Sea, Mountains and curves - Flores Island

Hallo,
The last two weeks we have been diving in the Komodo National Park and have traversed Flores Island from Northwest to South to the Middle to the South to the North to the Northeast. ;-)

- Dive Spots: Premium! Really, really excellent although the current was not as much as expected, what lead  immedeately to less big fish such as manta, sharks or barrakudas...but corals and fish schools and everything else: absolutely TOP!

- Boat: Small and bumpy...good luck there weren't a lot of big waves :-)..but we had it on our own. A crew of five for two passengers ..not bad ;-)

- Komodo Dragon: Sleeping.

- Flores Island: a lot of curves. For about 600km, which is the length of the "Trans-Flores-Highway", it took us three driving days (21 hours as a whole) to cross and criss-cross the island. Not one single strech of straight road! All curvy and in rather bad shape! Average speed: 25km/h to nill. Ufz!!!

 - Accomodation: really, really basic. Nothing to relax in.... :-(

- People: exceptionally friendly! Incredible! A smile on every face! :-) ! Thank you Flores people for making us smile and feel special all along the way! :-)

- Landscape: green, green and even greener! Jungle all over! The island is also supposed to have vulcano peaks, but they were not really visible to us due to clouds and fog. :-( So it could be a tale again ;-)

- Beach: mostly black. Ours: empty and relaxing after all the driving round curves :-)

- Look at the pictures if you are curious: Diving Komodo NP & Flores Island.

And remember: Keep smiling even if the road is bumpy & full of curves and obstacles and although it's raining and you can't see the way because of all the fog and dust!! :-)

Regards, Renate & Rainer

China and what remains of it in our memory.....

It's now about one week we left China and as we now can access the blog and can upload some pictures we try to summarize our impressions and what we retrospectively think about our time in China for you.

China for us is a land of very controversial things and facts.
Everythings seems to be available in any sizes and shapes.
Nature ranged from untouched amazing beauty via artificially created and kept landscapes to damaged and polluted surroundings, which you nearly can't call nature at all any more.
Weather and temperatures we have found from soaring heat, sandstorm to immense rainfall and snow blizzards.
People dressed with modern "Gucci"-dresses made up for high society down to people in dirty, old clothes, marked by years of wearing.
We met laughing faces, bitter faces, benevolent faces, friendly faces, angry faces, content expressions as well as fear and curiosity. Dark faces, round faces, chinese faces, european faces, middle-eastern faces....

People either did everything to help us or ignored us altogether.

We were appalled by the quantity of surveillance cameras but on the other hand glad because it made us "save" and helped us to retrieve our backpack which we lost with the aid of exactly those films we hated by the police.

Food was abundant and in as many shapes and variations as the people who cooked it.

Houses and buildings ranged from downright spectacular to mud-huts without heating, or even water anywhere nearby.

Cars from Big Mercedes and Bentleys down to donkey-karts.
Extreme wealth and extreme poverty.

Mandarin, english, Uygur, cantonese...just to name only the few we could differentiate... there are millions more...

All together in one country, one society, although  more on paper than in reality, because Western Chinese people in our opinion have nothing to do with eastern- or southern chinese people. They just happen to have ended up within the same borders.

We guess that you can find anything of these in other countries as well, but it seemed extreme to us within China. Maybe because we crossed a lot of terrain in only two months time. We were startled by all the variety of things. We felt like moving through different countries all the time although is was supposed
to be all "China".

If you want to follow our pictures to get an impression, take a look at the links where you can find pictures of Beijing, Chengde, Datong and Wutai Shan, Pingyao, Xi'an, Jiayuguan & Dunhunag, Urumqi & Turpan, Kashgar & Hotan, Karakoram Highway, Kunming & Dali, Lijiang, Tiger Leaping Gorge & Shangri-La and finally: Hong Kong.

Basically we did not know what to expect when we entered China two months ago and found many wonderful things, learned a lot and enjoyed the first part of our trip a great deal!

Have fun viewing the pictures as much as we enjoyed experincing them!

We are looking forward to hearing from you!

Renate & Rainer

P.S.: Also look at our "Special". :-)