Amazing

This weekend, I'm spending a quiet weekend at home. Last weekend, I had a not-so-quiet weekend at Pulau Seribu, or Thousand Islands. We left our house at 5:45 to make sure we got to the dock by 6:30 a.m. We thought there was only one boat and that it left at 7:00 a.m. sharp. We took two cabs. One of them (mine) found the dock with no problems. There were several boats leaving for Pramuka Island—our destination. The first left at about quarter til seven, loaded down with people and cargo and not so many life vests. Watching the first boat leave, I was a little concerned. I didn't relish having to store my cell phone and camera in the plastic bags I brought while swimming to shore from a sinking boat. One person in my group had been to Pulau Seribu before and her boat actually did start to sink. Lucky for them, they were close enough to another island to crash land and evacuate.

There are lots of little moments in Indonesia where I think "Well, this boat (or this car or this whatever) goes every day to the island and even though it looks as if one good wave would sink it, it must be sea worthy."

But for last week, we didn't end up on the first boat, which was the most crowded, because the second cab, containing our friends, got a bit lost. It was stressful because we didn't know how long it would be until we had just one boat left. They kept filling up and leaving. One gone...two gone...three gone...four gone. At seven, our friends told us we should go without them. But there was one boat left. The three of us stood there, not sure whether we should get on the last boat or hold out hope. Then, finally, at quarter after seven, they came running around the corner. It was a good thing too, because the boat was just about to leave...

Just kidding--it's Indonesia. The boat didn't leave until it filled up, which was at about quarter til eight.

We had an uneventful ride out to Pramuka Island that took, as promised, about two and a half hours. Pulau Seribu is actually just over 100 islands in a little string starting just a half-hour off the coast. The water doesn’t start to clear until about an hour into the trip. In Jakarta, it is a nasty, and smelly, brown color with loads of trash floating in it.

As it started to look a little bluer, we started to see flying fish. In my mind, I had confused flying fish with sword fish that jump out of the water, but don’t actually fly. Flying fish—or at least the ones we saw—were little. They weren’t much bigger than perch or small walleye. But they jumped out of the water and then went skimming across it. Some of them only managed a few skips before they went back under. But some of them cruised across for at least a hundred feet, skipping and flying.

Aside from the flying fish, there wasn’t much to look at except for blue water and the occasional boat. I practiced a little bit of Bahasa Indonesia with a man sitting by us on the front of the boat. He was a teacher too, and last year he lived on Pramuka Island and taught at the school there. It’s the only school for the entire island chain and kids who live on the other islands arrive by school boat. I wanted to ask him how I could apply for a job, but my Indonesian isn’t that good yet!

In the past, when I have traveled, I’ve always preferred to have the details nailed down. It probably comes as no surprise that I’m a bit of a planner. Here though, planning ahead is more expensive because the hotels that you can book online or through an agent cost more. And, in some cases, even if you book ahead, they give your room away, so it makes sense to just go and figure things out when you get there.

I learned that this is especially true when you are taking a boat to an island that is expecting tourists. We got to Pramuka Island and before we were even off the dock, we’d been met by a man offering to help us. His office was right off the dock so we went with him and within ten minutes, we had a place to stay for the night and we had chartered a boat for the day to take us to snorkeling spots and other islands, complete with a guide. They quoted us a price and I think we were expected to bargain them down, but it was so ridiculously low by any standard that any of us were used to that we didn’t bargain at all. We just asked to see the place first.

It was a house, with one large, air-conditioned bedroom, one living room, and a bathroom and shower. It was clean and it was right on the water. They brought us an extra mattress, so all six of us could fit in the bedroom, and we were golden. Total cost: about US$35. And we split it six ways. You can see why we didn’t feel the need to bargain him down. The boat for the day was even cheaper.

I love being on boats and last Saturday was no exception. The boat had plenty of cover, so I could stay out of the sun, and we motored around, taking pictures as we went. There’s a lot of coral around the islands and the water is incredibly shallow. This means that we saw people in the distance who looked as if they were walking on water, hundreds of yards out from shore. There were also many fishing houses, and even a restaurant, built on stilts in the middle of the sea.

We finally came to our first snorkeling stop and jumped in. I love to swim and I used a mask and snorkel plenty of times growing up around lakes in Minnesota and Indiana. But I’ve always been a little bit afraid of swimming in the ocean. I knew I was afraid but I knew I was going to do it any way and, after sitting on the edge of the boat for a few minutes, mustering up the courage, I jumped in.

It was like nothing I’ve ever seen before. It wasn’t particularly colorful, like coral I’ve seen in aquariums or on television, but it was so beautiful. Coral fanned out all around us, in pinks and browns, in different sizes and shapes, and at different depths. There were fish swimming everywhere, but again, not the gigantic schools of them you see on nature programs. There were also these bright blue starfish, clinging to bits of coral. Our guide went down and picked one up. He also encouraged us to swim down and touch bits of it, which I thought was a little weird. He obviously wasn’t a conservationist! In any case, I had to fight with my anxiety most of the time we were snorkeling, so I stayed on the surface.

I did fine. As long as I was with the group and didn’t stare for too long into the bright blue expanse off the edge of the reef, I could concentrate on what I was looking at. But we kept swimming further and further away from the boat and at a certain point, my anxiety overcame my enjoyment and I decided to swim back.

After everybody was done snorkeling, we went to an island that is also a national park and nature reserve. There was only one house on the island—for the park ranger and his family, I think. It only took about fifteen minutes to walk around the entire shoreline and it wasn’t so good for swimming because there were too many rays in the water. But it was beautiful. There were huge pieces of gnarled driftwood on the shore and, as I walked, there were tiny crabs scooting here and there. There are also blocks of Mangrove trees planted in the water around most of the islands we saw. I learned later that they are a good natural defense against erosion.

After a long time relaxing on the island, it was on to another snorkeling spot. I’d had enough for the day and stayed on the boat. I know I’ll go again though, and maybe some day I won’t have anxiety about it. We ended our day with dinner at the floating restaurant and then, once we were back on Pramuka, a walk around the town in the dark.

The following day, I woke up early and opened the front door to a gaggle of children swimming in front of the house. Eventually, another person in my group woke up and we got some coffee from a little outdoor place where we sat and watched the kids swimming. When we were bored of sitting, another friend had joined us and we went for a walk around the village again. It looked quite different in the daylight and people were mostly outside of their houses, cooking or sitting. The kids were adorable, as they are everywhere. Where I live in Jakarta, the kids spend their weekends playing video games or walking around the mall. On the islands, kids were doing the same stuff that I did when I was a kid, riding bikes, swimming, and making up their own games. It was great to see!

While not everyone in Indonesia speaks English, they all seem to know “Hello, Miss,” which is what we heard from almost everyone we passed. We walked until we found the opposite shore of the island and then we turned back. By the time we got back to our house, everybody was up and we chartered another boat to take us to an island with a nice beach where we could spend the rest of the morning.

On that beach island, we met some guys with jet skis and some local boys, who stalked us until they worked up their courage to come and talk to us. It was a nice way to spend a couple hours. We got tired of the sun and went closer to the dock to sit in the shade and wait for our boat to come back for us. We had to be back on Pramuka to catch the boat back to Jakarta at 1 o’clock. While we were sitting, we started talking to a bunch of guys from Jakarta who were with the jet skiers. These guys were all Harley Davidson enthusiasts who take several trips a year on their motorcycles. Each summer, they fly to a different city in the U.S. and ride from there to Sturgis, South Dakota for the big annual Harley fest (the one where John McCain offered up his wife in 2008).

As we got more and more concerned that our boat wasn’t returning, we started talking about what we would do if we missed the boat back to Jakarta. The guys heard us talking about it and offered us a ride back with them. Turns out, they go over almost every weekend to relax on the islands. Some of them drive the jet skis. The others ride on a friend’s yacht. Yep. That’s right. They offered us a ride back to Jakarta on a yacht. But first, they took us to another friend’s private island where we were treated to a lovely lunch.

Who has enough money to buy an island? I don’t know and we didn’t get to meet the owner because he was on the way from the airport as we dined in style on his dime. We chatted with a lot of the guys (there were only a few women along—and about thirty to forty guys). Many of them had excellent command of English. At least one that I talked to went to school in the U.S. and then stayed there to work for several years. We also met a few police officers who were invited to lunch and we ended up coming back to Jakarta on a police boat instead of the yacht, which was super cool. It was super fast and the weather had turned a little bit stormy so, although we were out in front of the storm, the waves were huge and we got sprayed quite a bit.

So, to recap: boats, beaches, sun, snorkeling, ride on a yacht, lunch at a private island, and delivery back to Jakarta courtesy of the local police.

Quite a weekend.