CURVESCOUT / MOTORCYCLE RIDE
Ordered leg totals agree within rounding. Stop distances are approximate sums of rounded legs. 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.
A one-way ride of 436 km, Labuan Bajo to Wolowaru - roughly 5 h 13 in the saddle. It goes by way of Ruteng, Bajawa and Ende. The stored terrain estimate reaches about 900 m; a measured road-elevation profile is not available. It suits an unhurried touring pace.
Expect company on a summer weekend. Early is better than fast. For about 49 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.
Labuan Bajo is where the day begins. Next is Ruteng.
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.
Ruteng comes up about 127 km into the recorded legs. Next is 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.
May refer to an earlier itinerary; verify against your selected route before riding.
about 261 km into the recorded legs you reach Bajawa. Next is Ende.
Ende sits on the south coast of Flores, a long, volcanic island in eastern Indonesia, and it is a place where history has left a small, quiet mark. In 1934 the Dutch colonial government exiled the nationalist leader Sukarno here, and he lived in a modest house for four years, writing, staging plays and thinking. According to local tradition, he came to the idea of the Pancasila, the five principles that became the foundation of the Indonesian state, while sitting under a breadfruit tree on the seafront, and the spot is now a small memorial park.
Read the complete Ende write-up.
May refer to an earlier itinerary; verify against your selected route before riding.
Ende, late in the day. Next is Moni.
Moni is a small village on the lower slopes of a volcano, and it exists largely because of what lies above it. About thirteen kilometres up a winding road is Kelimutu, a peak of around 1,640 metres whose summit holds three crater lakes in different colours, one of them often turquoise, another green and the third dark red or brown. The colours change over the years, depending on gases and minerals, and no one has fully explained why. Local belief holds that the souls of the dead go to the lakes, the young to one, the old to another and those who lived evil lives to the third.
Read the complete Moni write-up.
May refer to an earlier itinerary; verify against your selected route before riding.
Finish at Moni. That is the ride.
Labuan Bajo → Ruteng is 127 km of getting across. Ride it tidily and keep the enthusiasm for what comes after.
Ruteng → Bajawa is 134 km of getting across. Ride it tidily and keep the enthusiasm for what comes after.
Bajawa → Ende is 126 km of getting across. Ride it tidily and keep the enthusiasm for what comes after.
Ende → Moni is 49 km of rhythm rather than effort. Let it flow and let the view breathe.