Today has not turned out as I’d expected.
Without finding a church, I’d anticipated a day hanging around at my DIY campsite, right on the beach. It is peaceful here, and really quite lovely. So that was definitely a positive prospect.
Just as I was settling into the day at around 7am, a white guy (first I’ve seen on since riding out of Bali’s Kuta) rolled past on his scooter with partner in pillion. He pulled up, as you do, to say g’day. Dave and Delia, meet Dan; Dan meet Dave and Delia.
Dave turned up to surf these beaches something like a decade ago for a few days, and… well… he’s still here. He runs a homestay in the village. Says he’ll be buried, when the time comes, on the hill behind. Dave may not be the first foreigner I’ve met in the archipelago with a story that runs something like that. The very pervasiveness of that narrative was in fact a motivator not to stay longer in Kuta! Didn’t want to be drawn into an everlasting “I’ll go tomorrow”, with my road trip devolving by stealth into a long-term or permanent proposition. Probably unlikely; but…
Dave insisted I come back to his place for a cuppa tea. I had to be back at mine by 9am as I was expecting a call from my eldest daughter, which is definitely the highlight of the month for me. It was just wonderful to have some contact, which had been set up out of the blue and earlier in the week scheduled for this morning. I was deliberate in keeping the conversation light, and Georgia followed along – so we were able to avoid hard conversations. While that isn’t a good long-term recipe, it seems healthy at this point to build some small wins with warmth and ease. May it be the first of many such calls!
No sooner had Georgia and I hung up, than Dave was back. “Come over for lunch!” He said. It was around 10:30am, but I followed him around anyway. We sat and chatted over a game of cards (“21”) for a bit, and then chopped veggies and chicken to make a great lunch of chicken, corn, sweet potatoes, carrots, etc.
After the stock-standard 30 degrees morning, not long after lunch the skies opened and this little fishing village was drowned in the biggest dump of rain I’ve yet encountered in Indonesia. Which wouldn’t really have been a problem except I’d put some washing to dry on the line back at the tent. It was very close to dry when I took off to Dave’s in the first place. Sigh! I zipped back through the downpour to rescue my clothes, and Dave graciously shared his clothes horse for the occasion.
Back at Dave’s, I took a quick hot shower so I’d be a little less cat-dragged-in after riding through the deluge, and we chatted while waiting out the storm. It turns out that Delia is a Protestant Christian, with theological training to boot. That led to the discover that there is in fact – sigh – a church with an 8am service to which I could have walked from my tent. Delia insisted we drop by the church anyway, in what turned into a tour of the fishing village.
I’d seen some of the harbour yesterday, but with Dave as tour guide we examined some of the day’s catch and chatted to a few of the locals. We then dropped by Dave’s mate John who lives close by, rousing him from an arvo nap. He also lives in the village, and is himself a fisherman and surfer who – you guessed it – turned up for a few days here at Red Island Beach a decade ago and never left. John sure has some stories to tell!
Both Dave and John were in need of some palm sugar, so we trundled off to see the local manufacturing process – partly for the pantry and partly for the pageant of it.
By then, I raced back past Dave’s to get my half-dry clothes and got back to the tent just before sunset. I’d very much had my fill of cups of tea, and very much had my fill of company.
If you’d asked back in Melbourne me to guess, I’d have said I would have so much alone time on this trip that even this extreme introvert would be craving company. Not so. I have to work hard to carve out a bit of me time that isn’t rolling the riding kilometres away towards London. I’m yet to really find (make) the thinking and percolating time that I’d thought would be a key ingredient of the adventure. That’s ok; I’m leaning in and not kicking against it. Good things have so far always resulted. It is just very different to expectations.
I’m siting writing this note in my camp chair out in the now pitch dark, watching a thousand fireflies dancing on the ocean horizon (local fishermen each with a lamp on the boat’s aft). All very pleasant. And then of course there’s the competing mosquitos at my ankles and the competing mosquitos (oops… mosques) droning in dissonance with each other behind and to my left and to my right. I swear they sound like a cow giving painful birth, except the bovine bellows would be more beautiful by far.
My next destination is to meet up with a guy I’m told is an absolute legend of adventure riding, who lives right in Central Java. Google says it is about 14 hours ride. So I except to split it into two days and find somewhere to camp tomorrow night along route. I’ll just see how the ride pans out. But I hope to be up around sunrise (or at least by 6), and hit the road no later than 7am.