Flores Trans Island Highway: Bajawa to Maumere

Scenic road chapters

Waypoint introductions and full write-ups

1. 1. Bajawa

   Bajawa is a cool highland town in the middle of Flores, and the first thing the body notices is the temperature. You arrive from the sticky coast and climb to around eleven hundred metres, where evenings need a jacket and the air smells of woodsmoke and clove. The town sits in a bowl at the foot of Mount Inerie, a graceful volcano of over two thousand metres whose cone dominates the southern skyline, and its slopes are covered in coffee, vegetables and clove trees. This is the heartland of the Ngada people, whose villages of thatched houses, ancestral shrines and megalithic stones lie within an hour or two of the town.

   Read the complete Bajawa write-up.

   Recorded stop-planning note

   May refer to an earlier itinerary; verify against your selected route before riding.

   Planning note

   Bajawa is where the day begins. Next is Kelimutu.

2. 2. Kelimutu

   Kelimutu is a volcano on the island of Flores, in Indonesia's Nusa Tenggara, and it has three crater lakes that change colour. At the summit, about sixteen hundred metres above the sea, the three lakes sit side by side in a rocky landscape, one a deep turquoise, one a milky green and one a dark, almost black, though the colours shift over the years, from blue to green to red to brown, apparently according to volcanic gases and minerals in the water. Nobody can predict when or how they will change, and that is part of their pull.

   Read the complete Kelimutu write-up.

   Recorded stop-planning note

   May refer to an earlier itinerary; verify against your selected route before riding.

   Planning note

   Kelimutu comes up about 186 km into the recorded legs. Next is Moni.

3. 3. Moni

   Moni is a small village at the foot of Kelimutu, a cluster of homestays, guesthouses and tiny restaurants strung along the road, in a cool green landscape of rice terraces, coffee bushes and banana trees. At about a thousand metres, it is noticeably cooler than the coast, and the evenings bring a damp chill that sends everyone into their rooms with a pot of hot tea. Most travellers come to sleep before the sunrise climb to the lakes, but the village has a quiet charm of its own.

   Read the complete Moni write-up.

   Recorded stop-planning note

   May refer to an earlier itinerary; verify against your selected route before riding.

   Planning note

   about 199 km into the recorded legs you reach Moni. Next is Maumere.

4. 4. Maumere

   Maumere is where the Trans-Flores road runs out of island, or begins, depending on which way you ride. It is the biggest town in the east of Flores, a trading port with a Catholic cathedral, a busy market and a long waterfront, and the heat and humidity here hit you the moment you stop.

   Read the complete Maumere write-up.

   Recorded stop-planning note

   May refer to an earlier itinerary; verify against your selected route before riding.

   Planning note

   Maumere closes the day.