The reason for the trip to Sumbawa is to give talks at Universitas Teknologi Sumbawa (UTS). Tim has been invited to speak on archaeology and I've been invited to speak about the bee project. But since we are traveling all this way, we wanted to be sure to see a little of the landscape. Pulau Moyo (Moyo Island) was declared a national park last November and from what I could tell has a large amount of intact forest on the interior so we decided to spend a few days there. We'd thought we would start with a couple days in Sumbawa Besar (the main city on this side of the island) but all the hotels that the UTS rector recommended were fully booked so we did a rapid airport to port transfer and made it in time for what we thought was an 11am or 12pm public boat to Moyo. Turned out we had plenty of time, the boat doesn't leave until it's fully packed, but getting there that early ensured that we actually had space to sit. It was pretty crowded. And AMAZINGLY full. Everyone was returning from market with all of their purchases (most everything needs to be brought to Moyo -- not much agricultural production there). Our stuff was some of the first put into the hold. Then tons of boxes and crates and bags of everything from crackers to eggs to vegetables went on top. Then the lid was shut and the motorbikes and 5gal bottles of drinking water loaded onto the front of the boat. Then bags (and bags and bags) of cement loaded in between everything. I think we finally left the port around 2pm.
Turns out that most days are calm and flat, but periodically winds pick up and rough up the channel between Sumbawa and Moyo. Some days it is so rough that boats cannot pass and people are told to come back and check on another day. Lucky for us, it wasn't that rough, but neither was it flat seas. The older woman behind me laid hands on my back and started praying softly as soon as the boat started pitching. I had to put my camera away because there was so much water blowing over the rails that I worried about destroying the phone, so no photos of it. The lady prayed the whole way, mostly in a soft sing-song way, but occasionally a loud (terrified) "Allah Akbar!" and eventually tears. I ended up holding her hand for most of the ride. The captain was absolutely drenched but didn't seem concerned so I figured we were OK, but there's always that little niggle of doubt. (and with all the market items on the boat, I'm pretty sure they were not wasting valuable space with life jackets, so we had real reason to hope to stay above water :-)
Turns out that most days are calm and flat, but periodically winds pick up and rough up the channel between Sumbawa and Moyo. Some days it is so rough that boats cannot pass and people are told to come back and check on another day. Lucky for us, it wasn't that rough, but neither was it flat seas. The older woman behind me laid hands on my back and started praying softly as soon as the boat started pitching. I had to put my camera away because there was so much water blowing over the rails that I worried about destroying the phone, so no photos of it. The lady prayed the whole way, mostly in a soft sing-song way, but occasionally a loud (terrified) "Allah Akbar!" and eventually tears. I ended up holding her hand for most of the ride. The captain was absolutely drenched but didn't seem concerned so I figured we were OK, but there's always that little niggle of doubt. (and with all the market items on the boat, I'm pretty sure they were not wasting valuable space with life jackets, so we had real reason to hope to stay above water :-)
Pulau Moyo is beautiful! A true island paradise. They are bringing in electric poles (several every few days) on the boats from Sumbawa and I guess they will have 24-hour electric before too long. But right now, the electricity is only on overnight from 6pm-6am which keeps development down and keeps the place beautiful.
We stayed at Maryan Moyo Bungalows which we chose because that seemed to be one of the few locally-owned hotels on the island. Most people come to Moyo for the SCUBA diving (which I can only imagine is amazing) and there are several foreign (French, Dutch, English)-owned resorts on the island. The main one (Moyo Dive Resort) has a couple boats and runs dive tours for both guests and people at other hotels. We did a bunch of snorkeling and it was really great. I'm sure the diving is amazing too, but for the price, I was just as happy with my snorkel.
We stayed at Maryan Moyo Bungalows which we chose because that seemed to be one of the few locally-owned hotels on the island. Most people come to Moyo for the SCUBA diving (which I can only imagine is amazing) and there are several foreign (French, Dutch, English)-owned resorts on the island. The main one (Moyo Dive Resort) has a couple boats and runs dive tours for both guests and people at other hotels. We did a bunch of snorkeling and it was really great. I'm sure the diving is amazing too, but for the price, I was just as happy with my snorkel.
Maryan Moyo was idyllic. It was right on the coast and they had a bunch of tables and chairs out in front. We got to see beautiful sunsets every night (the sun sets REALLY fast this close to the equator)
We ate most of our meals at the Maryan restaurant. Gunawan and his wife were really great cooks and made a point of helping us to try a large number of Sumbawa specialties (lots of tamarind and coconut, yum!) as well as having so much fresh fish.
While on Moyo, we hiked up to Mata Jitu waterfall which has these amazing pools created by the limestone that precipitates out of the karst (I think the whole island is karst) and just inside the national park (so we got to check out the forest too), hired a boat to take us to Takat Segili which is a little coral shoal that only pokes up in low tide (we went at high tide) for a snorkel, spent some time in the agricultural landscape above the village, and hiked up the coast to where you couldn't walk anymore (and where we were the only ones for miles on the beach) and snorkeled there too. We also hired a boat for the (3.5 hour!) ride to Pulau Satonda (with it's hyper-saline "soda" lake filled with prehistoric living fossils) which I'll give its own post here.
The water there is amazingly clear. And so many fish that it feels like swimming in a fish tank:
And, in case I sound too happy about all of this, over and over, I kept thinking about the last few years of IPCC predictions: the loss of 70-90% of all reef-building corals if we are able to keep warming to 'only' 1.5C above pre-industrial temperatures, and the probable loss of 99% of all corals if temperatures rise 2C. Since we are already at 1.1C warming and none of the most powerful nations are doing much about it, it is almost certain we will overshoot the Paris-goal of 1.5C. Sorry kids: we aren't leaving you much to work with :-(