Sumba

For a while we’ll have divergent paths on our trip. I’ll post photos from Liz to keep the trip footprints moving forward while I describe what I’m doing at the same time. On Monday, Insignia was in Sumba, an island in south-central Indonesia. Sumba was a late addition to the itinerary, replacing the spot of one of the Western Australia ports that were nixed. It’s a pretty remote and lightly inhabited place. They got on a tour out to see a waterfall and ancient village.

My accommodation here is a Holiday Inn Express. Not exactly a lavish beachside resort. I wanted something simple, clean, and inexpensive. It irks me to be paying for a stateroom on Insignia while also paying for a hotel room in Denpasar, Bali. This place is brand new, got good reviews (you have to be careful of online reviews, of course, since so many are written by bots, AI, or people paid to pump up the review score. But if you probe, look at some of the low-ranking reviews to see what bothered people, and look at pictures, you can get a sense of the place), and is centrally located. Maybe best of all there is a Grand Lucky supermarket right next door, so I can grab food and drink there. There’s no kitchen in the room, but there is a fridge. With the provided hotel breakfast I should be able to get away with one paid restaurant meal per day.

My plan for day one was to walk around the area to get a feel for what is here and see what the bach looks like. I got up pretty early, as usual, and had the hotel breakfast. About 7:30 I set off toward the beach. It turned out to be a bit longer walk than I thought, probably about 1.5 miles. But that was fine…what else was I doing? It was raining when I got up, but that had tapered off to a light sprinkle, which felt nice. The route featured four significant road crossings, which are still a bit of an adventure for me. Three of them had signals, which helps a lot, but Balinese drivers/riders seem to take things like lane lines and signals more as suggestions than hard rules, so you have to be very aware.

The area became increasingly tourist-focused as I got closer to the beach. Most enterprises were either a bar, a spa, a souvenir shop, or a tattoo parlor. Many were geared directly to Australians. Basically it felt like Cabo San Lucas for Aussies.

I did reach the beach, where there was a very cool statue of Balinese-style surfers. There was a boardwalk lined with an endless row of beach bars, each with their staked out bit of sand with plastic chairs, tables, and lounges. I didn’t want anything to drink, so I just kept walking. The beach was beautiful: wide, flat, and clean. There was a nice beach break with a number of surfers taking advantage of it.

I wasn’t prepared for a beach day; this was just recon, so I retraced my steps back to the hotel. I relaxed for a bit, then walked in a different direction toward what on the map looked like some sort of mall. This was closer, but it was sunny and very hot by this time so I was glad to reach what was named the Trans Studio mall. This was a big place, with an attached department store and some kind of amusement park. Air conditioned with a bunch of restaurants, so a reasonable lunch target.

I made it back to the hotel and had some food purchased the day before from Grand Lucky. The afternoon was spent swimming, using the treadmill in the gym, and writing up some footprints. For dinner I wanted to see what the hotel offered. There wasn’t much there suitable for a vegetarian, but they did make me some nasi goreng, an Indonesian staple of fried rice, vegetables, and egg. Normally it has some sort of meat, but they just held that.

So one day of banishment down. On to the next.Read more