Sumbawa

What can you expect from driving through Sumbawa? Most travel books hardly mention it. It is off the normal tourist track, and there is only one road going east? In fact, this part of our trip was one of the most spectacular and beatiful rides I have done for a long time.

Day 5: We left Kuta early to allow for an easy drive through the south-east Lombok country side. It was a typical nice ride through lots of small and busy villages until we reached the ferry harbour in Labuhan Lombok.

First looks of Sumbawa from the ferry showed a completely different picture. The vegetation was changing completely, all the green colours from Bali and Lombok were gone. Instead of sawahs (ricefields), farmland and forests, the islands were now covered by red, ochre and yellow-golden alang alang grass, with only a few trees and lontar palms growing along the ridge of the hillcrests.

If you drive east from Java you pass the Wallace's line already between Bali and Lombok, but the visual difference between Bali and NTB / NTT only strikes you when you move on to Sumbawa. The savanna, which can also be found on some small north-eastern parts in East Java, Bali or Lombok, becomes predominant.

We got off the ferry in Poto Tano harbour near Alas, which consists only of a couple of Makassar style houses, and blasted past the few trucks and busses which had left the ferry in front of us. After filling up with petrol at one of the last roadside 'Warung bensin', we hit the open road. I was immediately struck by the sheer pleasure to ride through this beautiful landscape. The road is in almost perfect condition and absolutely empty. It smoothly follows the costal line with the ocean to the north and the mountains in the south with an altitude between 1,500 to 2,000 meters. Incredible colour flashes of the turquoise ocean and the red and golden alang alang hills. It was somewhere here during the ride, that I suddenly looked forward in joy to drive back through the same area again. When I later talked about it to Max, Mark and Oliver, they totally agreed and obviously had the same feelings.

The road from Alas to Sumbawa Besar is less than 100km with only 2-3 villages and a couple of lonely farm houses in between. We reached Sumbawa Besar around two o'clock, well ahead of the time we had estimated. While we had some food in a Warung, we discussed the further trip for the day.

The next meeting point with Birgit on the following evening was in Hu'u Lakie beach, a surfers hang out 50km south of Dompu and another 250km or 5-6 hours drive. There was no need to rush through, so we decided to stay in SB. When driving into town, we went past the Pantai Kencana beach hotel, which proved to be the perfect accomodation for the day. We spent the rest of the day on the beach, had a couple of Bintang beers and a smoke, and enjoyed the full hotel services as the only guests being around.

Day 6: On the next day we drove on from SB to Hu'u. The ride is stunning again, but traffic is a bit increasing now. You pass through Empang and Dompu, two slightly bigger villages and the only ones which also offer accomodations if you want to stay overnight. The road from Dompu to Hu'u turns south and it is not as well maintained as the main road. Hu'u is a surfing beach with a couple of Losmen and homestays, which offer accomodation and a cold beer. The surf in Hu'u is impressive, but you still can go for a safe swim on the beach, as the tubes are a couple of hundred meters out. Here, international surfing competitions are held and you always can meet some hard-core surfers from around the world (okay, mostly Australians). A good traditional traveller hang-out, if you don't mind the 24h surfer movies on TV. And don't try to talk about bikes or engines!

Day 7: We had met Birgit and the kids again in Hu'u, and spent an afternoon on the beach. Birgit left early on the next morning to catch a flight from Bima to Flores. We took it a bit more relaxed, before we went on the road to Sape. The ride goes up to Dompu, then to Bima and through the mountains to Sape, the ferry town from where you cross over to Flores. Earlier we had tried to find out the time table for the ferry, but the more sources we asked, the more different information we got. The most common answer was that normally ferries will leave Sape at eight in the morning, but on one or two days, they may also leave at 3 in the afternoon. This had set our pace. No way to catch the 8 a.m. ferry, but we wanted to be in Sape early in the afternoon for the afternoon crossing, if there was a ferry on that day.

Again, a stunning ride, but much more through the mountains with twisty roads and serpentine corners up the mountain slopes with beautiful views over the Bima bay.

Getting close to Bima, the road leads through deserted salt production plains with a fully open view, a blunt invitation for a speed blast. On our road bikes we could safely go at a speed of 160-170km/h before the crosswinds got too strong to push it any further. This was actually the only part of the trip where we lost sight of Mark on his 650 trial bike. On normal or twisty mountain roads, he was always up to our cornering speed, and sometimes in close sections and rough road conditions he was well ahead of our heavy and slower turning road bikes.

The Bima - Sape road was mostly a great fun ride, but the road surface was not as good as on the first part of the Sumbawa trip. Sometimes road rehabilitation was under way, and there was a lot of sand and dirt in the corners. This made the ride still impressive, but as a driver you fully had to concentrate on the road conditions, so some of the beautiful landscape was lost on us.

Sape is a laid back fishing village and the ferry harbour for the crossing to Flores, Sumba and Timor. We had a look at the harbour, just in chance..., but there was no ferry. So we checked in at a nearby losmen and relaxed for the rest of the afternoon. I changed the rear brakepads on my bike, which were all gone. Max joined in with the village kids to play soccer, and later on we went for a sunset ride through the village surroundings and had a nice fried fish dinner. In the meantime the ferry had arrived, and back at the losmen a crowd of fans had gathered around our bikes. The most enthousiastic guy, dressed in a soccer jersey and shorts, turned out to be the captain of the ferry, who was staying in the same losmen.

Day 8: We were woken up by the ferry blasting its horn, but with the captain still hanging around in his soccer outfit and having breakfast, there was no real hurry. It turned out that he was actually keen to ask us if he could ride one of our bikes onto the ferry. He paid back the favour immediately by inviting us up into the crew's recreation area on the upper deck, where we enjoyed the 8 hour crossing.

Next page: our next target was Flores.

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