Ruteng

My last new stop on this trip was the town of Ruteng, back in the highlands, but even closer on my way back to Labuan Bajo. I stayed three nights via Airbnb with a lovely Indonesian divorcee, U, who lived in Tasmania for a decade and speaks great English. It was so much fun getting to know her, and as I was her only guest at the time (high season ended in October, and I'm hitting the beginning of rainy season, which is PERFECT, because there aren't too many tourists around, yet it's not really raining that much yet) she very sweetly took the time to show me around and come with me on walks and activities.

The town of Ruteng itself is pretty bustling...

...But U's place is just a bit outside of town, and my little bungalow there had it's own porch with this beautiful view, which I enjoyed to the fullest over my breakfasts and dinners and lazy afternoons reading and catching up on computer work.

U (who makes me look like a total giant...she seemed taken aback by my height, even though I'm not really that tall by Western standards) went with me to see the "spiderweb ricefields," which I was very confused and curious about, but turns out are just rice fields that are laid out radially from a single point, like wheel spokes. Kind of cool.

From there we went to a "traditional village," which I was very skeptical about, and kind of tried to get out of, though I didn't try hard enough, and away we went. The structures are lovely and striking, and I learned afterward that each modern day village is supposed to have one as a meeting place for community gatherings, which is nice.

But this spot just felt like the total tourist trap I'd been sadly expecting. The guy who runs it had built himself a massive concrete house with all the money he's raking in to dress people up in batik wraps and walk them 100 yards over to see the traditional houses from a bit closer. And he has a pitch of trying to get you to pay four times more to go into the houses, one of which, he says, contains the world's only human-skin drum. And he told a story that I couldn't understand, that U reiterated for me after: that there was a beautiful woman that three local kings were fighting over, and when they got tired of fighting, they just killed her and used the skin from her stomach to make a drum. A totally horrifying story, though U says she doesn't think it's true--that she never heard it as a kid, and this guy might have just made it up to try to get more money out of tourists. Which, unfortunately, is even more horrifying. Either way, U said, not worth it to pay extra to see it, so at least I was spared that.

Ironically, the most interesting part of the traditional house visit, for me, was that the guy who runs the place grabbed my phone from me and was insistent that we do these very involved glamour photo shoots. He had a fun flair for playing with perspective, but I was just laughing so hard the whole time I was sure the pictures were not going to turn out. This one is the best; the rest are just really embarrassing.

Definitely Indonesians love to take selfies, I've noticed. I don't know if the sole focus of this traditional village being selfies, though, is something they learned that Western tourists like? Which would just be so depressing, but is very possibly true. Or do Indonesians just really love it and want to make Western tourists happy that way? I don't know. Maybe it's just PEOPLE in general who are like this. Which always makes me feel like an alien sociologist just watching people and scratching my head.

My favorite parts of the Ruteng visit were the ones not really intended or engineered. After our scheduled tourist stops, we swung by the village where U grew up to visit her sister, whose house I just LOVED.

And the morning I left, U and I got up very early for a sunrise walk through the village as it was waking up, to a viewpoint over Ruteng. I loved seeing the kids on their way to school...

...and the view from the top of the hill down into town was like a fairytale, with some morning mist still blanketing the valley.

Also, the sunset over U's house on my last night there was jaw-dropping.

So, from Ruteng, I caught one last ride back to Labuan Bajo, and I'm spending the last weekend of my trip here without much of an agenda. Take some walks, enjoy the good restaurants and cafes here,  read, do some computer work that I know I won't have time to get to once I'm home and trying to catch up with everyone and the holiday season is pressing down hard. So for now, I'll have a few very peaceful days staying in yet another little private bungalow, this one with a fantastic view of the Labuan Bajo harbor.

If all goes according to plan, on Monday afternoon I'll fly to Bali and from there catch my flights back south to New Zealand. Pick up my luggage from the Antarctic center, sleep for a night there in Christchurch, and then on Dec 5 fly hoooooooome...to WI.

I suppose it's possible there will be enough unexpectedly photogenic moments between now and then to warrant another blog post, but I'm not really anticipating that and so will sign off for now. Thanks for following along on my 2018 global adventures. I really have no idea what 2019 is going to bring for me. It seems pretty safe to assume I'll be venturing outside the US at some point; I just don't know where or when. But when it happens, and wherever I go, I'll meet you back here to tell you all about it.