120 km to go on Flores

The young Indonesian guy at the hotel was quite fascinated that we were cycling Flores island. He said Indonesian people think everything is impossible but foreigners (older ones) think anything is possible. He was referring to a dutch cyclist that he had met who had a prosthetic leg & was biking the island. But then he told me he thought the hill to Labuan Bajo was definitely impossible & " a car would be more suitable for u Mrs" so i was a little concerned. We decided we needed to split the 130km into 2 days even though there was not much of a town between. We did 70 km to Lenbur by 1.30 lots of small ups & downs but all rideable. Cloves drying on mats beside the rd along the way. One place a house was being built, all the materials were on the rd outside the house site. This is the highway, the only main rd on the island. Everyone just slows down & goes around it. It will be there for months. Even the bricks are being hand made outside the house. Motorbikes with mum,dad, 3 kids, side saddle with babies, mattresses, eggs, chooks, you name it they can carry it, trucks & buses loaded with people on top. But pretty modern cars, no old ones at all. The only place to stay in lenbur was a Losman (home with a room to rent ) it was pretty bad,  intermittent water, no shower. Just a basic bed & grotty toilet area. So we bought water from the shop to wash in, found a place for dinner, made our own breakfast & were really pleased to be on the rd by 6.45 am for the last 60 km to Labuan Bajo. Great first 20 km till the base of the hill. We could see the cell ph towers at the top which were quite daunting but away we went. Up up & up. 2 km in & we needed to stop to eat and drink. Steep! We were putting in maximum effort to get around the corners only to see the next corner ahead. Not much levelling off to recover at all. There were lots of trucks going between a quarry in  Lembur to Labuan Bajo which just alerted us to each corner as they changed gears, mostly in the lowest gear for a very long time ! Finally my legs couldn't ride the steep corners anymore so i had to get off & push my bike round quite a few. Trevor managed to ride them all but only just. At one stage I didn't have any energy left to push my bike either & the sweat was just pouring off me, so i had to stop & recover in the shade for a bit. Took us 3 hours to get up the 10 km hill. Then across the top, a great downpour when we were right outside a little shop so we stopped for a rest & a cuppa. Last 12 km down and along to our destination. Another 10 km looking for a hotel along the coast rd but decided to back track &  stay right in town nearer the eating places & boats.  Finally got to a room at 4.30pm so a really long & tiring day. Well deserved drink watching the gorgeous sunset & ate pizza at an Italian restaurant. Rest days ahead so we can go see the komodo dragons.