Karimunjawa, an island getaway – Indonesia
Poised on the starting grid, everyone around us was staring at the seat belt lights. And… bing! We’re off! Go! Go! Go! The mad rush to grab luggage from the overhead compartments and then the awkward squeeze that follows when everyone realises that the door won’t actually be open for another 10 minutes always leaves Ruth & I bewildered. Once the chaos subsided and Ruth had helped to shoehorn me out of my seat after another shoebox of a flight with Air Asia, we headed off into Yogyakarta excited to see our friends from Korea.
The plan would be to make our way north and take a ferry out to an archipelago of islands called Karimunjawa in the Java Sea. As usual when we meet any of our friends, the first ‘quiet’ night descended into far too much beer for four people who’s tolerance had dropped through the floor – great night catching up and talking rubbish.
We woozily made our way to Jepara where we would catch the express ferry the following day and arrived on the main island to be immediately greeted by a troop of the local kids who’d clearly had too much sugar.
In his tiny moment of calm.
First stop on the trip was an island with a hotel/guesthouse. At least we thought it was an island. It actually turned out to be a little cluster of wooden huts with the sea right beneath your feet – just the kind of place we were looking for – and immediately got the camera and tripod out and started snapping away. We made up about 3/4 of the total guests out there and spent our time drinking, eating the excellent spread of food they prepared for us and reminiscing about Korea. The plan for the following day would be to take our cameras to the little island nearby and see what photos we could find but by the morning we all agreed there was no chance of that happening. Rats. Who doesn’t hate them? Especially when they actually climb into bed with you. No thanks, back to the main land.
We found our way to another quite spot, minus rats, where we’d spend a few nights. A jetty provided an absolutely gorgeous spot to watch the sunset – a really special evening.
Karimunjawa 1Our remaining time on Karimunjawa was spent bombing around on scooters exploring the main island, dodging monitor lizards, stuffing our faces and generally having a whale of a time. The highlight of the trip came towards the end when we chartered a small boat to take the four of us out to a couple of snorkelling spots and a couple of little islands that can only be described as paradise. I’ll leave the photos to hopefully do the place justice.
We spent about 10 days back in Yogya catching up on work, and giving Ruth some much-needed time to get some drawing done. Unfortunately we can’t show you too much more about the town or surrounding sights, the days we’d planned to spend motoring around the island on a moped checking out the sights were actually spent in hospital and then lying in bed with back trouble. My stupid fault too but I won’t bore you with that, suffice to say, I’m all fixed.
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The Rat Hotel, though I doubt that’s its name.
Looking out from the Rat Hotel.
Beatiful little island.
Me having a snorkel, lot’s of interesting… sand.
