Bengkulu to Jakarta; and the road winds on & on etc

 Bengkulu is quite a large town with an English fort at the centre, we didn't get any pictures as to be honest if you have seen one c18 fort you have seen them all.... it had a nice aspect out to sea though. We ran into a Spanish woman with an Indonesian boyfriend who invited us to their families place for coffee which was fun in a very educational way.... There was not much to detain us though so after we had recovered from the massive journey we took to get there we jumped on another bus for an now short (8h) ride to Kuri. A small town on the south west coast which was well off the tourist route map. The only people who ever get there are surfers, and only those who want to get right off the beaten track.

Arriving at Kuri in the dark and damp we had to get moped taxis to our hotel..... Liza's went straight there while mine stopped for fuel and then got really lost so I spent a good hour exploring the town and the environs while Liza got more & more concerned..... Alls well that ends well!

Once we woke up and found we had miles and miles of beach all to ourselves and enjoyed wandering along it......

 

 

 Loved the scatter-gun spelling approach applied to foreign language here... still it gets the message across!

 The driftwood was just first rate.

 With the normal fine sunsets.

 Our Kuri residence.... in the south of Sumatra they have real roof tiles and not the corrugated iron of the north. I'm not sure if this is just that these were not affected by the 2008 earthquake.

 We had two days in Kuri and then got on by now the standard (16hour) bus ride to Jakarta... we left at 5.30 pm and drove through the night to the ferry terminal where we crossed to Java, here is our final shot of Sumatra just as dawn broke.

 And our first of Java

 

 As we crossed the straight in the distance with the zoom on maximum I managed to catch sight of the worlds most famous volcanic remains, Krakatoa, well to be exact Anak Krakatoa, which means 'Child of' The original of course exploding in 1883. Anak Krakatoa is very active and is growing at about 2m a year. At some point it will probably follow it's parent!

So at about 10.30 we arrive in Jakarta and caught the bus to town from the bus station, well two buses, one to the centre then another out to our hotel. Jakarta has bus dedicated bus lanes which no other vehicles can go into and it really provides an excellent method of getting around town. Liza really enjoyed them, so much so that she pushed her way onto our second bus and left me standing as the doors closed behind her. She then got off at the next stop, caught another bus going in another direction entirely, caught a return and then went round and round a bit for the shear joy of it and finally got off at the right stop an hour later  As it was a flat rate of 3500Rp a ticket (20p) she felt she had better get her monies worth, well that's her story!

 So finally here are a couple of pictures of Jakarta, where we have been enjoying some absolutely torrential downpours, between about 5.00pm & 10.00pm  we have thunderstorms here, and the raindrops have to queue with at least 2 inches falling both days we have been here.

We have train tickets tomorrow to head on east to Yogyakarta in central Java, home apparently of Hindu temples and fine scenery...... Hopefully the train will not be as bumpy as the buses!