I was up at 05:30 and after hanging the dinghy on the davits, we were on our way by 06:00 heading to Nemberala, 25nm away. The wind dropped right off and the ocean glassed out and there was a deep ocean swell rolling in.
We rounded the south western tip of Rote and cut through the narrow shallow channel between Rote and Pulau Nuse, then headed east to Nemberala, finally entering through the narrow passage between large surf breaks either side into the anchorage, dropping the pick at 10:15 in 7.3m next to a high-performance luxury American catamaran.
Around 13:00 I went ashore on my own to try and buy some diesel and coconuts. It was stinking hot and I forgot my bloody thongs and my feet were burning walking on the hot rocks and asphalt.
Luckily, I met this young bloke who was a driver and he took me to a warung where I was able to buy some reasonable quality looking diesel that they decanted out of ten litre plastic containers and at a reasonable price. (IDR400,000)
Then he took me to his mate’s house to get some coconuts. One guy climbed up a coconut palm and threw down a coconut and another guy hacked it open with a machete and gave it to me to test drink just like when you order a bottle of wine in a restaurant.
I said it was fine. After I skulled the 1 1/2 litres of coconut water, the same guy split the coconut and then calved a spoon with his machete and I had to taste the coconut. It was soft and thin, just perfect for a young green baby coconut, and once I gave the nod of approval, nine more coconuts were thrown down. The same guy opened another coconut for me.
He must have thought I was starving or something. When we left, I was so full of coconut I could hardly walk, but we now had eight more coconuts for the trip back to Darwin.
After this, I asked the driver to take me for a drive around Nemberala and show me the sights. The town is very spread out and too far to walk. There are many nice houses, guest houses, chalets, low key resorts, shops and two huge churches. It’s a very nice and interesting town with lots of cows, dogs and goats wandering free all over the roads.
Some of the houses had beautiful gardens. After my town tour, we headed back to the beach where I had left the dinghy and I paid the driver, then headed back out to Sirocco. I spent the afternoon refueling and cleaning both the hulls.
Around 17:00 I had a shower and we headed into town to find a restaurant that I saw earlier on that looked very nice called "Narrow". It was a very long walk and took us about 45 minutes to get there.
It was a beautiful building with lots of interesting antiques from Java and the owners were a lovely couple, an amazing 80-year-old German/Australian (Derick) and his lovely wife from Java. We ordered black pepper mud crab and the local smoked beef.
They had several huge live mud crabs to choose from well over 2 kg each and I have to say it was probably the best mud crab I have ever eaten in my life, and that's a BIG call as I have caught hundreds of them before and spent a couple of years in Singapore.
We chatted with Derick and his wife all night and they had some truly amazing stories and were great company. Thankfully, Derick drove us back to the dinghy around 22:00 and we headed off into the dark night. It was a fabulous meal and a great evening in a lovely town Nemberala.
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