Pulau Weh
Posted by Sarah O'Neill , Saturday, 16 October 2010 03:20
We got up at the crack of dawn and it was still dark! In a taxi by 7am heading for the bus station. Got our bus to the airport, and were there with plenty of time! Lots of waiting around, but I was pleased as had a coffee in Starbucks, which Ben also did! His first Caramel Macchiato, and he enjoyed it! Our flight was delayed by about 30 minutes, so after even more waiting around, we were finally on our way! Our flight landed at around 1.30pm and we then had to make our way through immigration, as we had left Malaysia and were now in Indonesia. As this part of our trip was unexpected we were not as prepared as usual, and didn’t have ‘the book’! The dive centre we had booked with had been very helpful with lots of information and we knew that Indonesia had recently started issuing visas on arrival. However, we did not know that they cost $25 US dollars, and we had neither dollars or Indonesian Rupiah! The cashpoints were after immigration! They were fine about it, and kept Ben’s passport while he went and got some cash, and then we were able to proceed! In Indonesia we are millionaires! The money here is too crazy and I don’t like it! £1 is 14000 rupiah! As we were the last through immigration they were quite chatty, and when we said where we were diving, he said the man before us was also diving there. We hoped to get a taxi with him to the ferry, but he had already gone.
We got to the ferry and had loads more waiting around to do! There was nothing there to eat and we were getting rather hungry, having only eaten a muffin for breakfast! It left at four, and was a very choppy ride! Got to watch Evan Almighty on the way though, which was fun! We found the guy diving at LumbaLumba and another guy also heading that way and all got a taxi together, which saved us a lot as it was an hour away, and taxi is the only way to get there! I didn’t realise how remote our new location was going to be! The jeep type taxi struggled up massive hills, then back down the, having to avoid cows, goats, monkey and even geese on the roads! Got to the Dive Centre ( called LumbaLumba) which is right on the beach. We were shown to our room, which is a very spacious and new chalet type thing. Found out the hard way that it had a cold shower! Apparently all but one have cold showers! Fans as well, not air con, so a pretty hot time! Signed up for two dives the next day and eventually went for dinner at 7.30pm, we were starving! Hadn’t eaten since breakfast, and we were warned that here the food takes about 45 minutes to an hour to come out! There are about 4 little shacks on the beach all serving similar food. Some of it is available, some of it, we found out, has to be ordered at lunchtime! Things here work a little differently; we literally are in the middle of nowhere!
Post a Comment