main road. Also we find a post office which only has 10 (very basic and not at all touristy) postcards in total. We have been said that there is no water in Pangkalaseang village which is our ultimate destination for observing the eclipse, so we try to buy some. The biggest bottle the shop has is 6l and there is only 2 of those. We take both and hope to buy the 20l bottle in a kiosk on the roadside where we saw them being sold. But it turns out that one needs to have the bottle and it can be only filled in the kiosk with filtered tap water. Filtered tap water is not ideal but we still thought better than none. Yet it turns out one can only get water here if one has the bottle itself. Our big bottle is still full of water so we leave without any more.

More beautiful sights, more palms, more winding roads and another swim in the sea. In the evening we arrive in the Pagimana village and find a guesthouse between the main road and the sea. It has whole 2 air-conditioned rooms and an extra we had not expected to find here – wifi. Most of us squeeze in the 2 rooms leaving 3 other people to try to not suffocate in a non-AC one with an open window. Some fish are swimming in an enclosed area next to the guesthouse. Most of us pick some of them for supper while I will eat chicken instead. The guesthouse also has some beer which most of us have been craving for a couple of days already. The fish and chicken are delicious even though the supper is not cheap by the local standards. We talk and joke a bit. Then Ilgonis suggests going for a walk and most people join. I stay to translate Gunita’s article.

When they come back they have given the Big Dipper constellation a new name – ‘Bucket’ as that’s what we have been using instead of shower for last 2 nights and will do tonight as well. They have also made some new friends and learned about a road ahead which gets closed between certain times. We need to make it there before it closes around 8am, so tomorrow everyone must be packed by 6:30, then have breakfast and leave at 7am sharp. Time for some sleep, it has been another beautiful day!