by Richard Madden
Where in the world does an adventure travel addict take his bride on honeymoon? To Everest Base Camp, perhaps? To the North Pole for a tandem parachute jump? Or maybe even a swing through the guerrilla-infested cordilleras of Colombia? I had entertained all three possibilities, and many other adrenalin-pumping options besides, when a sobering truth dawned.
When love is in the air, the scent of massage oils and moonlight on a deserted beach should never be far behind. An exotic, not to say erotic, tropical location is not a honeymoon cliché for nothing. But for three whole weeks? Without even a whiff of adrenalin?
After a mutual decision to rule out the element of surprise, Sarah and I agreed our destination should be somewhere neither of us had been before. By a process of elimination we knocked out huge swathes of the globe. Unvisited tropical paradises from the Seychelles to the Maldives were considered and discarded. We wanted beaches, yes. But not beaches, beaches and yet more beaches. Siberia loomed uninvitingly. “Indonesia,” announced Sarah one grey February morning. “Bali you mean,” I replied ungraciously, “the ultimate honeymoon cliché.” “Well, it’s probably a honeymoon cliché for a reason,” she retorted, “and apparently there are 17,000 other islands in Indonesia, none of which we’ve been to.”
Five months later as we set out on an all-out gallop along a deserted two-mile beach on the Indonesian island of Sumba, I had reason to be thankful for Sarah’s powers of persuasion. After slumbering late, we had breakfasted at our favourite table on the edge of a cliff overlooking the sea. In the distance fellow guests surfed what I later discovered is one of the best – and least-known - surf breaks in the world. In the afternoon, while I went diving on a pristine nearby reef, Sarah indulged herself with some reflexology and a tropical massage. Now as our horses hooves thundered over the sand beneath us and the sun like a juicy tangerine slipped off the edge of the world, there could be no doubt. Cliché or no cliché, we had arrived in honeymoon paradise.
As we trotted back our Sumbanese guide Dato told us something of the island’s animist tribal legends. “Many of the rocks on this beach are sacred,” he told us. “This is the Nihiwatu Stone, one of the most sacred on the island.” Closer inspection of the rock—after which the beach is named—revealed three shallow hollows where fertility offerings are made by the island’s holy men, the Ratos.
Every year the Ratos hold a vigil along this stretch of coastline awaiting the arrival of sacred sea worms, called Nale, which swarm along the coast during February or March. From these, the Ratos foretell the health of that year’s harvest.
This event is the herald for an annual ritual known as the Pasola. Conducted on horseback in ceremonial costume, young men armed with lances gallop into a specially prepared arena hurling their weapons at their opponents. In a ritualised bloodletting, the grudges of the previous year are settled. Death can, and does, occur. We learnt later that Dato’s deeds of Pasolas past are the stuff of legend.
After a few days spent sun worshipping on the beach at Nihiwatu, we headed into the centre of the island to a forested wilderness in the Wanukaka Valley. Our destination was a waterfall which cascades over 300ft down the mountainside, like the tiers of a wedding cake, into an enclosed canyon. After an hour and a half on the trail we clambered over some rocks and found ourselves staring at a Zen masterpiece. But this was not just a painting. And we were the only ones there. Behind a curtain of spray at the base of the falls, we re-enacted the love scene from every Hollywood Castaway movie ever made.
Our swan song at the resort was a dive on the ‘Magic Mountain’, an underwater pinnacle that attracts pelagic, deep-water migratory fish as well as sharks and rays. On cue, as we circled the pinnacle at about 80ft, the unmistakable outline of a shark appeared out of the gloom while below us the dark shadow of a ray, liked an underwater caped crusader, flitted silently by. More ominous was a lone barracuda that circled us ominously throughout the dive. Along with razor sharp teeth, they have notoriously bad sight and have been known to make sudden lightning attacks on shining objects underwater. Covering my crotch with my hand just in case, I suddenly remembered the silver bracelet on my wrist which Sarah had given me on our wedding day. It was the ultimate Catch 22. Happily I reached the surface with my potency unscathed.
(reference: http://www.telegraph.co.uk/travel/destinations/asia/indonesia/731379/Indonesia-Wedded-to-this.html)
