Togean Islands, Week 5 (Part 1)

The Prettiest Place You’ve Never Heard Of:  A Mixed Review

This week Sue, Jaime, and I rode in a car for 7 hours, on a ferry for 4, and on a separate boat for another 1 to make it to the Togean Island of Kadiri, a white-sand-utopian-feeling-heaven located just south of the Equator.  The whole way there we sweat profusely and smelled awful, but the second we arrived we were like, Yes.

Here are some reasons why: 

Regular nightly ritual of watching sunset with all other island-goers
at the end of the pier. 

Kadiri Sunset. 

According to my Lonely Planet Guide, the Togean Islands are the only place in Indonesia where you can find atoll, barrier, and fringing reefs in one location.  It has over 500 types of coral and 600 types of reef fish species.  Tourists from at least 6 different European countries, Australia, and Argentina.  It’s the sort of place where you sit idly for hours, absorbed in the beauty, thanking whatever higher powers you can think of for the fact that you’re alive and mobile enough to make it to such a majestic land.  I snorkled everyday and the second I’d put my head in the water, it felt like I was in a completely separate world.  The sea was so calm and the visibility so clear, I’d find myself floating/swimming for hours, staring at the ocean floor below me, the reefs next to me, and all the eccentrically colored things existing on them, feeling so amazed and so happy. Unfortunately for everyone, though, I had no means to take pictures under water.  I also, for the first time ever, scuba dived (scuba dove?) and took no pictures of that, either.  But to sum up the experience for you: I am now an underwater pro. 

On Thursday, the three of us, along with Saul, the British, 45-year-old aspiring writer, and Winni & Melanie, the German recent college grads went on an all day snorkeling extravaganza.  It was a really fun day and I took pictures for your viewing enjoyment.  

Group shot!

Bajo hut in this clearly marked plot of land. 

What's for lunch?!

Oh, rice. 

There was literally nothing cool about Winni's hat.  

This pose was no accident, ladies. 

Friendship!

But then after that, some things started to not go great.

Coming up in Part 2:  The Story of the Time I Got Two Men Fired, Made a New Friend and then Lost Him, Kind of Practiced Restorative Justice, and Late Night Sailed in a Single File Wooden Canoe by the Light of an iPhone during the Course of 48 hours.