MAUMERE, FLORES, INDONESIA

Today we began our second side-trip from Bali, a nine-day journey that will (hopefully) take us across the island of Flores in East Nusa Tenggara, and then to the islands of Rinca and Komodo.

This afternoon we flew on Merpati Airlines from Denpasar to Maumere, in the northeast of Flores, and met up with the guide we hired, a good-natured but quiet Indonesian guy named Hayun, who took us to our hotel. The plan is for him to drive us westward across the island over three or four days, to Labuan Bajo, on the west coast, where we'll hire a boat to take us to Rinca and/or Komodo to see the famous dragons, and hopefully also to do some diving, which is supposed to be fantastic there).

Indonesia Fun Fact:

• What I know so far about Flores: It's lush and mountainous, less traveled than much of Indonesia, and was colonized by the Portuguese, who named it Flores, meaning "flowers." In contrast to the rest of Indonesia, which is overwhelmingly Muslim, Flores is predominantly Catholic (that Portuguese influence again).