These dudes are nuts!

Now the travelling in Indonesia is always quite comical even though there are inherent dangers when you consider the usual quality of the vehicle you are in! Anyway, this time it was to be the infamous Pelni Ferry between Flores and Sulawesi our next stop. We had our tickets in hand and were nervously waiting for the ferry to turn up in the port, which incidentally is like a big event for the locals and town!

Seven hours later than it's expected arrival…. The boat eventually turns up! Anyway, we had been talking to people who had done the Pelni Ferries before and we were well forewarned about what it was going to be like with most people actually just laughing to us ominously and saying “well, it will be an experience!” “You just wait here and just watch them for an hour as you won't get near the ship” was another thing we were told, along with the Indonesian methods of queuing which involves a free for all and whoever gets on gets on, in other words it sounded like complete bedlam!!!

So the ship rolled in and people and goods started pouring off the ship as well as some people doing their best against the flow to get on the ship! There were thousands of people there and it was a bit of a nutty scene!

One thing we will say though is that although it is pandemonium, everyone was polite to each other, no one got angry and rudely pushing (It seems that there is a difference in the type of pushing / jostling) is frowned upon, so the whole atmosphere was still fairly happy and jovial; what great people!

We made it on board and it was quite a site with almost every available space taken by a body (sleeping or sitting and smoking is the norm) or by sacks of rice, motor bikes, bunches of bananas, you name it! It was a quick dash to the officer’s desk to try and buy ourselves and upgrade on the ticket! (we couldn’t get one from the office) This means that the lads on the boat get to earn some extra cash by charging out unfilled first class cabins and/ or their own cabins (they probably end up sleeping on a generator or something in the engine room!). After some fraught minutes we negotiated (rather badly as we wer not in the best position to negotiate) a first class cabin with TV and bath room with a hot shower! It cost us quite a bit more but whe you consider the alternative it was worth its' weight in gold. We checked that the life jackets were close by and settled down..

We had all our meals included and to be honest it was pretty damn good (after all we were a little worried after knowing that ferries have sunk in the past on regular occasions, as is the way here!).
Here is a shot Dipi took in the morning which shows how every available space was taken up by one of the maybe 5000 odd people on board (that boat was overloaded for sure!). You can even see them crouching on one of the emergency boats on the left hand side!!)

After a 16 or 17 hour ride over night we got to Sulawesi safe and sound and actually quite glad that we had survived the infamous Pelni!!