August 1, 2022
The following are just my opinions and I’m sure Cyndi will violently disagree with them – after all, she even liked Queensland!
I’ll say to start out that I’m having a down day but maybe this is the perfect time to point out the hardships we’re experiencing in cruising Indonesia.
Officialdom run amuck!
We have a six month visa, but no, not really. It turns out we have two month visas that need to be renewed every two months for a total of six months. Each renewal takes about a week and costs several hundred US dollars. (2,000,000 Rupiah each for the visa, 670,000 Rupiah for the sponsor letter and postage for a total of $311 USD, not to mention the extra time in ports and going back and forth to immigration at least three times.)
Also, we can’t renew (supposedly) until a week before our visa runs out and we can only renew in certain cities. Combine that with having to time the weather conditions, and it’s a challenging mess.
Difficult Cities!
So far, the “big” cities we’ve been to are Saumlaki (where we checked in), Tual (for our first visa renewal), Sorong and now Ternate. The first three had very limited selection in the way of groceries. Ternate is a little better but still limited. There’s nothing here in the way of boat supplies. Our outboard’s gas tank is leaking and there’s just no way to replace it here.
None of the cities have had what you would call a dinghy landing. We tie up to walls covered with inflatable-dinghy-ending oysters or to boats where we need to run Ninja Warrior-esque obstacles to get to shore. In Tual, it was the big ball. We had to traverse a giant, rolling fender from the Coast Guard boat to a narrow dock. Failure to do it properly would land you in the hospital, or perhaps even dead!
Below is a 12 second clip of one of the easier attempts at high tide…
Rolly, Deep Anchorages near the Cities
I’m surprised at how excited I am now to find a sixty foot deep patch to drop our anchor. I’m even surprisingly comfortable with eighty feet. Before Indo, we would only do that as a last resort. Here, it’s every day.
Right now, off of Ternate, we’re anchored in 70 feet and rolling around like usual. There aren’t protected anchorages near the cities we need to be near to provision or renew visas.
Even at the remote places we’ve visited, the water is very deep. I’m so used to this now that I’m shocked when there’s some reasonable depth below Legacy. The other day, we traveled ten miles to get a couple of quiet nights. The satellite images looked like deep water to me – very deep. The charts, both C-Maps and Navionics just showed solid reef and were useless as usual.
As we entered the area where we’d planned to anchor, I was shocked and so excited to find it only 30 feet deep. Not only that, there was so much protected 30 foot deep area where we could anchor that the wealth of riches confused me, and I had a hard time choosing a spot.
It was strange. It was shallow, it was calm and it was quiet!
Noisy Mosques
The towns and cities we’ve anchored off of have had mosques all along the shore, mostly surrounding poor Legacy at anchor. The first call to prayer seems to blare from huge, overpowered speakers atop towers at about 4:20 AM. There seems to be another round every few hours.
Here in Ternate, whoever gets up close to 4 AM, will put the hatch boards in the companionway to try to block out some of the noise. Maybe the term “noise” is disrespectful, but to my ears, I’m just calling it like I hear it! Cyndi has started wearing earplugs to sleep. It helps but I still find her awake and reading in the wee hours.
Closing up the boat makes the boat hot. The heat here is another Indo issue but one that we’re dealing with well, for the most part. Our giant fans help a lot. Today is extremely hot and so humid, with very little breeze. (Yet even without the breeze, we’re still hobby-horsing and rolling like crazy.)
Nice but Annoying People!
“Hello Mister” times 10,000 is what we hear as we walk down the streets. We are a real oddity here and the unwanted attention is so tiring. In response to those who rattle something at us in Indonesian, we’ve been trying to learn to say “Sorry, we don’t speak Indonesian” but that just seems to prompt another outpouring of words we don’t understand.
They really are nice people and I feel bad for how I’m starting to react to the constant shouting at us. I know they are just being friendly, but aaaargh! Cyndi says she feels like she’s walking down the street in a Batman costume. I think we now know what it must be like to be famous and no thank you!
Remote Times are Wonderful
We’ve spent a lot of time here away from cities – away from anyone – in the intense natural beauty and it’s been wonderful. Between those trips to out-of-the-way places, we must stock up to survive three or four weeks without shops or markets. The hardship of doing that is starting to make me think the wonders of being in the beautiful Indonesian wilderness might almost not be worth it.
I’m Exhausted
We’re in eastern Indonesia and maybe that was the hardest part of Indo to start with. I’m told as we get west, the cities and towns will get to be more like what we’re used to. In my head, I’m likening this to French Polynesia where we started out in the Marquesas, then the Tuamotus. Neither of which had much in the way of goods or services. It wasn’t until we got to Tahiti that living got easier.
But in French Polynesia, we were mostly ignored in that wonderful, French way. It’s so hard being Batman every day! I really understand why he pretended to be Bruce Wayne! Maybe I can dress up as Mulyadi Setiawan? (A Google search result for “common Indonesian name.)
In Conclusion
Would I recommend cruising Indo to someone else? I’m just not sure yet. We’ll give it some time and I’ll try to keep an open mind. I love the wonderful people (just please stop yelling “hey mister” at me) and I really love the natural beauty. I pretty much hate the towns. Time will tell which side wins out.
There’s nothing we can do but keep on going. We will gradually head west and see how that changes the balance.
-Rich
If you find this information useful, or entertaining, perhaps…
