Day 275: Sunrise on the Kelimutu Crater Lakes — School Visit — Lunch at Mopi’s Place — Waterfall Swimming
Our alarm went off at 4 am. Eek. We’ve learned that any wakeup call earlier than 6 requires some kind of bribe. Starting in Asia, which had a bunch of early wakeup calls to beat the heat on tours, Teddy somehow started showing them YouTube videos of Woody Woodpecker cartoons to lure them out of bed. It stuck.
So with Woody on the iPad, they got dressed and brushed their teeth and we all met Marino and Yopi in the pre-dawn darkness by reception.
The ride was about 30 minutes on very, very curvy mountain roads. Yopi drove slowly, which I was grateful for.
Eventually we parked at the entrance to the Kelimutu National Park, and started our walk up to the summit. Marino led the way with a flashlight. It was chilly and got windier and windier the higher we ascended. We were well layered up.
Amazingly, the kids did not fall or even whine! I think the absence of heat cuts out a lot of complaining. About 30 minutes of “hiking” uphill (there was a concrete path and stairs), we reached a little viewing platform that looked out over two of three crater lakes.
By now a very orange ball of sun was peeking up from behind some thick clouds in the far off distance and the sky was lightening.
This was pretty spectacular. The extinct Kelimutu volcano has three crater lakes, each filled with its own distinct color water. Today two of the lakes are a bright turquoise and one is black. In the past they’ve varied from everything from red to white to green. All depends on the mineral makeup of the water at any given time, which changes with whatever the volcano insides are feeling that month or year. That’s my highly scientific explanation.
There were a smattering of other tourists there, but not many. After witnessing Europe and Asia’s over-tourism, it’s kind of wild to see something so unique and special exist without a swarm of jostling tourists. I kept thinking to myself: There’s no way this is going to last.
Eventually we made our way back down the hill. We stopped to listen to the sound of the birds — indigenous to this part of the island and loud and echo-y across the valley.
Willa tripped and fell spread eagle on the path once, and then we had to stop at a cement outhouse toilet for an extended James bathroom break. Finally got back to the car around 7 am and headed home for breakfast. Marino joined us at the hotel for coffee and banana pancakes.
Amazing how long a day can seem when you wake up at 4 am! I so wish I was a natural early riser (though grass is always greener – Lobsy is an early riser and always says she wishes she could sleep in just once).
After a couple hours of quiet time — Willa read, I wrote, Teddy and James played Yahtzee outside on the porch — Marino picked us back up.
View of paddies from our porch. Not a fancy place at all, but so well located.
I think most people do one night here and peel outta town after they see the crater lakes, but we planned for a more leisurely, kid-friendly two nights here. To fill the afternoon, we had two outings:
1. A school visit. Our travel advisor or Indonesia, Pedro, has a personal love of Flores and has sought out this particular village school with Marino as a place visitors can support.
We caught the 53 uniformed elementary students at recess and Marino introduced us to them and our kids got to ask questions of the students (eg, raise your hand if your favorite animal is a dog [all]. Raise your hand if you have puppies at home [all].) The kids sang us three songs — the Indonesian national anthem, a Christian church song (it’s a Catholic school) and a local song in their dialect. They also did Head Shoulders Knees and Toes for us which was fun.
We’d brought school supplies — a fresh notebook and pen for each kid. Would’ve obviously preferred to have the teacher distribute after we’d gone, but the she and Marino had each kid line up to receive their handout. Criiiinge. Maybe on a fundamental level this sort of nuance-free style of charity is a simple way for Willa and James to understand the general concept? It still just feels sooo white-saviory and awkward to do the handing out like this. The students don’t need to see that it was a charity handout from westerners, you know? Struggling with that. But each kid did get to practice their English as they took their notebook — “My name is” and “How are you” and “thank you” which was good.
Pics by guide Marino 
After that we all headed down to a dusty soccer pitch for a few games. The girls sat on the sidelines while the boys played. Everyone was encouraging James to jump in and play, which eventually he did. Willa ran out there too — even though no one had thought to ask her (myself included). Proud of her and mad at her parents!
That’s not Teddy’s beer. It was there when we got there.
At once point Willa came over to me and whispers in my ear, “Mom, there’s a little boy over there who has a BIG cut on his leg and it’s bleeding everywhere and he doesn’t even seem to CARE!” Ha!
Speaking of, James fell and scraped up his leg and was bleeding but didn’t cry or really react at all because there were so many kids around.
Marino and the teacher were shouting at the kids in Indonesian to pass the ball to James so we had to tell them (nicely) multiple times to knock it off and let our kids fend for themselves.
2. We left the school and visited its neighboring village. Marino wanted to tell us about the local beliefs and architecture, but the kids were only interested in three tiny puppies they discovered living under a house.
3. For lunch we ate at an awesome spot called Mopi’s Place. Marino and Yopi joined us. We joked that we needed a picture of Yopi eating lunch at Mopi’s to send to my brother Copey. It actually would have been fitting because Mopi’s is a Jamaican/stoner/beachy/tiki-type indoor-outdoor restaurant and live music spot. Owned by a local with an afro named Willy and his Aussie wife. Copey would love it! We were the only ones there.
4. Last stop of the day was up the road at a local swimming hole. We walked down a steep path past a pig pen with piglets and some nice grannies doing laundry in the river until we got to the perfect little swimming hole beneath a tall but gentle waterfall. Only other people for a while were a group of local boys. They were showing off with death-defying jumps that made me wince.
At one point this family we recognized showed up — a Dutch (?) couple and their two teenage kids, a boy and a girl. They’d been on our flight to Ende and we’d seen them that morning at the crater lakes. I only mention them because later in the day James announced that he thought “the teenager girl from the waterfall” was pretty. Willa added that the teenager boy was handsome…and James earnestly agreed. Their awareness and fascination with teenagers is endlessly entertaining for me for some reason.*
By 4 we were back at the hotel, showering up and relaxing before an early dinner. This place serves a set menu of simple Indonesian food. Again, Indonesian food is uncomplicated and good. I like it.
We ordered a cold Bintang and as we poured it into our glasses, Willa looked on longingly and goes, “I wish EYE could just glug down fizzy drinks whenever I wanted.” Glug down!
I fell asleep at 9 pm. I awoke at 10 pm to Teddy saying James had had a massive bloody nose all over his sheets. I awoke again at 11 pm to Teddy standing on a chair trying to shoo a lizard out of the room (it had fallen from the ceiling onto the mosquito net platform above our bed and was stranded there. He swiped it off the platform but instead of running out the open door, it scurried into our curtains, where it would just have to stay. Tail-less, I should add, since Teddy appeared to knock its tail off in the process. Also, “fun fact:” knocked-off gecko tails still squirm. Yes, it was revolting.).
Eventually we all got to sleep.
MISC
For the record, geckos DO fall from ceilings.
*I’ll never forget my niece Lula’s (Cope’s daughter’s) take on teenagers. When she was 8 I asked why she liked teenagers so much — she said, “What’s not to like? They’re kids and grownups at the same time!”
The crater lakes were unlike anything we’ve ever seen. We thought about other insane natural wonders we’ve seen this year. Not just beautiful places (we’ve seen countless of those), but distinct, individual natural wonders. I put those 2,000-year-old baobab trees from Zambia up there. Dung beetle ingenuity in action is another.
