BIRD’S-EYE VIEW

Many people report that it is often difficult to secure seats on a flight to Flores. A friend who recently came to Bali from Holland and expected to be able to jump straight on a plane to Labuan Bajo was disappointed to be told that all flights were booked out a month ahead, by which time he was planning to be well and truly back home. An infrequent flight schedule of three times a week, and the fact that flights often have to be canceled due to inclement weather, can make what should be the quickest way of getting to Flores a more complicated affair than most travelers count on. So, if you are planning to travel by air book well ahead.

Thankfully, being part of a ministerial entourage afforded us the convenience of a chartered plane. I was also grateful to be going on my first trip to Flores by air, from where the view of the chain of islands that pepper the tepid, unthreatening East Indonesian sea was so captivating that I found it hard to tear my nose from the window to introduce myself to the Minister. On crossing the Wallancea Line that divides waterlogged Bali from arid Lombok, many of the islands become long and flat, meandering like rust-colored sea snakes, dotted here and there with the green that is forests, and scarred with huddles of red-tile roofs. Others are vast cones that rise abruptly out of the ocean, gorged and pleated and blanketed in a uniform green. Others still are atolls, as round as if they had been dripped from on high, for they are ringed by a sky-blue shallow sea before the deeper ocean’s stronger hue begins.

Flying over sea can be an anxiety-ridden experience, bringing to mind horrors of dive bombing the hard surface of an angry sea, and being beyond salvation as it enters the fuselage from every direction. But this flat ocean looks gentle, and has a paleness that is playful and childlike. Had I been wearing my bathers, snorkel and goggles, I was sure to have pin-dropped down into it right there and then.