which way to the beach?? From Toraja, I hopped on a bus for a "10-hour" trip up north. I arrived at my first destination, Poso, 22 hours later, after a 4-hour stop-over in the middle of nowhere, so our bus driver could rest. I didn’t sleep much and my body hurt, especially my butt. I got into town about 6:00 in the morning and found a local breakfast place to spend a few hours until I got on another bus. The area around Poso has had continuing outbreaks of violence between Christians and Muslims. Whole villages have been burned to the ground, often 50 –100 houses in a row burned to the brick walls. A girl I sat next to on the bus had her house burnt down and like many others was living in military barracks. Very sad. It was calm when I passed through, this time.
I spent the night at a nice place on the beach and got a nice swim in. The next morning I left to catch the "9:00" boat out to the Togean Islands. It was a hot day, and to say the least, I just wanted to get to the islands and relax. At 9:00 three other boats left. At 11:00 I saw them bring an engine part on to the boat. At 11:10 I saw them take the part back off the boat, and hop back on a scooter heading for town. I was not happy! Finally about 12:30 the part showed up again and the engine cranked up. I was freakin by then! I calmed down as we headed over the water, just hoping that I wouldn’t miss the last boat to the Kadidiri Island, where I wanted to stay. I almost did! As we were pulling in a small boat heading for the island was passing by and we had it turn around and pick me up. Thank God!
I didn’t move again for 15 days. I stayed at a nice place on a small beach that had a dive center called Black Marlin. The beach was about 100 meters long, and that was about it, no roads, nothing. The water was incredibly clear and there was tons of coral and fish right off the beach. Further out there was some great diving, highlighted by some intense coral walls with tons of colors and some incredible small, but fascinating marine life. One of the dives was to an old B24 bomber that had gone down during WWII. It was smaller than I would have expected, but was quite intact. It was wild to see all the coral and fish life that made it their home, or at least their hangout. On some dives, and even snorkeling, I saw some larger life including a shark, lots of large parrotfish and even had a close encounter with a large eagle ray. Amazing!
I had no problems just kickin'it on the beach and really enjoyed the other people staying there. I had some brilliant swims in the afternoon, just as the sun would begin to set. I would swim along the side of the island and could see up to 20-30 meters at times. Beautiful!! One buddy, in particular, and I had a propensity for late nights (early mornings) drinking beer and playing cribbage, backgammon, chess or whatever other game we could think of. Remarkably, after who knows how many games, we were dead even, or at least very close. I think, well I know, the manager was glad to see us leave. He needed sleep!
I left the Tongeans to head south for an ultimate tournament in Bali. Two of my friends staying at the bungalows were hiring a boat and car to get back to Ujung Pandang with less treacherous overland travel. I decided to go along. We left in the morning on a boat for a nice relaxing ride to the port in Ampana. It was a nice day and we saw lots of dolphins on the journey. The thought of a nice air-conditioned truck, rather than a small cramped bus, sounded wonderful. To none of our surprise the driver wasn’t there when we arrived at the port. We made a couple of calls and then someone approached us and said that he had left because he was worried about traveling through some of the dangerous areas along the way. A number of people had been killed a few days before. We weren’t happy! A nice lady ran around and managed to secure us a bemo, a small, stripped out minivan, with small benches along the side used for local transport. Not what we were planning on.
After about two hours we saw the car we had ordered. The driver was pulled over on the side of the road…sleeping!! We were pissed. To top it off he had four members of his family which he had decided to give a lift! We piled in and survived the rest of the trip, listening to bad music, reminding the driver to go faster than 20 miles an hour and encouraging him to keep going in the mud pits when we had to leave the main road due to closure through the main problem areas.
We arrived that evening, had a cold beer and slept like babies in our air-conditioned rooms. Two days later I was in Bali, on the beach and trying to get in shape for the upcoming ultimate tournament.
