Kelimutu national park - Koka beach - Maumere

12.7- Today was a very early start, getting up at 3.45am ready to go to the Kelimutu national park and walk up to see sunrise at the volcanic lakes. We were all hoping for a clear day as all of our days in Flores have had a fair amount of cloud. The 'trek' to the summit was more of a 20 minute amble so we arrived at the summit with plenty of time to spare. We huddled up in the wind and waited as more and more people arrived and finally the sun started to come up at about 5.20am. It was a bit cloudy but still stunning. There are 3 lakes that are all different colours, and they also change colour with depending on what gases are going into them from the volcano. 

After sunrise walked to a couple more viewpoints before heading back to our little guesthouse for breakfast. 

That day we then drove on towards Maumere but stopped at Koka beach on the way. This deserted beach was definitely one of the most beautiful we have been on. 

After a few hours sunbathing it was on to Maumere where we were lucky to find a really lovely guesthouse with beautiful stone bungalows and literally right on the beach. The sunset was also beautiful. 

The owner was so friendly and was able to help me organise diving too for the next day. We ended up finishing the drive a day early somehow, so we feel slightly scammed by the guy who we paid as he charged us for 1 too many days. We ate at the guesthouse that night as we were sort of on a random road with very little on it. 

13.7- I decided to do one last day of diving, where as Lizzie and Josh fancied a beach day. So I got a motorbike taxi the half hour to one of the only dive centres. It's a completely different diving scene here to Labuan Bajo, and all the dive sites are deserted. After the 1992 tsunami, this area was hit badly and a lot of the coral reefs were destroyed. However 25 years on they have come back and are back to their colourful beauty. We were the only ones on the dive site and there were no other dive boats anywhere. You can tell that the coral here is very untouched. Saw lots of sharks, a few turtles and lots of fish and beautiful reefs. Obviously no photos of the diving again, but here is the little island we docked at for our surface interval- apparently there used to be a fishing village here but it all went with the tsunami.

 It was a wonderful last day! I got one of the local bemo vans back, which was an experience as we kept stopping en route to drop off and pick up various people and items! We ate at the guesthouse again that night and the owner went to the market to buy us a big fresh tuna fillet to share, and barbequed it- probably the best fish we have had out here, it was delicious. This was our last night in Flores before we fly back to KL via Bali tomorrow.