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Darwin
was our jumping off point from OZ and Indonesia would be our next stop.
Our new spinnaker paid for itself during a light wind passage.
Traveling in a six boat flotilla made us feel more secure as we sailed
into a Muslim country. While we were
a bit
nervous when we left, we experienced no
real problems. The people we encountered have been very
welcoming.
On Roti, our first stop in
Indonesia, we were t
he guests of honor at a children’s dance
competition. This is when we first
noticed a big culture change. The
music of gongs, chanting, and the costumes had changed dramatically from
anything we have seen in the South Pacific.
As mariner's, we were
particularly interested in
the variety of boats we encountered. On Roti,
they are still building fishing boats the same way they have for a hundred years
- no power tools and no metal 
fasteners. Much of the vessel is hewn with
an adze to shave the planks. The boats are painted in bright colors with a
variety of flags to indicate which fishing fleet they belong to.
We also went through dozens to
hundreds of smaller one-person fishing boats that reminded us of the good times
we had sailing/racing Hobie 
Cats.
These vessels are Lateen-rigged trimarans that look quite rickety close
up. But, we often encountered these vessels 40-50nm offshore and often at
night. They move much quicker than we expected, often making it a
challenge to thread our way through the fleet. Also, they believe that
they can rid themselves of bad spirits if they sail directly at another 
vessel
as fast as they can and then turn away at the last moment. This led to some
heart-stopping moments at first but we quickly discovered that if we pointed our
bows at them before they pointed theirs at us, they passed by us at a safe
distance. Guess they didn't want our bad spirits.
At the next island, we had
wanted to find and view an animist village.
We had an obscure reference in a cruising note to a teacher that spoke
some English and could take us there. We
walked through town asking at a lot of places but couldn’t get any
information. Lots of people
misunderstood us and helped us with things we weren’t asking for.
We found someone 
somewhere
that knew of someone else somewhere else that might know about the teacher.
So, Jeff ended up on the back of this guy’s motor scooter and
disappeared with him. A long
time later we started wondering what happened to him.
But, he returned with a teacher that could help us.
We also inherited another “guide” and headed down a dirt path.
A short while later, a heard of water buffalo 
came
down the path guided by a “guy who herds
water buffalo” (don’t know what to call him) in one of those pointy
round hats that you see in the rice paddies.
We finally arrived in the
animist village. They still have
elders that speak to spirits. Very
interesting people (we’ll get the pictures on the website when we have
access). We were asked to share
betel nut with them. Betel nut is
considered the Peacemaker. You chew
on a piece of betel nut, dip this green plant called siri into a white powder
(lime) and chew without swallowing. 
First
your mouth, teeth and tongue turn red. Then
everything starts going numb, and you start drooling which you are supposed to
just let roll out of your mouth. If
you make it this far you probably have not started gagging due to the awful
taste. Whatever you do, don’t
swallow. After all this, they warn
you to be careful when you talk not to bite your tongue.
Who knows what all this does to you.
We did notice that most of the adults in the village had very red teeth
and mouths and walk around constantly chewing something.
Gail and Teri looked like mad dogs.
From Seba, we headed for Rinca,
home of the famed Komodo Dragons.
