Moni- Kalimutu - Ende

Day 2 cycling. We left our panniers at the hotel and road up to Kelimutu national park. It was 17 km up, really steep corners that we could only ride the outside of as the inside angle was too much. After grinding up in low gear for 14 km then we came to signs indicating a steep road! Last 3 km just went up & up with no levelling off. Took us a couple of hours then we walked up to the crater lakes. Beautiful colours which change often. Not many people about as most take a taxi up to see the sunrise. The reward was all in the downhill, spotted monkeys swinging in the trees & peaceful. A good training ride for me. Day 3 cycling, Moni to Ende. 55 km Left at 6.45am to try & get the hill in before the heat - Trevor is in his element here as everyone gets up at 5 am - a couple of hours up, hard going, stopped to soak our shirts in water whenever we could to create a bit of coolness while riding. Then a pretty decent exhilarating down to sea level. Average about 12 km per hour, pretty slow but we were in no rush, in saying that we could not go any faster ! Trevor's panniers loaded to the max compared to mine. Had lots of fruit today, passion fruit, tamarillos, papaya, bananas, lots of kids calling out " hello Mr" and motorcycles stopping beside & the drivers tying to chat . Where u from, where u going etc. Ende is a port town. Hot & dusty. Checked out a few grotty places to stay then a guy on his bike who had just picked up his  3 kids from school helpfully escorted us to an 'English Hotel' the room wasn't ready so waited while it was cleaned. Not sure what they used on the tiles but it smelt like straight cleaning fluid. Took a while for the smell to evaporate. Air con did not really work & had to buy some insect spray to debug the room. Thought I might be asphyxiated during the night. Wandered around the town in the early evening and more nasi gorang for dinner. They have these little eating places here called Warang's which are really cheap but most of the food is all ready cooked & just sits in the window waiting on people who want to eat straight away to buy it. It is hard to  know how long it has been sitting there. So we try to go to a restaurant where you wait for them to prepare the food though rice always seems to be cooked Just waiting to be fried! Pretty good day today. Looking fwd to a coastal ride tomorrow.