02/02 to 04/02/2014 - 6 days of sheer boredom waiting for the ferry.

From Sape, Sumbawa to Labuanbajo, Flores Indonesia.

I made the attempt to cycle the coastal road back to Bima simply to clock up the kilometers whilst waiting for the ferry to depart to Flores. It was silly of me to think that the road would at some point become more manageable to cycle on but instead it progressively got worse to a point that you would have not even considered it a road. Cycling the 100km on a road in such lousy condition I disappointedly turned around and went back to Sape where I spent the next 2 nights in a cheap place in town hoping a ferry would depart sooner rather than later.
I honestly can say I didn't do anything in these days other than pursuit my new found passion for macro photography where I would spend many hours wandering around the small garden of the hotel looking for small insects to photograph.
With the exciting news that a ferry was finally due to depart to Flores at some time on the 4th of February I hastily headed back to the port were quite a few westerners were much in the same situation as me however they had not spent nearly quite as long as I had eagerly waiting any means of departure off Sumbawa.
With complete misguided information from the locals providing me with a plethora of varied times in which the ferry would depart I eventually got my ticket to board the ferry.
Happy days!

Here I am going to provide details of what I was told of the schedule from the local people and the actual times between leaving Sape, Sumbawa to Labuanbajo, Flores:

Ferry departure time on the 4th of Feb 2014, information provided by the locals: 8am, 10am, 2pm, 5pm, 10pm, 12pm with 3am and 4am the following day. The time we actually departed was 3am on the morning of the 5th after boarding the boat at 9:30pm. (5.5 hours of waiting in the harbour)

Time at which you can purchase the ticket to board ferry: 2 hours before all these times up until midnight. This turned out to be 8:45pm.
Trip duration: typically 9 hours. This turned out to be (surprisingly) less than 6 hours on an incredibly calm ocean where all the passengers expected rough unforgiving seas with relentless winds which was the sole reason why the ferry had been stationed at the port for the past week. Bullshit! The weather and conditions were very conducive for all vessels to cross the ocean.

The moral of all this: in Indonesia you never know the times at which public transportation is going to run or if at all. An expression that we use while tree planting in Canada can be adopted here. "Hurry up and wait!"

I can only hope the boat ill be taking doesn’t end up looking like this…