Karimunjawa!!

2 weeks after the Dieng trip there was a trip organised to go to Karimunjawa, a group of islands off the north coast of java. 4 friends (Meg, Lucy, Sarah and James) went to Semarang (the port city) on Thursday, I went with Eda and Lisa on Friday after our classes. It was much easier than to Dieng, we only had to catch a 3 hour direct bus. We got there just at sunset, got off the bus at a random intersection, and caught a taxi to the hotel where the others were staying. The hotel was… amazing!! It’s an old dutch building, on the luxurious side of things, but cheap. I stayed in a huuuuuge room with the 4 who were already there, and hired a mattress on the floor because the beds were full. To my disdain, all of our time in Semarang was spent in the hotel (either the room or the hotel’s pub) taxis and the port. I had pizza for the first time since arriving, which was reaaaally good, but apparently theres heaps of good chinese food there, I wanted to try that too.

the Dutch hotel

almost at Karimunjawa, from Java

We went to the port nice and early for the 9am boat (wouldn’t want to miss it, not another for 3 days), but Lisa left behind all her money and camera in the taxi. Luckily the driver returned it to the hotel for her to pick up later. The boat ride was nice, especially if you had 3 padded seats to lie across and sleep on. Once on the main island we decided to stay at a floating hotel, which was a kilometre out to sea from a small fishing harbour. We had lunch first, at a ‘warung’ on the edge of the town square. This weekend happened to be the lead up to the Islamic festival of idul ahid, which would start on Monday. This is the time when goats are sacrificed, partly for the purpose of more well-off people feeding the poor, by providing them with goat. This resulted in goats (and other meaty beasties like cows and sheep) being fattened up wherever there was grassy areas. It just so happened that this town square was particularly green, so we watched the doomed goats running around while we ate… I was really happy to not eat meat!

goats, anyone?
me, james, lucy, sarah and meg on the prahu to the floating hotel

We packed ourselves into a little prahu boat and went to the hotel, Wisma Apung. It was so cool!! It was all made of wood, which was rased just above the sea. It wasn’t floating, but poles had been sunk into the seabed, which was only 2 metres from the surface. There were walkways everywhere, so we could walk around pools of small sharks, sea turtles, miscelaneous fish etc. I stood in the shark pool for a while! My friends were constantly screaming at me, saying I was crazy, but I didn’t think they’d bite, they seemed tame from being fed fish. There was a pontoon where we did crazy jumping stunts for everyone else waiting with their cameras ready. There were about 15 rooms, some with doors opening onto the sea, some with toilets (umm, you don’t want to know about the waste disposal system!), some with just beds. We were fed amazing fish for dinner, but it sucked for Eda, who is vegan. There was a choice of white rice and cucumber for her, until she convinced the cook to make her a packet of indomie. After dinner we played cards and crazy games (wink murder!), sitting above the sea.

selamat datang!

lisa, lucy, james

lisa...
lisa and eda

a ray in the shark pool... where are the sharks? camera shy.


sitting on the other side of the hotel, watching the sunset...... ahhh

In the morning we hired a boat with 3 Indonesian tourists to go on a snorkelling tour of some islands. The first one was an idyllic tiny tropical island, perfect white sand, covered in trees. We stopped near some small sandbars which led to the island. The Indonesians (Hary, Fifi and her boyfriend) snorkled on the other side of the boat, which was much deeper. We wallowed about in the pale turquoise water, snorkelling through little seaweed ecosystems and watching a starfish turn itself over. I walked on the island a bit, then went back near the boat, played around with james and lisa doing handstands.

On the way to the next spot (which was actually a beach on the main island with the goats before, but far from a town), I steered the boat, I kept asking the ‘captain’ which beach we were going to, he kept saying ‘the white one’… useful! That island had amazing coral (amazingly sharp too, I cut my feet so many times from stepping on dead coral), I swam around a huge reef, saw so many cool things, like a coral that looks like splashes of purple paint, a grey spiky one with bright blue tips, one that looks like an enormous pink plate, etc etc etc! and the fish were just as amazing! A pale one with a light pink head and a green ridge between its eyes popped out of somewhere and just sat right in front of my face, looking at the strange underwater creature that I am. There were schools of tiny silver fish flicking around me, and I saw nemo too. And angel fish, I think.

Back on the beach we got a local to climb coconut trees, we had a coconut feast right there, we tried very young, young, medium and old cocunut juice and the ‘meat’…. Aaaargh so delicious!! After that we went to a spot in the ocean, and snorkelled there. It was deeper, but much more extensive… I didn’t have as good a time there, I couldn’t get the snorkle and mask to work in unison.

We went back to the hotel, had amazing crab for dinner, we played more crazy games, I chatted with the indonesians who went with us on the tour. And the mosques on the main island were going all night long, because the next day was goat day. We got up at 6:30 I think, to go back to Java. We packed, had breakfast, and caught the little boat back to the main island. Oh dear, there were no goats in the town square anymore. We tried to not think about that. We caught a big ship to Jepara, not Semarang like the first boat. This took cargo of coconuts, and cars and motorbikes, with people on the top 2 levels.

The economy section sucked, there was cigarette smoke everywhere and crying babies. I went to the open deck, and hung out with the indonesians who had been on our snorkelling boat. We found shady spots next to the captains deck, slept, ate, took photos of the sea. It was a slower boat than the first one, and jepara was closer than semarang too. Even so, it took 6 hours to go about 40km! In Jepara, Hary, my new friend, offered to take us all (7 of us) back to semarang in his dads car… we thought ‘how can you fit us, yourself and the driver bringing the car in 1 car…?’ we saw it coming towards us and thought ‘oh no, its really small’, then it turned and we all signed at once, cos it was extra long, with 3 seats in the back! Hary asked the driver to catch a bus back to his dads’ town, and we all fit in, so off we went to semarang! We found the hotel from before really easily, and Lisa got all her money and camera back. We stayed there again, and once again ate in the hotel pub. We thanked Hary profusely, who is currently on holiday from work in Jakarta, and he’s planning to come to Jogja, so maybe we’ll meet again.


The next morning we got up, did the packing thing again, went to the bus station (where I bought the obligatary oleh-oleh, food gifts from the place you’ve been visiting for friends at home), and came all the way back to jogja again.