Sept 8-12
Hi All,
I’m writing this blog as we are on passage from Lombok to Lovina Bali……ahhhhh, Bali, sounds so exotic:))))
YES…..BABY KENNEDY RENEE YOUNGBLOOD IS BORN!!!!!! It was a very long labor for Dana and David but she got it done and all is well with Mom and baby. Since it was a long process and there were some quiet periods Kathy was especially stressed and nervous. She woke up very early Friday am to check messages and I hear this loud scream……SHE IS HERE……well, no sleeping after that. We quickly read all the messages, see some pictures and arrange a Facetime call and we get to see baby Kennedy about 5 hours after birth……and she is gorgeous and very healthy……has already eaten and is now in an angelic state of sleep!!!! We did indeed celebrate YB style that night with lots of champagne!!!!
And now, the rest of the story on Lombok!!!
As everyone who had climbed Rinjani had told me, the next day I would be very, very sore……and YES, that was the case…..oweeeee!!!!! It took me a good 2 days to feel better and by about the 4th day I was close to being back in the game…..whoa!!!! We had dinner the night I returned in the marina restaurant with a lot of the other Rally boats……some didn’t say too much but others enthusiastically congratulated me which was nice to hear as I was pretty happy about it all. But the best compliments came from the locals who had climbed Rinjani…..way to go Papa, congrats Papa, you really climbed Rinjani Papa!!!! We had drinks one night with Molly, I’ll introduce later in the blog and Peter, who owned another resort…..Peter had done the climb at 55 and was very impressed I had done it at 62…..you indeed were the oldest on the mountain…..they could think of only one other person who was older who had done it……they both gave me a lot of compliments. When I laid my head on the pillow that night I had a big grin and remembered the Harrison Ford line…..I still got it baby:))))
Well…….we are not sure if what we experienced the last few days is just the Indonesian culture or some hard working capitalist ingenuity or just a random set of problems/issues we got to experience…..
Fueling: We had decided not to take on fuel in Labuan Bajo as we discovered this marina could arrange a fuel truck to come to the dock……great, so much easier than jerry cans and hopefully cleaner fuel too!! So we made the arrangements before I left to climb Rinjani and Kathy would pay as soon as a price was established. Kathy did pay and kept reminding them we wanted diesel……not biodiesel…..yep, you guessed it,…..a little later the marina tells Kathy it is indeed biodiesel…..oh, no….we can’t take that…..why not, a lot of local boats use it…..Kathy explains about issues with seals/o-rings and well, finally says we will have to cancel…..well, what if we can get diesel next week…..ok, but when…..they finally come back and say they won’t know what is delivered next week until the barge arrives….ok, we will cancel the truck and take on jerry cans…..and we know you can only handle 500 liters/day so we will just take 1000 liters….oh no, we can do 2000 liters in one day….seriously…..yes, the woman Leah handles all this for us and she can do it….ok, we will take the whole 2000!!
Well, indeed, Friday night around 7pm Leah shows up with the 1st 500 liters….25 20-liter cans. We tell her we will empty around 7am the next morning which we do with our portable fuel pump. They take the cans away by 7:30am and are back by 9:00 with the next 500…..cool, we might be done by lunch…..oh, silly us. The 3rd batch has not shown up by 1ish so I go up to the office…..oh, do you want your fuel….yes, we are waiting…..ok, I’ll call as I’m sure the remaining 1000 is ready. Sure enough around 2 the 3rd batch shows up. The we wait again……around 4 nothing…..Kathy goes up to the office and we find out their truck has broken down but it will arrive soon. Well…..nothing by 5ish…..we are both tired, in smelly diesel clothes….especially me as I’m handling the cans on the dock with the hose and the cans are pretty dirty…..we decide to shut it down and get Mystic cleaned up and go take showers. Indeed, around 6:15 I see this man with a wheelbarrow hauling 4 cans through about 200 yards of soft sand beach…..that guy is strong……I find an interpreter and he tells me the rest will be delivered over the next few hours……and, it was. When we came back from dinner the whole lot of 25 cans were on the dock!!! So we were up at 7am the next day, emptied the cans and then spent the next hour scrubbing down Mystic, the fuel pump and hoses and by 9am we were done…..whoa…..about 26 hours:)))))
Provisioning: There is a native woman named Molly who married a Canadian and has started a restaurant and a western/local food distribution business and she caters to cruisers…..fantastic…..and she can get LETTUCE and AVOCADOS……and she can get Bintang beer in cans…….and she delivers right to the boat……Kathy says sign us up!!! We go in Thursday to place the order and arrange for her to deliver on Saturday after lunch as we know we will be there due to fueling. Molly does not come so Kathy calls around 3ish…..oh, I’m coming but I’m totally swamped…..I’ll see you around 6pm and explain. Now we had gotten to know Molly as she likes to come to the restaurant for HH and we had several great conversations. Indeed, Molly shows up around 6pm and the truck is quickly descended upon by 15-20 people from the other Rally who are now in Lombok…..uh oh. Kathy is still in the shower and when she gets out she walks over to the truck hoping our order is still there…..Molly says oh yes, I boxed it up separately so no one could take anything…..and here are your 3 cases of Bintang…..but it’s bottles and we ordered cans…..grumble, grumble, somebody took your cans but no worries, I’ll go back to the shop and get cans and we will deliver it all to Mystic in 10 minutes…..indeed Molly comes with her staff and all is delivered as promised!!!! What had happened was on Sat am about 6 other Rally boats showed up and demanded their orders be delivered today. So Molly was scrambling…..even took supplies from her restaurant……and get this, while Molly is talking to us a woman comes up and physically grabs Molly and says “I need to talk now”. Molly says ok, but let me finish with this gentleman. The woman starts yelling, NO, NOW PLACE ORDER!! I tell Molly to go ahead we will see you later in the restaurant…..then Molly is surrounded by about 6 other people all shouting out their order……OMG….and yes, these are cruisers. We were mortified by their behavior and their rude treatment of Molly……arghhhhhh!!!!
Visas: Our visa extension went exactly as promised……we received our stamped passports back in 5 days…..but, oh what a story in between. The process is you fill out the paperwork, it is submitted to Immigration in Mataram., about 1 hour away, it gets processed into the computer system, Immigration calls the marina and sets up an appointment for you to go to Mataram to get all fingers fingerprinted and your picture taken……some kind of antiterrorist system. Our Rally changed the dates to later in Lovina Bali to the anxiety of many people. So, a bunch of boats decided to extend in Medana and had submitted the Friday before the Sunday we arrived. But, they did not submit early enough on Friday so their papers would not be delivered to Immigration until Monday morning…..which was the same as ours as we filled out all the paperwork on Sunday. Mid-week the Immigration computer system crashed and was down for 2 days. Immigration got way behind and just stopped communicating with the marina. That caused a lot of anxt with many people and we were almost assured nothing would happen for us until the following week. Ok, so we go to Plan B…..plenty to do in Lombok. But, a lot of these people had already been here for a while and really, really wanted to get out of Lombok so people got very frustrated with the marina and Immigration. In fact, it got so heated for the Marina that they decided to not do anymore Visa extensions which is really going to screw-up the next Rally. We were the 2nd to last boat to submit but the other boat was going to stay for a while so they were not concerned. It got so heated that Adam, one of the marina managers went to Immigration on Friday to try and get the remaining passports completed and to see if he could get us in Friday afternoon as they needed the dock space for the next Rally. Adam came back dejected and empty handed….no passports and no appointment for us. Well, we were in such a good mood with Baby Kennedy being born nothing fazed us. But, then miraculously, around 1pm the Passports show up for the other people and Adam knocks on our door and says Immigration has called and wants you there ASAP. I have a car coming in a few minutes…..so Kathy and I scramble into our formal clothes…..this is a very traditional Muslim city so I must wear long pants, collared shirt and shoes…..oh, my aching feet::)))) But, we get there a little after 3pm and we are out by 3:30pm…..all is good and our Passports come to the marina the next morning while we are fueling!!!!!
Marina: Well, I’m not sure I’d call this a marina. The docks are in very poor shape with a lot of corrosion on the metal docks….you have to be careful where you walk as you might fall through one of the many holes. They put us close to the beach……about 2′ under the bow as that helped with the weight on the mechanical hinges. The power was only 6 amps…..that barely runs our frequency converter so why bother……and the water is not potable…..but it was a dock we could tie up to and helped Kathy while I was gone. The restaurant was great…..excellent local food…..and wow, were the people nice, courteous, and very, very helpful!!!!!
Gili Air: The Gili’s are a set of 3 beautiful islands about 4 miles from Medana Bay and have become a tourist/resort mecca. They are quite popular but are getting mixed reviews by the cruisers. We were told we’d absolutely luv it and then the opposite. Brian, on sv Furthur, a Selene 48 was here several years ago and loved it. So….we said we gotta go…..but then maybe 5-6 boats told us absolutely do not take Mystic over there and anchor….you are too big for a mooring so you need to anchor out in the channel and there are these big fast ferry boats that come zipping by you and will wake you almost gunnel to gunnel…..yikes….ok, been there done that in Mexico and don’t want to repeat. So, we decided Sunday to take a water taxi and check it out. First, though, you take a land taxi, 15 min, walk or take a horse drawn carriage 10 minutes to the dock, then you get on a ferry, about 10 min plus the wait…….we started from the marina about 10 and get to Gili Air a little after 11. We are initially met with a horde of people…..like 100’s….oh my….we later find out they are queuing for a large ferry but yikes, we could barely move…..then we walk by the garbage dump….yep, right there and it is stinking…..ugh.
Brian had told us to go by Paradise Bar….his favorite…..we walk maybe 15 min and we are seeing one restaurant, resort, dive operation after another…..ok, we need a map…..better yet we ask someone…..oh, Paradise….well, it is closed and the government tore it down….sorry Brain. What about Chillin Out….yep, but you are going the wrong way, turnaround and go about 10-15 min on the right…..so, back through the hordes of people, past the stinking garbage dump and we found another set of restaurants, souvenir shops, dive shops and bars and eventually Chillin Out. We go in and it is very nice…ok, this will work….we see a bunch of beach chairs out on the beach…..we head for them to discover they are all taken….then we look up and down the beach as far as we can see and see the same thing with the beach full….oh, wow….how can there be so many people…..we eventually find a table by the next set of beach loungers and LIG!!!
Now we are going to to this YB style…..in Jost Van Dyke in the BVI’s we went in search of the best painkiller, in Grand Cayman the best mudslides, etc…..so today we decide we will go in search of the best margaritas!!!! We order 2 margaritas, a large Bintang to split and some nachos, as we were so busy fueling/cleaning this am we had not eaten. The margarita is way too strong, the Bintang sort of cold and the nachos……hmmm, the chips were crunchy but it was like a tomato sauce…..hmmm. But we had a delightful conversation with some Dutch backpackers…..and we were starting to relax. Next up was Zipp……the margaritas were too weak, but the Bintang was colder and it had the best wood oven pizza we have had in Indo…..and we got one of the platform beach loungers…..LIG. But, we see the time…yikes…time for one more bar. We go next door to Scallywags….oh, man, luv the name. They get the best margarita award…..just right and the Bintang is ice cold served in a coolie…..LIGI…….then all of a sudden it is 3:15. We were told to be at the ferry dock by 3:30 as the last ferry is 4pm…..ok, we get there and the lady says, we have a fast boat in 5 min or the public one in 30….fast boat please….we get on and we are slammed back into our seats as it takes off at full power waking all the boats in the anchorage severely….we look at each other and say yep, not bringing Mystic over here!!!!
So, that is why we are on our way to Lovina where we will catch up to our Rally….wow, that is novel….but only because they delayed the dates. We hope to do some land tours as well as some diving and catch the last few days of the Rally’s organized activities. After that we are not sure…..the Rally has changed some of the dates and are not having activities in a few places so we will probably skip the next few places and go off on our own before getting to Kalimantan and the orangutans. We are not sure what other people are doing so we may be with some people or on our own, but whatever the case may be, we are sure there will be more adventures to come!!
Hope all is well!!
John
Mystic Moon
GO MYSTIC GO!!!
PS: Pictures in a gallery on the website: https://www.mysticmoonvoyages.com/photo-gallery/nggallery/main-album/Lombok