CURVESCOUT / MOTORCYCLE RIDE
The recorded total and the leg detail need reconciliation. Inspect the leg notes before using this record for timing or navigation. Stops, delays, approach and any separate return travel add time. Basis: producer-declared routed record.
Reading history stays on this device. My road watch requires a separate selection; opening it does not subscribe this ride.
Distance and riding time are measured on the routed road. Check local closures and conditions before you ride.
curated scenic road. volcanoes, rice fields, coast. A one-way ride of 555 km, Labuan Bajo to Maumere - roughly 6 h 40 in the saddle. On the way it passes Ruteng, Bajawa, Wolowaru and Detusoko. The stored terrain estimate reaches about 900 m; a measured road-elevation profile is not available. The line favours views over speed.
Expect company on a summer weekend. Early is better than fast. For 4 km this is Trans-Flores Highway, a road with a name of its own and a reason for it.
Labuan Bajo was a sleepy fishing village not so long ago, and it is still trying to catch up with its own fame. It sits at the western tip of Flores, in eastern Indonesia, facing a scatter of dry brown islands that rise from a bright blue sea, and it is the gateway to Komodo National Park, a UNESCO site since 1991, home of the Komodo dragon. The largest living lizard on earth, which can grow to about three metres, survives in the wild only on a few islands here, and boat trips from the harbour take visitors to see them on Komodo and Rinca.
Read the complete Labuan Bajo write-up.
May refer to an earlier itinerary; verify against your selected route before riding.
Flores Trans Island Highway point 1 sits at 0 km, early in the day. Next is Flores Trans Island Highway point 2.
Ruteng sits on a cool plateau in the middle of Flores, about twelve hundred metres above the sea, in country that feels more like the Alps in a heat wave than the tropics. Mornings here are cold enough for a jacket, mist hangs over the rice fields, and the hills are green with coffee, vanilla and clove plantations. About thirty-five thousand people live in the town, the main centre of the Manggarai region, and the majority are Catholic, a legacy of Portuguese traders and later Dutch missionaries that makes Flores unusual in mostly Muslim Indonesia. The cathedral is a large and busy landmark.
Read the complete Ruteng write-up.
May refer to an earlier itinerary; verify against your selected route before riding.
Flores Trans Island Highway point 2 comes up 54 km in. Next is Flores Trans Island Highway point 3.
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.
May refer to an earlier itinerary; verify against your selected route before riding.
At least 124 km in you reach Flores Trans Island Highway point 3. Next is Flores Trans Island Highway point 4.
Wolowaru is a market town in the mountains of central Flores, strung out along the Trans-Flores Highway east of Kelimutu, and on market day the road through it fills with trucks, bemos and people in hand-woven sarongs carrying sacks of rice, coffee and vegetables. It is not a place most travellers stop for long, but it is a good one to pause in: a slice of ordinary life on an island where tourism has only touched a few spots.
Read the complete Near Wolowaru write-up.
May refer to an earlier itinerary; verify against your selected route before riding.
Flores Trans Island Highway point 4, about halfway. Next is Flores Trans Island Highway point 5.
The road from Ende up to Moni climbs out of the coastal heat into a world of rice terraces, waterfalls and cloud, and Detusoko sits about halfway along, a quiet village spread across the hillsides with terraced paddies falling away below it and forested ridges rising above. The air is cooler here, the light softer, and in the morning mist hangs in the valleys. A few homestays have opened in recent years, and it makes a peaceful alternative to the busier village of Moni.
Read the complete Near Detusoko write-up.
May refer to an earlier itinerary; verify against your selected route before riding.
Flores Trans Island Highway point 5 sits at 218 km, late in the day. Next is Flores Trans Island Highway point 6.
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.
May refer to an earlier itinerary; verify against your selected route before riding.
Flores Trans Island Highway point 6 comes up 555 km in.