April 2001 - Alor/Flores Dive Trip

One of the Kelimutu "3 Colored Lakes"

Larry with one of the locals in Flores

Local boys in a canoe that paddled out to see us

Local lady chewing beatlenut

Clear blue waters around Flores

Group Dive Trip to Alor and Flores

In April 2001 Bill and a group of friends did a dive trip aboard the Evening Star II (now out of commission) to Alor and Flores in eastern Indonesia (see map below). In 2000 the majority of this group took a similar trip to Komodo National Park - see details of this trip here. We flew into Maumere Flores where we boarded the boat and did our first dives in the Maumere harbor. Over the next 7 days we headed east towards Alor and dived a total of 24 different sites before returning to Flores for our return flight.

At the end of our diving trip we made a land tour to the Mount Kelimutu Lakes or more commonly referred to as the "3 colored lakes". This visit was well worth the long drive on poor roads and the climb up to the observation deck.

The final excitement for this trip was that we were "kicked off" our outbound flight in Maumere. Despite having confirmed seats on the day of our return it just so happened that a local high-ranking government official and his entourage wanted to leave town on short notice. Hence the local airline gave our seats away and denied us boarding claiming that we hadn't confirmed our seats. We knew this wasn't correct and after much shouting and screaming we finally got the truth from the scared local airline representative (not sure if he preferred having 9 angry foreigners screaming at him or deal with the local government official). Fortunately we were all able to get on a flight the following day but we needed to drive to the city of Ende which was a long arduous 6+ hour drive across pothole full roads. To top it off after arriving in Ende we stayed in the best hotel in town, only problem was that it was very basic by "western standards". Quite an adventure indeed!

All in all a very good trip which I would definitely like to repeat.

Emperor Angel fish

Lion fish

Doug showing his diving skills

Scorpion fish

Seascape

Map of Indonesia

Our trip spanned several hundred miles between Maumere Flores to Alor and back. At the conclusion of our trip we needed to drive to the city of Ende to catch our outbound flight.

The Diving

The diving was nothing short of phenomenal. The currents at many sites were "rip roaring"and could only be dived at slack tides. During this trip I did a total of 24 dives.