I hosted Amy and Julie, two female travelers from New York City, USA who have contacted me on February 2024 or two months before they arrived in Labuan Bajo for touring to Wae Rebo.

Together with Tony, the driver, we left Labuan Bajo on April 15 2024. We started the tour with a drizzling in the morning just when we were about to leave Villa Dominik, an accommodation where Amy and Julie stayed after exploring Komodo National Park three days before.

We were expected to leave Labuan Bajo at 8 AM but because of both Amy and Julie spent a few minutes to enjoy the panorama from the restaurant by taking some pictures, we left Labuan Bajo 30 minutes later as they found the place is amazing and worth the price they had spent.

As we reached down to trans Flores which we love to call it as highway, we first went to money changer office located near to Starbucks down the town at Soekarno-Hatta street to get Amy and Julie’s USD changed to Indonesian Rupiah for tour balance payment and other expenses that would be spent along the way.  

We found out that the exchange rate was about 15.200 or one thousand rupiah less than what we saw on the news applied on that day. However, Amy and Julie were seen okay with that due to the other services were still closed from Eid Mubarak holiday.

Our first stop according to the itinerary was the spider web rice field in Cancar, three and half hour drive from Labuan Bajo, however due to the attractions provided along the road, we stopped for the beauty of landscape caught from number of islands on the west part of Flores, just after 30 minutes drive. Not only that, Amy who loves so much animal was seen very impatiently to jump off the car to get to see and touch a pig that was on the roadside with few locals who wanted to bring the male pig mated.

After spending few magnificent minutes, we continued on to drive to tackle the Flores highway which is very mountainous with lots winding roads and passing through villages, rice terraces, little shops or “kios”, school building, soccer field, churches, and forests. Tony was seen decelerated his car to make sure both Amy and Julie could make videos and photos from interesting sights along the road till we arrived in Lembor which is known for its largest paddy field in Flores.

In Lembor, we saw many farmers were still busy working. The activities were not the same at all. We saw them still plowing the rice field by using the tractor machine, some planting the new seeds, and on the side of the road there were farmers working in big group to cut the rice for harvesting. This made us to stop and took some pictures till we met an old lady who was there during our pause. While chewing betel nuts, she kindly approached us with a very warm gesture just like a mom who has been waiting for her kids from a long distance.

“I have my son working as hotel staff in Labuan Bajo. He has been very helpful to my family because for more than a year we could not sell rice due to having no water on the rice paddy, there was a construction on the irrigation that caused many farmers lost their job and had to go to Kalimantan to find another job”, she shared her story regarding unable to harvest rice for sometimes.

I thought it was probably the reason why the rice in Manggarai or Flores is very expensive due to this problem. Thankfully, the old lady could finally back to work and from the piece of land she has, she could harvest two tons of rice per harvest or six tons of rice in a year and from that, she can sell half of it and leave the rest for her daily consumption.

Together with her nephews, we took picture together and then continued the journey to Cancar to see the spider web rice field.

15 minutes before Cancar, I pointed out the place where we would eat for lunch, at La Nusa Resto famous with its authentic food, “se’i babi” East Nusa Tenggara smoked pork.

The sky around the restaurant was full of cloud that led us to start walking to the lookout point with our raincoats ready on the bag pack. We managed to get few photos before the rain but when it came, it didn’t stop us from enjoying the incredible view of the spider web rice field that is unique and rarely found anywhere else in the world.

Julie acknowledged that she has seen many rice terraces with wonderful scenery but the spider web rice field is just second to none.

“it is a memory once a lifetime”, she added.

Yulianus Irwan