Labuan Bajo -> Ruteng

Day 1 of the road trip. Set off about 10.30 after doing some admin in town, and off we went. Headed pretty steeply up the hill from Labuan Bajo - views were amazing. We had 120km to Ruteng to cover so we stopped after about 2 hours to have lunch. We were of course a big attraction for the locals! So many people waved and said hello when we drove as I think tourists are still quite rare.

We were about 30km from Ruteng when it started raining. Hard. We stopped in a shelter for about 20 mins but then decided we had to brave it. It wasn’t too pleasant so we stopped again. Again we waited but it didn’t stop. So we kept going and made it to the homestay completely soaked.

Luckily Jeff the owner got us towels and coffee so we dried off and relaxed. Everyone staying had dinner together and a couple of glasses of Arak and an early night as we were getting up for sunrise!!Read more