[9th May 2007]
After 6 days in Bali, Winston, Alvin and I started our journey to conquer Mt Rinjani in Lombok, an island located 35km east of Bali, Indonesia.
We rent a car and arrived at the Padangbai ferry terminal at around 11.50am for 260,000 rp, not a good deal for me. At the ferry terminal, some touts tried very hard to squeeze more out of our limited money supply. I knew their tricks for I had been traveled alone before. At one point, there was this guy who tried to out-smart us by agreeing a ferry ticket for 25,000 rp each and then charged us 50,000 rp each when he asked us to pay. We refused to pay and I really got angry with their dirty tricks and scolded them. Luckily, we managed to get the tickets for 25,000 rp (RM10) each when we approached the official ticket booth and run and hopped into the ferry just in the nick of time before the ferry raised its bridge. 12.00pm on the dot. Phew! We felt like doing Amazing Race live!
According to my trusted Lonely Planet travel book, the ferry trip should take around 3 1/2 to 4 hours depending on the sea and wind condition. So, my hope of meeting Saiful at Lembar ferry terminal at 3pm in Lombok was still very much on time. We were excited and restless. Winston and Alvin even went up to the upper deck and into the navigation room. The sea were rough, the ferry wobbled hard.
Actually, the ferry was navigating itself to cross the famous Wallace's Line* between Bali and Lombok that is separated by the deep Lombok Strait. We noticed the colour of the sea changed from blue to black at some points and that confirms how deep the Lombok Strait actually is.
Yonder! We are not crossing the Bermuda Triangle but the Wallace's Line.
Time passed us by. At 4pm, the end was still far away. We decided to send Saiful a short message to tell him to keep on waiting for us. He replied positively and we were relieved. At least, we were still on the right course.
5.30 pm, we could see the end is near. The ferry was approaching the Lembar ferry terminal and waiting to dock. The whole docking maneuver took another 30 minutes to finish. At 6pm, we were on our feet again. For a mere 25,000 rp, this ferry trip was worth every rupiah we paid for it. From far away, I could see Saiful was waiting for us. We exchanged some friendly handshakes and he took us to his brand new 1 day on-the-road van that we had the honour to first sit on it. Or so he said. It took us another 3 1/2 hours, across city roads and more so country roads to reach the valley of Sembalun Lawang, the trail head of Mt Rinjani trek.
We had our dinner and the day was gone. It took us more than 10 hours from our hotel in Bali to reach the starting point of the trek at Sembalun Lawang.
* Wallace's Line - According to the Lonely Planet: Bali & Lombok travel book, the 19th-century naturalist Alfred Russel Wallace (1823-1913) observed great differences in fauna between Bali and Lombok. In particular, there were no large mammals (elephants, rhinos, tigers etc) east of Bali and very few carnivores. He postulated that during the ice ages, when sea levels were lower, animals could have moved by land from what is now mainland Asia all the way to Bali, but deep Lombok Strait would always have been a barrier. Thus he drew a line between Bali and Lombok, which marked the biological division between Asia and Australasia. Plant life, on the other hand, does not display such a sharp division, but there is a gradual transition from predominantly Asian rain forest species to mostly Australian plants like eucalypts and acacias, which are better suited to long dry periods. Wikipedia has a good article on the Wallace's Line, do check it out.
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