A trip was posted to go to a traditional whaling village, Lamalera. I was not interested for several reasons: I'm not keen on the idea of whaling, the prior day had been a full day, and my body was bounced out from road trips. That said, I was overruled...and the whaling village trip was on.

The road up to the whaling village made the prior days' road trips feel like a drive on the Brenner Pass. (See prior blog entries.) I don't know the life expectancy of their cars, axles and springs here, but it can't be much..or they have magicians for mechanics.

Whenever I hear the expression 'traditional', my antennae go up. I'm always anticipating a restoration of a village. Not this. It is really, really, really the real deal. It's not set up for tourism at all. I think this tour was a personal initiative by our guide, Ella, who comes from a nearby mountain village, and with whom we've been hanging around for the past few days. There are whale bones everywhere. As you walk around this very small village, you see horizontal bamboo sticks covered with hanging blubber. Beneath them are chutes of sloping metal, into which the whale oil drips down and flows into a bucket at the bottom. Simple, but obviously effective. Down at the black lava sand beach are eighteen 20-25 ft wooden boats (pledangs), each one in a covered shed with an open front to the sea. The men of the village are all hanging around under the sheds waiting...waiting...waiting for the cry 'balyoo' (sp?) (not dissimilar from 'tallyho' in fox hunting). A whale has been spotted! Off the men go...dragging the boats into the water and rowing out to the whale. (Only one boat has an engine.) One of the whalers is the harpooner. When close, he jumps off the boat, armed with his harpoon and tries to make contact, and then somehow jumps back on the boat. We didn't actually see this in action, because they haven't landed one in 12 days, but I take it on a leap of faith (no pun intended). If they're fortunate (and the whale isn't) they then haul the poor bloke back to the beach, and go to work. Apparently they bring in 30-35 whales a year, and all belong to the community. We met a young Italian journalist who is writing a piece on Lamalera and whale hunting, and he actually went out with them earlier this week, but the big one got away. Just so you don't worry that they will starve between whale landings, they do have fishing nets and keep themselves busy and fed in between whale sightings.

After lunch and some ikat (traditional weaving) shopping, we headed back, stopping along the way at the family home of our guide. One of her little cousins (the whole family came to see us) scampered up a tree and knocked down coconuts for us to drink and then eat.

Back on the 'sort of' road again, we were stopped for 20 minutes by a road crew, tarring a portion of it. On the side of the road is a tarp tent, where they live while doing the road work. No OSHA visits here. The tar is being heated in a primitive fire box. The workers are barefoot, mask less, and gloveless. For this dangerous work, they are paid 50,000 rupiah/day ($5)...and it is considered a good job.

It is obvious to us that the government is putting some serious money into encouraging tourism, and we have certainly benefitted by its initiatives. However, their infrastructure is clearly going to be a disincentive. It's a conundrum. They need to put a lot of money into their roads, but unless they have more tourists, it won't be worth it, (although they do say 'build the road and people will come). My advice: forget the roads and put in gondolas. The problem with roads is that they can work on them in the dry season, but they will get washed out yearly during the rainy season,,,,,something like the Cross-Bronx Expressway in NY: every spring, they have to refill the potholes.