Our Last Hurrah

All of a sudden, as we load up the bike and bump out of the coffee plantation and over the waterfall bridge, it feels as if we’re in a hurry.

We’ve been meandering across Indonesia and around Timor Leste at a more or less leisurely pace these last few months.

We’ve covered well over 5000k on our not-so-trusty Honda Vario with its skull and crossbones stickers, including some truly atrocious roads.

A testimony to butts of iron and a general resilience that Z feels “has definite bragging rights. Not many ten-year-olds travel 5000k on a motorbike”.

And now, all of a sudden, we have, well, stuff to do.

Z needs to fly to Brisbane to see his father, a process that I sincerely hope will go more smoothly than our last attempt at flying him as an unacccompanied minor.

I’ve booked my ticket out of Bali to Singapore, where, as I did in Sydney, I’ll be bar reviewing and generally earning money. Z will fly in from Oz to meet me there.

Our China mission, perhaps by way of Laos to see friends, arrange visas and generally hang out, and certainly by way of Penang, is beginning to loom on our horizons.

So, for that matter, is Europe. We have tickets booked back to the UK for Christmas, and a loose plan to roadtrip slowly down to Spain in January.

But before any of this, of course, we need to get out of the Ijen plateau and into Bondowoso with ourselves and the bike in one piece.

And feeling the bike’s leaden, dragging resistance every time I try to accelerate sufficiently to get us up the hill, that’s looking increasingly less likely.

My core problem with the bike, I have learnt, is that I basically have no idea how it works.

Each time it complains I parrot to Z what a succession of Indonesian chaps have told me:

“There’s nothing wrong with the engine. The oil just needs to work its way through…”

Even as I say it, I don’t really believe it.

Just outside the village of Sempol, we pull over to rest the bike.

“Look!” says Z, pointing at a small pink pool that is forming in the dirt. “We’ve got a leak.”

“Oh sh*t,” I say. “We’re leaking oil. That isn’t good.”

“I know it’s not good,” he says. “I think you should sell this piece of junk for the most you can get for it the SECOND we get back to Bali.”

“And how do you propose we get around Bali, then?” I say. “Sell this and hire another one?”

“True,” he says. “I’m actually really looking forward to Dad’s ute. You know it has AC?”

Now, Indonesians are lovely people.

And there are few parts of the world where a woman and small boy standing by the side of the road inspecting a stationary vehicle will not spark offers of assistance.

When Z was four, or thereabouts, another lemon I had bought (this one on four wheels, not two) blew a gasket on the motorway in December.

As we sat on the verge awaiting the breakdown truck a guy pulled over, raced back down the hard shoulder, checked we were alright and insisted that we take his blanket.

Anywise…

In due course a guy transporting his family and a hefty load of pig fodder on a motorbike that’s been customized into a sort of impromptu truck comes past. Slowly.

“What’s the problem?” he says.

“That,” I say, pointing. “There’s oil leaking.”

“Not a problem,” he says, confidently. “Can you drive it?’

“Yeah,” I say.

He starts the engine. “There,” he says. “Not a problem. No problem with the engine.”

“Well,” I say to Z. “I guess the guy was right. We just need to allow the oil to work its way through the system. I just thought it would have done that already. We’ve driven 30k.”

A little further along, we stop for — what else? — coffee, at the Arabica plantation, where a shell-shocked looking Dutchman informs me that it took him over three hours to drive the road from Bondowoso in a car and that he wouldn’t recommend it.

“Ah,” I say, cheerfully. “You wait till you get to the road to Banyuwangi! Ha!”

“Yeah,” says Z. “Now, that’s a REALLY bad road.”

We wind up through rubber plantations, coffee plantations, tall avenues of standing trees.

Our progress is, well, stately…

Even with the accelerator maxed, the bike is refusing to do more than 20kph on even the slightest incline, and I don’t want to max the accelerator in case the engine overheats on me.

We reach a sign. 50k to Bondowoso. 24k to the nearest village worth identifying. At our current pace it will take us over three hours to make Bondowoso and there’s not a lot of traffic on the road, which means that if we break down, we’re stranded.

“Z,” I say. “I think we need to get this bike looked at. I’m going to turn round and head back. They’ll have a bengkel in Sempol.”

Freewheeling on a motorbike, if you’re ten, and even, frankly, if you’re not, is almost as fun as freewheeling on a bicycle.

We race down the winding mountain road, the wind on our faces, the bike lunging forwards on the open stretches. We cover the ground that took us so long to ascend in a few adrenaline-fuelled minutes, using the engine precisely once.

Down a dusty side street we find the bengkel, a repair shop where anything that can be fixed is jerry-rigged into functionality for a cost, generally, of around 25,000 rupiah.

It’s a wooden shack tacked onto the front of the mechanic’s home, decked with a dangling array of well-used parts that might come in handy one day and adorned with a selection of small children, richly coated in oil and grime.

I explain the history of the bike. He runs the engine. “No problem with the engine,” he says.

“Oh,” I say.

“You over-filled it,” he says. “Change the oil and it will be fine.”

The road to Bondowoso is pretty chewed up, to do justice to the Dutchman, with swathes of it reduced to the sort of chunky scree that is extraordinarily easy to slew on on a bike.

On one stretch, in fact, a local chap, who has, like all the locals, steamed past us as I painstakingly navigate the scree, comes off his bike.

He looks, well, irritated. Picks up his bike. Checks it for scratches. Dusts off his hands. And gets back in the saddle.

Us? We make it into Bondowoso, and a business hotel with swimming pool and wifi, and alternate between pool, learning and work for the next couple of days.

En route from Bondowoso, we find a rest cafe that has not only a real live flying fox but also (drum roll!) quadbikes.

Z’s driving style on a quadbike, like his karting style, tends to the sedate. He poddles happily and proudly around and around their track… races down the flying fox… scrambles up their assault course…

We spend a night in Kalibaru, at a place with a spice plantation and dairy farm on site, its charms rather mitigated by the presence of a number of tour groups.

We spend another night at the port town of Banyuwangi.

And in the morning we’re ready.

Ready to go back to Bali.

To go back for what feels like our last hurrah in a place that, to both of us, is one that feels like home.

To say goodbye to our bike, to Indonesia, to Bali, to this leg of our adventure, to the places that have such familiarity, the rhythms of life we understand, the language we can cope with…

For me, it’s a wrench.

For Z? He’s just superstoked to be seeing his dad.

“You know, Mum?” he says proudly. “This will be my FOURTH time flying as an unaccompanied minor.”