Bira blue

In my previous post, I mentioned that our camera got stolen on the night bus from Rantepao to Macassar, the capital of Sulawesi. The thing hardly rated as a high-tech gadget and was easily replaced, but its memory card carried all the photos we took during the first month of our travels.

This could have been avoided if we had made a back-up. In fact, a few days before the theft we were about to commit ourselves to some serious archiving, when someone said “Let's do something else” and we forgot all about it.

But in travel, as in wife swapping, your luck can change. To illustrate, let me tell you about the day after that unfortunate nocturnal journey.

Clown car

Still blissfully unaware of our loss, we waved down a jeep to take us to Bira, a fishing town and popular weekend getaway destination approximately six hours from the capital. To say that the vehicle was crowded would be an understatement. No less than nine people, not including the driver, were squeezed in the tiny spaces between backpacks and grocery bags. The roof was reserved for the chickens one of the passengers had purchased in the city. It was like an Indonesian version of the clown car routine.



Next to us sat Floor and Eva, two charming girls we had met in Rantepao, back in Tana Toraja. Being Dutch, they were tall enough to experience severe discomfort from the lack of leg room. Painful glances were exchanged, but the overall atmosphere was – at this point at least – jolly.

As we slowly made our way over crumbling roads, the temperature in the ramshackle Isuzu steadily rose. Halfway to our destination, one of the chickens shat on the straw hat Hannelore was using to block out the sun. Deciding that now was as good a time as any, the female passenger behind me loudly regurgitated her breakfast.

Then, Eva noticed her iPhone was missing. Further investigation showed that all the money had been removed from her wallet. We checked our backpack and couldn't find our camera. Disbelief turned into anger, anger turned into whining.

Sparks

Thinking a bit of music might lift the gloom, our driver plugged an mp3 of his favourite local band into the soundsystem. It wasn't exactly metal – more like an amped-up version of the American band Sparks - but it definitely had the relentlessness of metal.

Between two bouts of angry shouting, a beautiful song shuffled by. A desert rhythm accompanied by an elegant, female voice. I took out my notebook so Floor – who spoke a decent amount of Indonesian – could ask the driver who this singer was. Either he didn't know, or he didn't want to spill the secret. In fact, he only wanted to talk about the extra money he was going to charge us because Bira turned out to be further away than he initially thought. This was turning into quite a frustrating day.

When we finally arrived at our destination - no surcharges paid - we immediately headed for the Sunshine guesthouse to drop our luggage. And this, my friends, is where our luck changed.