The long trip to Larantuka.

Nothing ever quite happens the way you expect it will in Indonesia, and it is best to roll with it, and see where you end up. Perhaps this gem of wisdom might explain why our kayaks are now stacked, one on top of the other, in the regional office of the Director General of Taxation in Larantuka. Well, where else should they be?

Few stretches of coastline have been as dramatic and beautiful as the last couple of days of paddling along the north-east corner of Flores. Gigantic limestone cliffs have been ripped into the landscape by roaring currents. Dense tropical rainforest dripped from every crack and crevice in the cliffs like it had been melted into shape by the intense heat. The cauldron of swirling water beneath us concealed endless coral reefs, bright and colourful and boiling with colour. Turtles flipped, fish jumped and we paddled on by.

Indonesian red tape has ensured that the route we hope to achieve needed to be sliced up into stages as our visas can only be issued for 60 days. Our goal for this stage has been Larantuka, a bustling but small port town in eastern Flores. About ten days ago we seriously wondered whether it would be possible to achieve this goal, as the headwinds had made certain that we moved slower than we had hoped. Larantuka became a powerful motivator and we both dug deep to make the distance, and to reach the goal.

An enormous volcano towers above Larantuka and the narrow strait that divides Flores from the islands of the Solor and Alor archipelago. A dawn low tide on a new moon (tides are generally bigger around the full and new moons) ensured that we departed our final campsite in the pitch dark to avoid being trapped by the wide and very shallow seagrass shelf that surrounded our camp. Features on the silhouette of the jagged volcanic peak above Larantuka slowly appeared with the morning light, as did the extensive shallow reef below us. The scene was dramatic and spectacular, a fitting finale for this stage of Archipaddlo.

It wasn't long however before our old foe, the wind, decided that we shouldn't have things so easy on this last day, that we still needed a challenge. We pressed into a strong headwind as we entered the narrow channel where Larantuka lies. Unfortunately narrow channels in this part of the world are like funnels and water roars through them with a vengence. We first noticed a large cargo boat with engines clanking at full power that was literally going nowhere. Even within inches of the shore we could barely paddle into the force of the water, but we did manage to overtake the cargo ship.

Eventually, after expending considerably more effort than we had hoped, and after several long and tiring days of hard paddling, we slipped our kayaks onto a beach just outside Larantuka - we achieved our goal.

Just how and why our boats are stacked in a side room of the tax office is altogether another long story. We needed somewhere to safely store the boats for the next couple of weeks, and despite my personal efforts to avoid the tax department back home at all costs, this seemed like a safe, if somewhat illogical option for storing our boats. I suppose we just chatted to the right person at the right time to get what we needed done. That is the way of things here, and perhaps it is the same everywhere.

Picture: A top spot for lunch (instant noodles again) in north-east Flores.

Crazy Cartography

Recently I posted a few comments regarding the absurdity of our navigational tools, and I now have some firm evidence to prove that it is not just my potential inability to read maps, charts and the GPS, but laughable inaccuracies on the part of the map-makers.

For the duration of our paddles in Flores we have been thoroughly enjoying the challenge of locating campsites each day that are tucked away in quiet corners of the island where there are no villages, and we are unlikely to be disturbed. While it is impossible to feel like we might actually be the first visitors to any particular spot, as there is evidence of people everywhere, our selection of campsites has been fabulous and we have slipped through almost entirely unnoticed by the masses.

However, surviving on our own stores and avoiding the relative 'comforts' of visiting villages, we were running really low on food, or at least anything edible or with more nutritious value than a cardboard box. We decided to deviate from our pattern of sticking to the most remote locations and to head into Maumere Bay, risking exposure to the masses, but opening the opportunity to actually find some healthy food. And it was in Maumere Bay that the cartographers seemed to have given up their attempt for any form of accuracy on our only map.

North-east of Maumere, the bustling capital of Flores, our fabulously inaccurate map lists a location, Wodong Beach, that is marked with an umbrella, usually the symbol to show some sort of coastal resort or point of interest for tourists. This sounded promising - perhaps a restaurant serving yummy food, or even cold beer, might be there waiting for us. As we paddled past the extensive and unbroken mangrove forest where the umbrella was listed we began to scratch our heads in wonder as to what fate may have befallen this potentially sprawling development. Alas, it was at this point that Lain noticed that the town of Wodong was in fact listed, about 35km east of where we were expecting it to be. At best, that is about six hours of solid paddling.

In an attempt to find some food along the way, exhausted as were were after the wild goose chase our map had led us along, we landed on the coast exactly where our map suggested another small town, Degit, would be nestled. A fisherman in his dugout canoe laughed at our suggestion that we were looking for this particular town, and he said that it should take us about 2 hours to get there by motorbike. Lain accosted another local who drove her to a market in a large town nearby (neither was it called Degit nor was it marked on our map) to hurriedly grab some supplies and some takeaway meals, a luxury we had not experienced for over a fortnight.

After eight hours in the pressing heat we finally made it Wodong, or at least the place on the coast where the map claimed Wodong would be. In fact there really isn't a town at Wodong at all, just a slightly more populated stretch of the same road that runs across the island. We watched a bus slow down to (literally) about 30km/h to let a passenger launch off the side in front of the 'bus stop'. Fortunately Wodong had a tiny hotel on the beach with a vacant and very basic cabin we could stay in. There was one luke warm beer in the resort, and our dinner took nearly two and a half hours to be prepared. If only we hadn't been starving to death at the time!

As a final injustice, our carefree cartographers decided to place 'Babi Island' wherever they wanted to - on the island of Flores! The map shows a small island roughly in the location that Babi should be, but clearly they never bothered to edit the rough draft, perhaps assuming that nobody in their right mind would ever actually visit these places (they might be correct about my state of mind!). This area was rocked by a serious earthquake and tsunami in 1992, perhaps this was responsible for shaking up all of the place-names as well.

Our eyes are now firmly set on our current goal, Larantuka in eastern Flores. This town will signal the end of this stage of the expedition as our visas, which we have already extended to our maximum permissible stay, will expire in about a week. We'll hopefully locate a secure spot somewhere in Larantuka to leave our boats while we zoom off out of the country to repeat the ridiculous visa requirements, so that we can then continue on to the Solor and Alor Islands to the east of Larantuka. All this of course is based on the fact that Larantuka is actually where our map suggests it will be, and indeed the islands to the east of Flores actually exist at all! Thank you cartographers, you have been a great help.

Picture: This sections represents about 200km of eastern Flores on our map - the black circles are mine showing Wodong and Wodong Beach, Degit, and Babi Island (it also points to the actual island).

Royal Flush

Once in my life I believe I did have a punt on the Melbourne Cup, I have put no more than a sum total of $20 into pokie machines, and I don't adhere to a set of lotto numbers, so it is with no confidence whatsoever that I will hereby claim to know that the 'Royal Flush' is the hand which poker players dream to receive, the top of the pile which defeats all its opponents.

I do however, understand with painful accuracy that a 'Royal Flush' of a different sort can be caused by some unseen bacterial army marching into my alimentary canal, planting their flag and proceeding to defeat all of its opponents, in this case the rather flimsy defence that my rapidly weakening body can muster. Recently in Jakarta, both Lain and I succumbed to the onslaught of bacteria that teemed in the unsanitary street stalls from which we were receiving our daily repast. At the time, and up until that point our bodies being in relatively plump, good health, it took us both a full week to recover while limiting our daily output to stumbling down the hotel stairs for breakfast. Now, after several months of relying on two minute noodles to provide us with the energy we require to paddle heavy boats into headwinds for many hours, in the tropical heat, each day our bodies are somewhat depleted of their 'safety margin' and the defences within are sadly running low. 

In Indonesian houses the toilet is slightly different to that which we, in the western world, are more accustomed to. The bowl itself is the Asian style, squat toilet, or more precisely, a hole in the ground. Toilet paper is absent, along with other advances in modern technology such as a flushing cistern. A large rectangular tub, or Mandi, holding perhaps 200L of water is built-in, or in more luxurious establishments is a sawn-off plastic barrel, beside and within easy reach of the bowl or the person squatting above it. Floating in this Mandi is a small plastic scoop with a handle not unlike a large measuring cup and it is with a well-practiced slosh into the bowl with this scoop, and a deft wipe with the left hand, that any soiled areas of ones privates are wiped clean after a visit to the kamar kecil, literally, the 'little room'. The scoop is then used to pour water into the bowl several times in an attempt to wash away the remains of one's visit. 

This rather full explanation of Indonesian plumbing is included here to give the reader some appreciation for the horror we experienced recently when we learnt that the only 'fresh' water we would be able to procure at the small village from which we desperately needed a re-supply, was directly from the Mandi of the ramshackle shop that was supplying us with far from satisfactory supplies for our continuing adventure. Using the same scoop into which so many unsanitary hands had placed themselves I tentatively poured the somewhat dubious liquid into every single one of our water bags, the liquid that was to keep us alive and paddling for the next week. 

It is without exception that every drop since that day has been boiled on our trusty stove, or upon a campfire along some deserted beach, but I continue to have my doubts that even after several rinses with sea water and other 'clean' supplies that our water bags still harbour small battalions of determined bacteria. Perhaps I should not have been surprised when one such force, undoubtedly trained by the SAS of the bacterial elite, snuck behind enemy lines (that of my body's sleeping defences) to mount a full scale war upon my alimentary canal. 

Again running extremely short of water and other supplies, we did not have the luxuries available to us that we found so essential when inflicted in such a way in Jakarta, and despite my body's obvious opposition, we proceeded to paddle fifty kilometres over the next day and a half to again top up on essential supplies (we were down to our last litre of water when we finally found the village that was nowhere near our map suggested it would be).

It was with utter exhaustion that we finally pulled up in a suitable place to rest, well away from the constant barrage of staring locals, for a chance to recuperate, and to give the antibiotics that I am now pumping into my system a chance to hurl a few scud missiles in the direction of the SAS. We have a couple of hundred kilometres to paddle before we'll need to race off for another visa run, and if it gives us a chance to top our bodies up with a few good meals, then it can't come soon enough. At least then Lain might stop referring to me, describing my cadaver-like appearance, as 'The Coat-hanger'.

Photo: Lain drinking in some healthy goodness, and hoping it it clean!

Rest Day

Invite your local neighbourhood olympic athlete, or other elite sportsperson to describe their rigorous training schedule and amongst the early morning cardio sessions, the endless pounding of pavements, you will discover the compulsory rest day. To gain the most from such exhaustive training, at least once a week the body must recuperate, it must relax and process the grilling that it is being served.

And so it is with paddling long distances, pushing aching muscles to just keep going, and forcing the body to burn away whatever energy it can locate in some long forgotten and fast dwindling stores (one day soon it might stop eating away at my non-existant bum and finish its job burning away the years-old layer of beer and pizza that still thinly clings to my belly). While our training schedules might render us more in line with a Kenyan long distance runner than a Hungarian hammer-thrower, we still need to rest.

A somewhat related phenomenon in this watery part of the world is the way the wind seems to know exactly what we are thinking. Careful not to jinx ourselves, we are cautious with what we say in regards to the weather conditions because it feels as though the wind can hear our every whisper. Unfortunately the wind is like a hard-nosed swimming coach (the fearsome Mr Houge of my youth) forever pushing us to work harder, do more, and get more and more exhausted. Should we begin a day hoping to achieve a long distance, the wind will tease us with a constant headwind. If we attempt a long crossing of a wide bay the wind might help us by blowing gently from our stern quarter for a little while, then stop dead, leaving us to crawl through the water as though it was sand in an endless desert. Should we settle in for a rest, after exhausting ourselves in a headwind all morning, the wind will respond by swinging 180˚ and blowing as a tailwind all afternoon, taunting us like a school bully. Rarely, if ever, is the wind on our side.

Typically during our paddles we aim to take a rest day on the seventh day, our Sabbath, regardless of the day of the week, but hopefully in a location that is suitably hidden that we can relax in peace. Occasionally our rest day is spent trekking into the closest town to restock supplies if we haven't been able to procure the essentials along the way. Solar panels come out to lap up the sunshine like a French nudist and rest days are spent drying out wet gear and fixing things that need a touch up. Our trusty hammocks get a workout, the billy is regularly boiled and the pages of well-thumbed books are slowly turned. Our rest days are sacred, and they recharge our bodies and minds like the batteries charging in the sun.

This week however, our routine was rattled, our seventh day was spent, rather than resting, paddling into the wind into an attempt to find a reasonable spot to stop. Unfortunately there were plenty of beautiful, secluded, sandy, reef-clad beaches that we passed, but all just around dawn, as we were gearing up to make some distance. After several thousand kilometres our standards have become quite firm, the bar has been raised quite high, and the island that we ended up on wasn't quite perfect for a rest day. This however, was something that we did not whisper to the wind and by the time we had decided to push on for one more day, or however many we needed to so that we could find a perfect rest-day location, the wind had set its schedule for the following day. Expecting, of course that we would not be paddling, the wind settled on a fresh nor-westerly, a wind that might actually assist us in our current south-east trajectory.

It must have come as a surprise to the forces of nature when, the following morning we were sipping coffee and packing away the tent well before dawn. Try as it might to reverse the schedule, to reinstate a headwind for the day, the valves had already been opened and the wind was with us. Making the most of the conditions, we paddled past many kilometres of unsuitable mangroves, salt marshes and the delta of Flores's mightiest river which, according to our hopelessly inaccurate map, is a watercourse that is unworthy of a name. Risking total exhaustion, and shortly after refuelling our bodies with the routine quantity of one and a half packets of instant noodles, complete with the 7 vitamins and minerals that the packet claims they contain (although I suspect these said minerals are in fact ingredients in the ink stamped on the plastic wrapper) we headed out for a long, 20km (roughly 3.5 hours) crossing of a wide and shallow bay. Even this act of defiance against the wind, a red rag waved in front of a bull, could not tempt the wind to taunt us with a headwind.

By the time we landed, on a perfect, quiet, white sandy beach under the shade of tall open trees, with a grand view of the surrounding mountains, we had paddled for over eight hours and covered fifty kilometres - not exactly the rest we had hoped for. After eight long days since our last rest day, and with roughly half of Flores behind us, we had tricked the wind, and found our perfect location for a well-deserved day of rest. Bring it on!

Photo: Juz blogging away in his hammock/office on a well-deserved rest day.

Captain Caveman

So far our paddling in Indonesia has been broken into reasonably digestible chunks, like the tinned sardines we mix into our rice for dinner. Red tape, restocking, rest days and the very occasional cheeky beer allow us to focus on small steps at a time, rather than being dwarfed by the big picture.

On our very first day of the Archipaddlo adventure, when we had paddled our dangerously overloaded boats all of about 5km from Trinity Beach, Cairns, to Double Island, we whipped out the map to see if we could make sense of the massive task we had set ourselves. We couldn't - the map showed a vast coastline with islands dotted about and vast waterways separating them. To say we were both just a little terrified may be a slight understatement. Now, quite a few months and several thousand kilometres later we are not so effected by the stress of imagining how far away the end point might be. We have learnt to deal with what is on offer at the time, and just aim for some campsite at the end of the day.

It is, however a reality of any sort of travel where similar places are visited regularly that spectacular sights can become ho-hum, the traveller blasé to the wonders they are witnessing. Many years ago, when travelling through Europe, I found that after a while it didn't matter how many grand cathedrals, ruined castles or ancient walled cities I ventured to, they all started to look the same. And so it is with tropical, white sandy, coral-fringed beaches, unfortunately they all start blending together.

Perhaps it is a symptom of Lain and I becoming a bit more proficient in existing out of kayaks in Indonesian waters. We have learnt the finer points of negotiating with little old ladies in roadside markets, to supply us with greener bananas, tomatoes and cucumbers that might last a few days longer stuffed into the hot, sweaty storage hatch of our boats. We have enough water and gas, rice and noodles to last us a week without ever visiting a town, and we have the capacity to sneak silently into the tiniest and most protected beaches that even the local dugouts struggle to reach.

Diversity is therefore the key to our predicament, the ingredient that will prevent us taking this brilliant place for granted. The coastline of north-western Flores, when spied on through Google-Earth goggles, appears to be a natural wonderland, a kayakers dream. The reality is pretty much spot on, this place is beautiful. To make sure we keep our eye on it though we have been mixing things up, and doing our best to do something different every day. In the last few days we have been pushed ashore early in the day by a strong easterly wind, meaning our daily distance is well below average, so our campsites need to be comfortable enough to absorb an afternoon of recuperating, coffee drinking and hammock swinging.

A night spent in the mangroves was a stark comparison to the white sandy beaches we have become a little accustomed to. Squadrons of midges, released from their hangars in waves attacked their victims with regular raids to any exposed skin not thickly coated in Rid. Escaping the mangroves and the extensive sea grass beds at low tide was also an adventure, something different - this is good.

We snuck past several villages into a blustery headwind to find a tiny, isolated pocket of rainforest where the cool shade of the tall trees allowed us to swing in our hammocks in the cool breeze of the afternoon, undetected by the many passing fishing boats. Another camp was on a deserted beach strewn with huge grey rocks, giving the whole place the appearance of a film set for a chick flick romance film.

Tonight, however, is perhaps the winner for something different. We are sleeping in a cave! For the fifth night in a row we have landed on an isolated beach, far away from any town. When we arrived this morning after four hours of slogging into headwinds, Lain located the entrance to a low cave at the back of the beach. Cool and quiet, we spent the day relaxing in this peaceful underground cavern and tonight we are sleeping in the tent, in the cave, far away from the rest of the world, and the normal routine of more and more beaches.

We'll keep shaking things up - I wonder what is in store for tomorrow.

Photo: Captain Caveman - Juz admiring the sunset from within the tent, within our cave.

This is rubbish!

Try this: Take 220 million people, give them huge quantities of plastic packaging wrapped around every known commodity, and do not provide any form of rubbish collection or waste management. What do you reckon would happen?

Unfortunately the "do the right thing" message is struggling to gain a following in this sprawling archipelago. Children throw plastic wrappers on the ground where they have finished their sweets, shopkeepers push a mound of plastic generated by their store into the adjoining creek and families play in their yard where plastic wrappers lie on the ground as though they were leaves from a tree. Rarely is there any attempt to clean things up.

Once the little port and fishing village of Labuan Bajo, in the west of Flores, would have been a dreamy slice of tropical perfection. Cascading fresh water flowed down the steep hillside among rainforest giants to the crystal clear, shallow waters of the protected harbour where coral silently filtered their share of the nutrients and fish leapt from the water in huge schools. Now the creeks run black, their unimaginable odour that of sewerage and filth, their banks lined with compressed rubbish, awaiting the next wet season deluge. Much of the coral is gone, the fish have been eaten and the surface of the water is a sludge of plastic wrappers and other refuse. Paradise is lost.

Even in the Komodo region, a World Heritage Area, and the least populated place we have found in Indonesia, every beach is backed by a smattering of rubbish. Plastic bottles, chip packets, bits and pieces of all shape and colour lie scattered above the high tide line and blow about in the wind. Drifting through the crystal clear water where we are paddling are countless plastic bags and other scraps. Usually we'll know a town is around the next point by the rubbish in the water, drifting on the currents. Reefs catch the odd plastic trophy and store them for eternity. Mangrove forests filter the oceans and mounds of plastic build up behind them.

On several occasions the rubbish has got serious. As we set up camp on Moyo Island I collected a hypodermic needle from the beach around our camp and several small vials of some medical who-knows-what that had bobbed in on the tide. After our second day of scurrying about barefoot in our magical camp on Gili Mauan I brought my camp chair into the tent in the evening to discover the 2-inch needle of some years old hypodermic spiking into the base of the chair. Thankfully we have survived so far without any puncture wounds.

So how do we deal with our waste? This has been of concern to me since we began planning Archipaddlo. In QLD we minimised our rubbish by preparing and packaging all our meals in vacuum sealed bags. The sum total of a week's rubbish fitted into a sandwich bag. Wherever we could we took this to a town (Cooktown and TI) for disposal. In a few spots we burned our rubbish or buried it deep in a hole I was never certain of the best strategy so I mixed it up a bit.

In Indonesia we cannot avoid the excessive packaging. Every morsel of food we consume is wrapped in too much plastic. I suspect that if Indonesians worked out a way to individually package grains of rice then they would give it a go. Even if we collect every scrap and take them to the next town for disposal they would be thrown on the beach and burnt in small fires, smouldering until they have oozed their plasticky mess into the sand where the children play. So we carefully burn most of our rubbish, far away from children, and on hot fires to incinerate the remains. Then we bury the ashes. Typically this is done on a beach surrounded by hundreds of other plastic bits and pieces, but at least our own rubbish has been removed.

Is this the right thing to do? I just don't know. The problem of rubbish in this country is massive. The scars on the environment are permanent. Some plastic bottles are recycled here but this is not a solution. We try our hardest to minimise our own impact on this beautiful place. We only wish that the people who call this home would do the same.

Castaways and Manta Rays

It was probably all those re-runs of Gilligan's Island, or perhaps Tom Hanks and his volleyball, that fuelled our imagination but I suspect at one time everybody has imagined how they might feel to be shipwrecked and washed up on the white sandy beach of some remote and uninhabited island. Komodo's violent currents did their best to tear our kayaks apart and although we survived without being dashed upon the shore we certainly found a true castaway island, Gili Mauan, in the heart of this incredible World Heritage area.

Imagine pouring half an ocean's water through a narrow channel, then reversing the flow every 6 hours. Swirling and ferocious currents rip cliffs into the rocky islands and the remnants of once-proud islands lie submerged, terrorising the flow and kicking enormous and very unpredictable eddies and whirlpools into the current. That any islands have survived the torment unleashed upon them by the relentless oceans is truly a miracle, especially the tiny Gili Mauan which lies in the centre of the flow, splitting the current like a lone traffic cop in the middle of Times Square in rush hour. The massive current is so precisely split that at one point on the beach the current will tow one foot east and the other west.

Gili Mauan became our home for three days, as we took an essential break from many long days of tough paddling. Shady trees kept the beating rays at bay and their limbs held our hammocks in comfortably sagging smiles. The 'fresh' water we had collected in Komodo village came from a very suspect source but we had plenty of firewood to boil and boil our billy, and rehydrate with too many coffees.

Anemone fields harbouring thousands of 'Nemo' fish wrapped around the island's shallow coral shelves and during the short slack tide we watched the fins of manta rays cruising the deeper channel torn into the reef at the end of the tiny island. Eagles soared over head and dipped into the shallows to collect a feed while baby reef sharks patrolled the shore searching for a fish that had swum too far from the school.

It was the mantas though that really caught our attention. We calculated the tides carefully so that right at the turn of the current when we had a slight chance that we weren't going to be whisked out into an endless whirlpool, we donned our masks and jumped in for a snorkel. And we hit the jackpot. Fifty metres off the beach we swam into a massive manta ray, happily cruising the warm water for millions of microscopic morsels. Now when I say massive, a fully grown manta would have a wingspan somewhere up around the 5 metre mark - an imposing creature indeed.

Although manta rays are technically fish it doesn't feel right to tar them with the same brush. Mantas fly through the water with a grace and ease that truly is one of nature's wonders. We swam with this giant of the deep for several minutes, often passing within a metre or so of its gently flapping wings, staring into its enormous eyes and watching the tiny specs of life being vacuumed into the manta's wide open mouth. As it silently flew off into the deep we were left bobbing at the surface, dumbfounded by the spectacle. Yet that was only the beginning.

Over the next half an hour twenty or thirty mantas came cruising and swirling around us in the calm water of our deserted island. Sometimes five or six at a time would circle us, flying around us doing aerobatics like biplanes at an air-show. Everywhere we looked enormous mantas, with their black wings and white bellies, eyed us off as though they were as excited to see us as we were them. When we finally flipped back to the beach to escape the rapidly building current we were both speechless from the spectacle we had just witnessed. It was brilliant.

There are some moments in time that will be impossible to forget and swimming with a school of giant manta rays in the tropical sunshine of our own castaway island will be a moment I'll gladly carry with me for ever.

Photos: Gili Mauan, our campsite was in the trees behind the beach. Juz and Lain loving life after swimming with a school of manta rays.

How is it so?

B.L.O.G. = Bring Lots Of Gear!

Adventurers scrambling all over the planet have discovered various ways of cleverly communicating their antics and whereabouts to the world. To me this wizardry is all still somewhat baffling but having the ability to communicate is a mandatory requirement for a safe and successful adventure, especially in remote areas. Welcome to my office!

Some days I feel a little like James Bond with all these flashy gadgets out in the middle of nowhere, although I can't imagine they will ever cast a dreadlocked hippy in a sarong into Fleming's leading role. So as I lounge in my reclining camp chair on a coral beach in the sun it seems appropriate that I do my best to explain what I am up to, how I can actually make these blog posts appear on the very distant world wide web.

Basically it all relies on lots of gadgets and clever toys that all need power, and there isn't a power socket for miles. There is however, plenty of sunshine (yes, notice the bronzed Aussie in this picture) which I can capture with two flexible solar panels. These 14 watt panels roll up and are stored in a PVC tube with a screw cap made from an old piece of drainage pipe from a mate's house renovation (cheers Simo). A regulator plugs into the panels which feeds the charge into two 12V, 7.2Ah batteries that are heavy but do the job. Charging the batteries will take more than a full day in the sun but I cannot use this to justify too many rest days.

When charged I can connect a female cigarette lighter connection to the batteries to charge up all the other goodies. This may be pretty basic technology but I tried some fancy battery options before leaving home and was pretty happy to stick to the basics, especially in case I need to source repairs or replacements along the way.

My trusty and very tiny MacBook Air (11 inch) is the brains behind this operation. I have tried to kill it once by dropping the wafer thin computer from waist height onto the shiny tiled floor of a Surabayan hotel room, but it bounced back with little more than a good buckle at one corner of the lid. Using solid state memory, this little tacker uses much less power than many other small computers which suits my purposes perfectly. I run it as lean as possible, making sure that any power hungry processes are switched off, and running the screen on the lowest possible brightness setting.

When I write a blog post it is set up as an email, that is delivered directly into the workings of the Archipaddlo website so that I do not have to actually be on the web to edit the site. As I am extremely limited with upload speeds I use some very clever compression software (XGate) that converts the information making up my email into the smallest package possible. I also have some software (iResize) that very easily converts images into tiny file sizes that I am able to upload. For instance the picture on this page has been shrunk from a 7MB file down to 7KB for more efficient uploading. The position updates on Google Earth work similarly, I send an email in a certain format to some clever software (cheers Rob) so that the red line forms on the map automatically.

Next in the list is a sat phone (Iridium 9555). In theory this will allow me to plug in from anywhere at any time, but the coverage is usually pretty patchy, allowing for a few minutes of coverage before dropping out. The phone connects to the computer and in some magical way connects the computer to the world. I use a mob in the States (Global Marine Networks) for my prepaid plan so that when I upload data or make calls the info is sent to Florida by satellite, then beamed into the web. The connection speed is claimed to be 19200 bits per minute but this never happens. It usually takes around four minutes to upload a couple of position reports and a blog update, and at $1.50 a minute it costs more to update the blog that it costs us to eat here for several days.

For photos we have four cameras that we juggle around at different times for different uses. Four cameras mean four batteries that need charging, three chargers, plugs for AC and DC, spare batteries, spare memory cards and cords for connecting up to the computer. The two GPSs (and our head-torches) that we are using run on AA batteries so I have rechargeable batteries and a recharger for those as well. The iPhone contains the better navigation software and is a convenient way of accessing the web in WiFi spots in bigger towns, and it only needs one cord to charge up from the computer. We also have a cheap mobile phone that we bought in Indonesia for use over here but it doesn't draw much power and I don't have a DC charger for it meaning we can only charge it up when we get to a town.

Just in case it all goes pear shaped I am backing up all our valuable data - already nearly 10,000 photos - on two separate 1TB hard drives. There is one drive hidden in each of our kayaks in case somebody decides to rummage in there one of these nights. On that note, I have already caught one would be thief in the act, but he got away empty handed.

Keeping all this gear dry inside salty, sweaty, hot kayaks that are occasionally swamped with sandy water in dumping surf landings has proven to be a challenge. Most of the electronics are stored in Pelican cases that are then wrapped in dry bags. Bags of silicone absorb whatever humidity gets into the boxes and so far we haven't had any major issues.

All of this just to make sure that I don't feel too far disconnected from the real world, or perhaps to remind me that I am!

Photo: Juz, hard at work in the office.

Enter The Dragon

Paddling Sumbawa was a challenge. Wide, exhausting crossings in strong wind and very deep water with surging swell was more than a little nerve racking. Our total lack of privacy was tiring as our every move was scrutinised by an army of observers. The lack of respect for the environment was hard to take, especially in our last campsite on the island, a beautiful, secluded, white sandy beach surrounded by coral. We had only arrived ten minutes earlier when a massive bomb blast at the far end of our beach sent a huge column of water 20m into the air. We had heard distant dynamite blasts in the water but to see the scale of the impact, and for the reward of a few undersized fish, it was heartbreaking.

Our paddles through the Komodo region have been quite the opposite. While we have not been able to escape the wide crossings the challenges here are spectacular, just like the scenery. Currents surge through these rugged islands with a force that causes much bigger boats with powerful diesel motors to cower in the bays waiting for the tide to turn. Water rushing around a point can cause huge standing waves to rise from nowhere and can be almost impossible to paddle against (although we keep sneaking through). Vast whirlpools like those described in children's books cartwheel through the channels, pulling our boats around like driftwood. It is all very exciting paddling, but we are developing steel nerves as we go.

Imagine the Whitsunday Islands, on steroids, and there you have the Komodo region. Numerous rugged, dry islands, many of them huge and with high ridged spines, are separated by clear, cool water that literally teems with life. Great schools of fish leap as one to avoid some unseen predator. Turtles bob their heads and tear away terrified through the aquamarine depths as we approach. Eagles and kites soar from the cliff tops, and occasionally scoop low to collect a fish from the surface. Kingfishers flash brilliant blue wings during the day while flying foxes flap and chatter in the evening.

The snorkelling is all that one could ever hope for. We practiced our freediving skills off a deep ledge in water the clarity of glass, and in the space of just a few minutes saw sharks, turtles, a million fish (give or take one or two) and a manta ray. We have had several of these giant rays fly effortlessly through the water just under our kayaks creating a sensation only matched by paddling with the giant humpbacks that I so love to play with back at home.

Speaking of giants though, there is not a predator on the planet that could stir the emotions like the hulking, fearsome Komodo Dragon. We stopped for a bite to eat and a restock of supplies today on Komodo Island and were fortunate enough to witness a fully grown dragon, lazily deciding which of the camera-snapping tourists it would most like to eat first. Images shot through my head of the speed with which an Australian goanna can explode with hungry, teeth-gnashing force, and I cautiously kept my distance behind a wall of much smaller tourists.

Perhaps even better than the wildlife, the scenery and the incredible paddling in this region is the fact that we are on our own. The islands are deserted, the beaches free from the constant staring audience. This is more like paddling in north QLD than the overcrowded islands of Indonesia and we are relishing the refreshing break. Few people mean few villages, so our supplies need to last. We will scrape on through with rice and noodles for another five or six days though, for the once in a lifetime chance to explore such an incredible wilderness.