The alarm goes off on Tuesday morning at 4.15 am. We brush our teeth, get dressed and stop the last things in our heavy bags to and fro. At 4.30 am, we put the bags on our front porch and the boat boys flapper Alor Divers come pick them up and hauling them to the rickety canoe. The canoe paddle them the baggage to the speedboat. We drink a cup (soluble) coffee in the restaurant and Marije decision a while with the young dog Moose to play. Not a very clever idea because the dog knows no stopping after 10 minutes of play and bite the dog firmly in her ankle. With a few big, bleeding, scratches and bite marks as a result. Wounds heal in this moist warm climate, especially if you regularly go into the sea, but very slowly and the wounds will do so until the end of the holiday visible. Not only diving you're ugly, but also play with the local dog.
At 5 o'clock we all sit on the high speed towards the jetty where the car waiting to take us to the airport from Alor to bring. The day is organized as follows:
20 minutes by boat
40 minutes by car to the airport
Wait 60 minutes at the airport
40 minutes fly to Kupang
15 minutes by car to a hotel in Kupang (for breakfast)
240 minutes waiting in the hotel Kupang
15 minutes by car to the airport of Kupang
Wait 60 minutes at the airport of Kupang
120 minutes to Surabaya
390 minutes waiting at the airport in Surabaya (including the broad-hour delay to our flight)
70 minutes fly to Balikpapan
15 minutes by car to a hotel in Balikpapan
And then we are in Balikpapan and is 22 hours and 18 hours and so we, as the crow flies, but a few hundred kilometers away. And we know that the next day yet another day of travel ahead of us.
During all those hours waiting for what we read, we buy at the airport of Surabaya for a few new books and we work with the blog and our email. We find to our surprise that we have had no rain at Alor. This conclusion we draw when it begins to rain at the airport of Kupang before we have to get in for our flight to Surabaya. We walk through deep puddles to the aircraft. That it has not rained in Alor is a little miracle, because virtually all locations where we have the past 5 years in Asia has been the rain. We therefore often jokes that we hire to travel to very dry areas, because we seem to attract rain 
Overnight at Novotel Balikpapan in watts can be called a fancy hotel. We take a taxi at the airport in 10 minutes for us to tears, as if we are racing-game sit. The flight to Balikpapan was interesting (in an airplane because of "operational issues and technical checks" was delayed over an hour and then during the flight where the ice was on the plane. But this drive, we will also remember for a while .
Wednesday morning, we wake up call in our hotel room by the agent of Maratua resort that wants us to remember that we are at 11 am at the airport should be. We first expanded breakfast. An extensive breakfast buffet awaits us, with real double espresso. Best that we both missed the past week. Then we take a taxi to the airport. This time the boot of the taxi too small for our bags and going 1 on the front seat, 1 on the back seat and we were both wrong. This driver has an opposite driving style than the night before. We plod slowly through the movement of Balikpapan but we are well at 11 am at the airport. There stands the banner Maratua agent waiting for us and gives us the tickets to Tarakan! We were to fly to Berau from there to take the boat to Maratua, but we fly to Tarakan and from there take the boat. We are 5 years ago in Tarakan was (when we traveled to Sipadan to Sangalaki local ferries) have Tarakan and then voted the most unpleasant and dirty city of Indonesia, or perhaps we see the world, and vowed never more to come .... . But this promise to ourselves we can not fulfill Meanwhile, our flight from Balikpapan to Tarakan been a half hour delay before we checked in, so that would just again a long day can be.
We land around 14 hours in Tarakan. We are only 5 years ago with the boat arrived and departed from Tarakan, so the airport is new to us. And that is bad. The reminder that we have to Tarakan is a dirty and unkempt city (open sewers, odors, slums, etc.) but the airport is new, tidy and does not stink. We are with 2 cars picked up because we are traveling with 4 others, 2 Italians and a German couple, to Maratua. Near the port, we are off and we walk through creep by stealth-by scaffolding (called Kampung) to our boat, something we do recognize 5 years ago: an old ferry boat. If we get in around 15.15 hours we are told that the 3 hour trip and we sit down and leave. When it gets dark at 18.30 in and around the boat, we still do not. The locals also travel on this boat to Maratua (where incidentally 7 villages with a total of 3200 inhabitants) is continuous with their mobile phones to check whether they have received (for it is since a few months a mobile pole Maratua ), and once they start calling and texting and we know that within a radius of 15 kilometers from the island should be. At 19.30 puts the boat, it turned out so 4 hours by boat instead of 3, well the Indonesians do not take it so closely with the time.
Stiff from sitting for hours on plastic benches we get out on the jetty of Maratua Paradise Resort. It looks, certainly compared to Alor, very luxurious. We check in and be brought to our Beach Chalet. The cottage is about 3 times larger than that on Alor, and even a bath! After a quick shower we have around 20 hours in the restaurant at the end of the jetty where we take a well deserved cold beer and get some food from the buffet. We have already spent all 38 hours to Alor to Maratua to come, not even 1100 km as the crow flies (an average motorcycle gets about 38 hours away easily ).
We get after eating a briefing in which the once austere daily program that also on this island diving is done is explained. Breakfast 7.30 am, 8.30 pm departure for the first dive, 11 hours the second dive, lunch 12.30 pm, 15.30 pm the third dive and at 17.30 or 18.30, the fourth dive! We are probably not so fanatical that every day we go 4 dives, but there is plenty of choice
It was indeed 2 long days and we sit still and patience are well on the test. But a first glimpse of Maratua gives the impression that it all could be worth. Now tomorrow and see what the water is below
