We had a long travel to get all the way from home to our hotel destination at the Tangkoko Sanctuary Villas. We first flew from Denver to LA on United Airlines, followed by an 11 hour flight from LA to Tokyo on ANA, a few hours wait, and then another 7 hour flight on ANA to Jakarta. Once in Jakarta, we passed through immigration with no line (it was a 5am landing time) and were able to check in to our domestic flight on Garuda Indonesia Airline. We had a few more hours to wait in Jakarta but used our Priority Pass to get into the Blue Sky lounge. At first it seemed basic, but they actually had a really good food selection and friendly service. One more flight to go, we boarded for Manado which was another 3 hour flight.

We had arranged pickup by our hotel ahead of time so once we landed, we were in the car in no time for the 90 minute drive. Relieved to finally be at our destination after ~40 hours of travel, we sat down to enjoy a quick late homecooked lunch of rice, chicken curry and vegetables before heading out on our 1.5 hour nature walk. After our walk, we were quite exhausted and eager for bed. The hotel provides all meals, homecooked, so after our 7pm dinner of a slightly different pork and chicken curries, we collapsed ready for a good rest! Our room was comfortable, quiet and had A/C, with a great view over the jungle.

Tangkoko Evening Nature Walk

Our hotel had arranged a guide to take us on their late afternoon sunset walk in the Tangkoko Nature Reserve as well as a longer more extensive walk in the early morning. The cost was around $20 USD per person to do both, which seemed like a deal! You also have to pay 100,000 IDR ($5.75) per person per day for the park entrance fee. We started the evening walk at 4:30pm, meeting our guide Fabyo in the parking lot. He took us into the park where the first stop was to spot the Spectral Tarsier, a very small and adorable looking primate found only on North Sulawesi. We located several tarsiers living in a tree near the entrance to the park. We watched them as it got darker, as they are nocturnal. The tarsier comes out from the hiding as it gets dark and can swiftly jump from tree to tree hunting for insects.

After the tarsier, we walked along another path where our guide knew of a green pit viper snake that had been resting in the same small tree for the last several days. It was indeed still there, and we carefully took some pictures. We went back to visit the tarsier couple again before seeing a tarantula and ending our walk for the night.

We had an early morning wake up today but it didn't bother us since we had gone to bed at 8pm! Our morning nature walk started at 6am and lasted for about 4 hours. We were super lucky and able to see all of the animals we were hoping to plus a few extra! The weather was hot and humid, but luckily we were in the shade of the jungle for most of the morning. After the walk, we enjoyed a late breakfast at the hotel before showering off and packing up.

After the 90 minute drive back to Manado, we checked into our hotel at the Four Points Sheraton where we caught up on some work and then visited the crazy huge mall next door, seriously, so big. We walked around and checked out the attached super market where we got some fruit and snacks. We ended up trying two new fruits today which are local to this area. Salak, also known as snake fruit (!), totally looks like it has scales on the outside. When you peel the thin skin it has about 3 large cloves on the inside, is crunchy like a pear and sweet with individual pits in each clove. Next, we bought Matoa fruit from the market, which are similar to a lychee with a harder outer peel and soft inside with pit. Both were intersting and fun to try!

Tangkoko Morning Nature Walk

Our morning nature walk started at what seemed to be much too early, however due to our jet lag and early bed time the night before, we were already waking up before our alarm. It was still quite hot and sweaty, even in the morning, especially walking a mile or so before we spotted our first animal. First, we spotted a tarsier sitting in the tree, after its long night of hunting. Nearby there was a kingfisher hiding in the trees. Our guides then spotted a cuscus bear way up in the tree. We aren't sure how they were able to spot it since it was so camouflaged in the branches. The cuscus bear is a marsupial known only to this area, living high in the trees and barely coming down, it eats mostly leaves and flowers.

 
We wandered further into the jungle where we found another cuscus bear and her baby, as well as a male and female hornbill. The hornbills flew from tree to tree, making loud noises with their flapping wings and unique call. The guides were quite excited, because they said that seeing hornbills can be quite rare at times. In the excitement of trying to get a good photo, Bryan lost his glasses on the canopy floor! He backtracked and searched for a while and miraculously found them.

After spending much time waiting for good views of the hornbills, we moved on to see the black crested macaque monkeys. The live in large groups and were familiar with people, coming quite close to us however they are not agressive. They spend more time on the ground due to their small tails compared to other monkeys. We finished our walk along the black sand beach before heading back to the entrance. We got lucky at the end of the hike to see a flying dragon lizard on a tree and even saw it fly. All in all, we walked about 4 miles and the walk took us almost 4 hours.

 
Once in Makassar, we took a taxi to the hotel, the Aston Inn Pantai Losari Makassar, located right on the waterfront area. The hotel was nice, for only $40. We spent some time looking for dinner restaurants online but then decided to just walk over to the waterfront area and see what we found. There were quite a few people out and a very long line of food stalls. We took some pictures of the 99 domes mosque, a recent addition to Makassar and quite impressive with its reflections over the water. Everyone wanted us to stop at their food stall but they were all selling almost the same exact things. Most people were eating these grilled bananas topped with chocolate and coconut flakes or something else that looked like pancakes with chocolate, but we were looking for dinner. We decided to stop at a small local place across from the food stalls that was cooking up a variety of Indonesian staples. We tried the fried noodles with chicken, a chicken soup with ramen type noodles and another plate of plain rice and fried chicken, all with spicy sauce. We had the 3 meals and 2 waters all for less than $5! After our late dinner, and having enough of the city, we headed back to the hotel, eager to be on our way to the islands tomorrow.

We woke up early and had breakfast at our hotel, eager to get to our island destination. We had a long travel ahead of us, and wanted to get started. At the aiport, we checked in for our flight to Luwuk, which is located in Central Sulawesi and took our 1 hr 15 min flight on Batik Air with no problems. We were immediately greeted by a driver who would take us to the boat. Thinking that we were moving fast (landed at 11:30am), we asked to stop at the ATM. He brought us to a bank where we decided it would be easier to ask to exchange USD instead of having to do 4 ATM transactions (we owed the boat driver 4.5 million in IDR cash). Unfortunately, after we had given them the money, we found out that it would be a 45 min delay as they needed to take the USD to another bank to get approval before giving us the IDR. We waited and waited and it ended up taking even longer than that, which was really frustrating.

 

We had heard that our boat driver was having some food at the dock and wasn't ready yet anyway, so when we got to the dock we asked someone who we thought was our boat driver about food. The guy placed an order for some fried chicken delivery and told us it wouldn't be long. After waiting more than 50 min for the delivery, and finding out that our boat driver was a different guy and he was ready to go, we couldn't stand waiting anymore and abandoned the order telling the guy we had to go. Offered to pay him for it and he refused and insisted we didn't have to, they were waiting for their order too and were also upset. We finally got on our way around 2:45pm which was much later than we had hoped for!

The boat was a single engine "speedboat" and we settled in for the 3 hour ride across sometimes very choppy water. We were hoping the ride would somehow turn out to be shorter, but it took almost exactly 3 hours. In the meantime, we went through 4 large (10 gallon?) containers of gas that the second guy on the boat was in charge of switching out. At last, just before sunset, we arrived on the private island where there is a family living and running a few cottages to stay at. There was only one other guest at the cottages besides us. The island was paradise, with white sand beaches and super clear blue water!

Bakakan Banggai Cardinal Fish Cottages

We found this place by looking around on Google maps of the Banggai islands and zooming in, looking for places to stay. It had a few reviews and everyone loved it so we contacted the owner on Whatsapp and from then on he has been helping us schedule everything from getting to the island, to a day boat trip, beer delivered to the island, and how to get to our next location! He has been beyond helpful! To make things easier for payment, we transfered money to him via Wise, which allowed us to bring less cash around. The cottage is only $25 per person and includes all meals homecooked by the family. The speedboat ride over was significantly more, at ~$350 USD but the alternative was an 8 hour slow ferry to the main town and then another short boat ride to the island. We opted for the fastest.

On the island, there are 2 cottages, one for us another split in two, making the number of guests on the island very limited. They use a generator for about 5 hours each night to run electricity but the lack of fan made it hard to sleep with the heat. Despite having some rough nights sleeping, we still loved our time on the island. We spent one whole day snorkeling and relaxing on the beach. The reef right off the island had some large schools of colorful fish, several giant clams and the we spotted the cardinal fish, which the cottages are named after.

The family staying here has two youngish boys and they were amused by playing on the boats and water. The family spoke very little English but we were able to get by. Food was good and fresh, as they would go out to catch fish by snorkel and spear before every dinner! We had fish cooked over the fire all 3 nights and a variety of sides such as cooked greens and vegetables, stir fried tempeh, tofu, and watermelon and baby bananas for dessert. Because of our flight cancellation earlier in the trip, we changed our next destination to only 1 night instead of 2 so we could stay here the originally intended 3 nights.

Today we had organized a boat tour stopping at some of the more popular sights of the Banggai Islands. Our cottage owner had asked us if we wanted to set this up and we paid 2.1 million IDR (about $135), which seems expensive until you factor in the boat was just for us and there were two guys also spending their time for the good part of a day. We also invited the other guest of the cottages as she is young and traveling on a budget. You can read more about the boat trip stops below!

We left for the trip around 10:30am and returned around 4pm. We were able to enjoy our last night on the island. It was low tide, so we took a walk along past sunset point until we got to the rocks, making our way around them there was another beach. We walked long and saw a small trail up into a clearing where there was a house. After turning around, an older Indonesian couple came down planning to get into their boat and were overly excited to see us there, tourists on their beach. The woman was telling us all sorts of things in Indonesian, and we waved and asked to take her picture, which she was very happy to do. This is one of those countries where white tourists are still rare in some parts and we are greeted only smiles, waves, and hellos by everyone of all ages.

Banggai Islands boat tour

The Banggai Islands remain a hidden gem in Indonesia. They are so remote and hard to get to that your regular Bali style tourists haven't made the effort yet. The islands are similar to the other limestone islands of southeast Asia, with clear blue water and many small islands popping out of the sea. We were amazed at the clarity of the water as we left on the speedboat and made our way to our first destination. We started with the Tanjung Gundul, a cave / hole worn into the rock where you can see through the other side. From the boat, it looks amazing, such crystal blue water and white rocks. We jumped in with our masks and snorkels to swim there and on the way started feeling the stings of jellyfish, then more and more until your entire body was being stung but we were so close and couldn't turn around due to the tide. We decided to swim out the other side to avoid the most stings, especially having to beat the current.

Back on the boat, we went over to Long Beach where we stopped for a long lunch break. Unfortunately, the water in front of our lunch also had a few jellyfish which scared us away from swimming. We relaxed on the beach and ate the home cooked lunch from our cottages: fresh fish, rice, veggies, and watermelon. We ventured up the beach near the end and tested the waters with no jellyfish stings before getting back on the boat.

The final stop was Oyama Beach, an amazing blue water bay with pristine white sand beach. The water was perfect and we swam for a while, flew the drone and relaxed on the beach. It was getting late by then so we headed back to Bakakan Island for our final night there.

We had an eventful night on the island, with many visitors, including multiple large huntsman spiders (4-5" wide) in our bathroom and on the toilet seat, remains of a lizard left on the floor, and other strange noises on our roof. That combined with the heat and jellyfish stings led to a very sleepless night. We had to get up early for 7am breakfast and goodbyes to our kind family on the island. They were sincere in their goodbyes and we felt like we were leaving them behind as we drove off in the boat to the main Peleng Island. Our arranged car was already waiting and we settled in for the 3+ hour drive across Peleng Island from one corner to the other.

Upon reaching our next stay at the Azzahra Poganda Cottages, a set of 3 cottages set on the beach, there was almost no one around except one person who let us choose from the 3 bungalows. We were overjoyed to have full time electricity and an actual fan to keep us cool at night! We went out for a quick snorkel in the reef with some cute schools of fish while coordinating for a motorbike rental and how we could get back to Luwuk tomorrow. The remainder of the afternoon we spent at the Paisu Pok, a famous clear lake you just have to see while in the area. After the lake, we made our way back where we had dinner arranged by our cottage. We happened to share it with a couple who travels and posts videos on YouTube, The Adventures of Lauren and Jason, and swapped many travel stories! We recommend you check them out!

Paisu Pok Clear Lake

Is Paisu Pok the world's clearest lake? We went there to find out, and honestly, it might be! We took our motorbike to the lake entrance where you can park for 5,000 IDR (30 cents USD) and take the path across the road to get to the official entrance. Tickets are also 5,000 IDR per person. The lake is absolutely stunning, and you can see all the way to the bottom even at 30-40 feet deep! The deep blue crystal clear waters allow you to see all of the trees and branches that have fallen over the years.

Late in the afternoon, the lake wasn't really that crowded, with a lot of people packing up shortly after we arrived. It was more crowded near the intial entry point but we had the back area of the lake almost to ourselves. We rented a row boat for 30,000 ($1.70) and brought all our stuff on board, rowing to the back of the lake. By the way, the lake is not big, this takes only a few minutes. We enjoyed the boat for quite a while, taking photos, flying the drone, and even snorkeling from the boat. The water was so refreshing, cold but not too cold. We can see why people make the effort to come to this lake, but for now it remains somewhat of a hidden gem and the majority of visitors there with us were Indonesians.

Because Peleng island is hard to get to / from, combined with the lack of flights to Luwuk, we had all day today to spend just getting back to Luwuk and then doing some sightseeing in the area, where we would spend the night. We investigated the options with the help of our cottage owner (via WhatsApp) and the two options were to take the public ferry at 9am for $3pp or get a speedboat for $175. Since we had all day, we decided to check out the ferry situation and take our time, seeing more of the local way of travel. We arrived in Luwuk around 1:15pm and set out to rent a motorbike.

We stopped at a pharmacy to pick up some cream for Bryan's jellyfish stings, as they were still quite red and itchy. Then we decided to walk through the heat with our bags to the motorbike place. We stopped at the grocery store for some iced coffee on the way. Covered in sweat, we came across an adorable kitten and Jaimie kept it company, watching the bags, while Bryan walked up the last hill (turns out Luwuk is a very hilly place!). We rented the bike with pickup at our hotel the next day for 115,000 IDR ($6.50).

We checked in to our hotel, the Swiss-Belinn, but immediately headed out to see the nearby Piala Waterfall. After enjoying the waterfall all the way until closing time, we rode back into town and stopped at a restaurant / billards along the water where a string of restaurants were. Upon asking for beer, they laughed but they proceeded to send someone to the local shop to get two beers for us! We ended up ordering the "smashed" chicken with veggies and rice, the fried rice and a banana strips with spicy sauce for dessert. Honestly, we had low expectations and it ended up being some of our favorite food of the trip! Food and beer combined was still less than $10 and they were amused and overly excited that non-locals were dining there. Luwuk and the whole Banggai area is not used to seeing a lot of tourists (yet) and you will feel like a celebrity just walking around. People will shout hello and wave even just passing by on their motorbikes and ask to have you take pictures with them.

Ferry from Peleng - Luwuk

People in Indonesia use ferries to travel, sometimes for several days at a time to get to further destinations! We had arrnaged a taxi to the ferry town of Leme-Leme and bought our tickets. When asked if the ferry would leave at 9, the ticket people replied 9 or 10... At least this set our expectations. We got on board and found our assigned sleeping mats, happy to find they were on the top level and on an end cap. The ferries here don't have traditional seats, but instead double layers of sleeping mats on each level of the boat. There are a few private rooms, we heard they might have A/C but it seemed like they only had fans, and we ended up being pleased with our mats because you can feel the breeze and see the view.

Being some of only a few tourists on the ferry, we were greeted with many smiles, hellos, and waves including a few pictures and videos. lol. People kept showing up, well past the 9am departure time, and we finally ended up leaving around 10:45am. It was a really good thing we weren't on a tight schedule! We lounged on the mats and the 2.5 hour ride went by quickly. On board they have a couple Asian style bathrooms and are selling packaged noodle cups (very common all around Indonesia), snacks, and coffee. We hadn't eaten so bought two of the noodle cups which hit the spot. Overall, traveling on the ferry wasn't as bad as we thought it would be and if you have the time to take it slow, is an affordable way to get around Indonesia.

Piala Waterfall

The town of Luwuk gives way to steep jungle covered hills and is home to multiple stunning waterfalls. We didn't have time to visit them all, so took the motorbike to the Piala Waterfalls, located less than 20 minutes from our hotel. Following Google maps didn't take us the right way, but we found them by following a dirt road in the general direction. The entrance fee was 10,000 IDR per person (less than a dollar) and you will walk up a path for only 5 minutes before reaching them.

We spent quite a bit of time here, as we were hoping to take some photos with little to no people in front of the waterfall. You can swim in the cool blue water on the upper level and many people were coming and going. We were the only non-Indonesian's there, which of meant that we were also a big attraction, with many people asking (and also not asking) to take pictures with us or of us. We stayed all the way until closing time just past 5pm when we finally were able to get some pictures and drone video of the falls with no one swimming and standing in front of them. We're not sure why more tourists don't take the time to stop here, as the waterfalls were stunning and the water so clean and blue. We wished we had more time to check out some of the other falls in the area, but our ferry ride and motorbike aquisition had taken up a lot of the day.