I Kandui. You Kandui. We Kandui!

Rini and Roberto are the grease in the wheels for the Padang portion of the Kandui arrival process. Smooth as silk and sweet as can be, this duo help you slide right into the home run.

While Finn, Ian and I devoured breakfast at the 6am buffet station, Rini and Roberto worked their magic, fitting all our luggage into the Toyota like those colorful tiles in Tetris. Bellies full, we eagerly hopped in the van ready for our fast ferry to Kandui! Woohoo!!

The ferry port was much like you would expect. Hustle and bustle, confusion and disorganized order. Once again, Rini and Roberto made the process easy- checking in our luggage for us, charging the baggage fees to the room and ushering us on the ferry.

Beyond excited that the name of the ferry was “Mentawai Fast”, we settled into our seats for the quick trip.

We hadn’t done our research.

We missed the memo.

7 hours later, we pull into the port of Siberut- the end of the 2^nd leg of the ferry ride.

Now, just a short 1-hour jaunt in a long and pointy, fast and furious Kandui boat to our home for the next couple months!

I digress. The ferry was packed. We discovered after the fact, that it was the very first ferry service offered since the holiday period. We were sardines in a can and social distancing was impossible. Masks were worn as an after-thought, slung low as a kind of chin-hammock, or drool-catcher, often yanked down low to permit a cigarette to grace the lips of the accompanying human.

I asked one Indonesian if they were concerned about catching COVID. They said an emphatic ‘yes’. I continued my curious thread and asked them if they were concerned that smoking cigarettes might make it all worse? A puzzled and less emphatic ‘no’.

Another curiosity was the in-service movie. A bad, grade Z movie named 6 Underground. Lurid doggy-style sex scenes, and in-your-face butts covered with nothing more than bum-floss, along with close-ups of brains being blown out of heads, the works. Ian does his best to distract Finn with some form of flicking each other game as I sit there puzzled over how my uncovered shoulders could possibly be more offensive than this. The movie played once on the first leg of the trip, drawn out to fill the entire 3 hours. This was due to the raggedy disc spinning off skips and lengthy pauses. An oldie but a goodie!! Relieved when we made it to port one, mostly that the movie was now over. Nope. They hit repeat and we got to watch it all over again.

A highlight for me was getting to taste a typical Indonesian bowl. The base was kind of like tamarindo fruit, made into a little pudding type consistency, and the top was gelatinous coconut, but salted sweet. At around hour number 6, this came as a very welcome treat indeed as we had failed to pack snacks. Before we said ‘yes’ to the offer, I asked what it is. The ubiquitous response “Indonesian food” was good enough!

Off the ferry and into the fray- the port was packed. How on earth were we to nudge our way to where our bags were being unloaded? And the surfboards?! We need not be concerned, there is so much order amid the chaos. Haven’t we learned this by now?

The Kandui speedboat – I guess in Costa Rica we would call it a panga, but crafted more like a cigarette boat; long, narrow and smooth, was waiting for us just on the opposite side of the dock to the ferry. A drop of a mere 6 feet down- the dock obviously was designed to moor a large vessel! We dropped the surfboards and all our luggage down into the hull and I said no-way to hopping down there myself. I am no mountain goat. So, we hustled our way through the throngs and down to a little sandy corner of the inlet where we hopped aboard for the very last leg of this epic journey to our destination.

The weather seemed fairly clear, and the swell wasn’t forecast to be big. Should be smooth sailing, yeah? Nope. I started wishing I was on an airplane again! Not Ian- he is the quintessential waterman, always preferring to have his feet in the saltwater rather than up in the air. The white-caps were at eye-height and the spray was bucketing in where we were huddled- until one of the crew slid a huge perspex windshield down to block the most of it. Fresh air now gone, left with the fumes of one of the three very powerful engines, mixed with the constant aroma of second-hand smoke, I was ready to chunder within minutes. Not until my 40th year in existence did I ever get bothered by motion sickness. Not a good time for it to raise it’s ugly head, before a trip where we are to spend every day on boats! Ian switched seats with me, as I decided I would rather get wet and have fresh air than be dry and gassed out- and here I was able to usher the fresh breeze from outside from under the shield. A short hour or so and we MADE IT!

It sure was an adventure getting here, but OH MY GOODNESS are we ever so appreciative of the fact we are here. Would I do it all over again? Yes. Without a doubt.