There’s few words from me tonight as today’s hardly been the most exciting day – unless you count hoping the snow showers we’ve had on and off all day would deliver a decent deluge and we’d be covered in the white stuff for the weekend. I was looking forward to getting some shots of snow-covered trees in our local woods, but it wasn’t to be. We’re just that little bit too low on the valley side so whilst nearby Warley looked picturesque, we were left with muddy footpaths and wet woods. Maybe tomorrow!

The pictures I’ve been scanning today couldn’t be more different, as this one shows. I took this shot in the last few days of September 1998 on a tiny little Island called Kanawa which is a boat trip from the town and ferry port of Labuanbajo on the Western end of the Island of Flores, Indonesia. We were staying in the little resort you can see by the beach, although ‘resort’ is rather a grand term for a collection of a dozen stilt bungalows and a restaurant! But, it was a fantastic place to kick back and relax. This was in the days when mobile phones was a luxury and the internet was dial-up and could only be found in major cities. There was no TV here either. Lynn and I had a short-wave radio with us and that was our only contact with the outside world. Here, you sunbathed, swam, snorkelled and slept. Supplies were brought in by boat daily from the mainland and after a couple of days you learned not to order breakfast until you saw the boat arrive and what was on it. But everything was fresh, especially the fish – and the chicken as the birds scratched a living from the ground around the resort. I remember one day someone ordered chicken for the evening meal. The chef disappeared out of the back and there was a helluva commotion accompanied by lots of flapping, clucking and squawking. 20 minutes later the cook came back and said to the couple. “Sorry, you can’t have chicken”. “Why not?” they asked. “I can’t catch one” was his reply! At least you didn’t have to catch your own…

I’ve dozens of pictures scanned and ready for editing before adding to my website tomorrow. When they are, you’ll be able to find them in this gallery. They’ll include shots of both Flores and Bali as we were heading West to Java before flying to Australia to spend Christmas with friends we’d made earlier in the trip, although first, we were meeting up with a group from the UK who were coming out to join us in Bali for a holiday.

I’ve a favour to ask…
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