September 4th, 2008 – by:
miss_rain
Sulawesi from the air
This is the first time I stepped on the soil of
Sulawesi so I was very excited. This trip was to visit a missionary friend who'd started a settlement on the mountaintop among the lush green jungles of Sulawesi. I'd been warned that it's going to be a very difficult trip but I decided to go anyway. The journey began with a two-hour drive to the airport in Jakarta then I had to catch the 5-o'clock flight to Makasar, which is the capital city of South Sulawesi. Some friends met me there and we had the most delicious sea food in a restaurant called Dinar. In the afternoon, I caught another local flight to
Luwuk, a port city in Central Sulawesi using a small aircraft. Once landing in Luwuk in the evening, I continued the trip to the village of Pandauke using a minicab for another five hour drive. The road was very bad and several times in the darkness of the night, the driver told the passengers to get off the cab because we're either passing an almost-broken bridge or very very very muddy path. The day seemed so long and I felt like I had been endlessly travelling from point to point. The head of the village in Pandauke had kindly offered a free room for me and my friends to sleep that night. And his wife had cut a boar and cooked it for us when we arrived in the middle of the night. Though I wasn't hungry at all (I just wanted to sleep), I forced myself to eat a bit. I had never eaten boar before and it tasted strange.