Indonesian Visa Hoops

Indonesia is apparently  much easier to visit and get visas for today, than in the past. As I understand it, when you arrive by boat you can ask for a free 30 day visa that is non-renewable. In most entry ports, but not necessarily all, you can pay a nominal amount ($35) and get a 30-day visa that is extendable for another 30-days. To stay longer you need a Social Visa. These are good for 60-days and are extendable another 30. A Social Visa requires a letter from a sponsor who lives in Indonesia. You can get this letter by joining one of the Indonesian rallies, races or directly from an agent in Indonesia.

A couple of comments on the rallies and why we are not going with a rally. First, we're hoping to minimize dealing with schedules and crowds. Second, the two rallies leaving from Australia start in mid-July, making it really tight for us to make the start since we're getting a late start out of here.

The SailIndonesia rally leaves out of Darwin and has a long history of taking boats to Indonesia. It is now a much smaller rally than in its heyday. This is probably due to the fact it starts in Darwin which is another 600 miles west along the top of Australia and the competition from the somewhat sneakily named newer rally, Sail2Indonesia. This rally has grown so large that they now have two start dates to accommodate the crowd (reported to be 70+ boats). The Sail2Indonesia rally is run by a guy who has a bit of a reputation among cruisers who know him from his other rallies in Tonga and Fiji. Apparently this rally does not want anyone in their rally to ever say anything negative about it, as they require each participant to agree to the rally terms, including:

No participant or crew of any participating vessel shall bring Sail2Indonesia, it’s sponsors or associated Yacht Clubs into disrepute by any action, comment, blog, article, image or posting in any way, shape or form either during or after any event or rally.

Another option to get a non-rally Social Visa is by joining the Darwin to Ambon Race. We took the third option and got our sponsorship letter for our Social Visa from Frenky Charles, an agent in Kupang (kupangyachtservice@yahoo.com). He charged $50 per letter and they came quickly via email. Paid via PayPal. And then completed the Social Visa application on our own.

Once you get the sponsorship letter, you need to get all your documents to the Indonesian Consulate including the Visa application-- available on the Consulate web page (usually), boat documentation, passport photos, crew list and port list (not enforced) noting port of entry and exit, and your passports. You can mail these with a payment to the consulate with a prepaid, self-addressed envelope to have them mailed back. The visa process takes about 4 working days. We are just too insecure about putting our passports in the mail, so we shuttled down to Sydney using cheap Jetstar flights (about $50 each way from the Gold Coast) to drop the paperwork off and pick the passports with our visas up.

Once you get your Social Visa you have to check in to the country within 90 days. We'll let you know how they work when we make the passage in early August.

Paul

   

Manatee Chowder

After getting back from our short Bellingham visit we needed to put the boat back together and get ready to head north. We had to do a quick haul at the Boatworks yard to fix a leaky through hull valve. After that and a list of 90 other things to do on the boat we headed down the river to anchor in Bum’s Bay, near Southport. We were greeted by this mom and pup Manatee lazing around. Reminded me of my days in Florida. Southport, AKA the Gold Coast, is a zoo of a region for boats. The waterway speed limit is 40 kts. It’s amazing that any of these slow moving manatees are still alive.

The next step for us was to work out our Indonesian visas. This required a short day flight to Sydney to the Indonesian Consulate. I’ll do a separate blog on the visas to help out any other cruisers who need to jump through the hoops. Tomorrow, with a little luck, we will leave Southport and do a two day sail north to Lady Musgrave Island. We have about 1,200 miles to cover on our way to the top of Australia where we can clear out of the country at Thursday Island. Then we’ll make for eastern Indonesia, probably in early August.

Paul

An Inland Visit

We flew to Adelaide so we could pick up the The Gahn. This famous train runs through the center of Australia between Adelaide at the south end of the continent and Darwin in the north. Named after the Afghan camel trains that were the only way to transport goods across the center of Australia in the previous centuries. It’s an up-scale sleeper train with all inclusive food and drink. In the photo above we are stopped in the middle of the desert at sunrise to get a look at the morning star, Venus (actually a planet), rising as you rub the sleep sand out of your eyes. You get a good feel for the vastness of the empty center of the outback.

There’s lots of time to sit in the lounge car with a wine or a cider and read or do some emu spotting. We got off The Ghan in Alice Springs and had a good look around the town made famous by the book/movie “A Town Called Alice”.

Gotta love the bird life in Australia. Here's he resident, noisy, Galahs on an Alice Springs street.

Next day we headed out to Uluru, aka Ayer’s Rock. On the bus ride out to catch some sunset colors on the rocks we pass this feral camel that was totally destroying this tree.

Along with tree destroying camels thy have people destroying flies. Without the fly net I would have packed it and watched CNN on the hotel TV.

These are the Kata Tjuta rocks glowing for us at sunset.

Next morning we got up before sunrise (to be precise, at some god awful time) so we could walk the 10.5kms (6.5 miles) around the base of Ayer’s Rock and catch the sun on it just as it rises. Pretty impressive. These aren’t mesas like we have in the desert Southwest of the US, these are actually huge boulders that are ‘floating’ in the desert sand, like icebergs what you see is only a small part of the entire rock.

We saw some hidden rock paintings, each still telling their own story. This is officially Aboriginal land and these are sacred sites.

After Ayer’s Rock we flew to Melbourne. What a great city. Lots of new construction along with some interesting history. The city has to have the best restaurants in Australia. We stayed in the CBD (Central Business District) and got around on the free street car trollies.

Melbourne is a nice town to walk in, but I sure wouldn’t want to drive here. I wouldn’t have a clue which of those 12 traffic lights applies to me. Then there’s the how to turn right if you are driving in Melbourne. Remember the country drives on the left. If you look at the picture above you can see the right-hand turn lane is on the left side of the on going traffic. So you are driving down the road and you want to turn right. You move over to the left lane and make a mad dash to right when you think you have some chance of living through it. The locals claim it has something to do with the trollies going down the center of the street.

Can’t stop in Melbourne without visiting the famous Victoria market.

There’s also lots of great street art in Melbourne carefully sprayed in select alleys in the CBD.

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After our inland tour of Oz we flew back to Bellingham (via Vancouver) to get our grandkid fix. It was well worth it, although I had to endure many dragon attacks.
If you are flying across the Pacific, fly Air New Zealand if you can. They are head and shoulders better than Air Canada.
Chris is back working with her consulting project in Kathmandu while I do boat projects. As usual I am adding items to the list a little faster than I am checking them off.
Next week we fly down to Sydney for the day to get our extended Indonesian visas. Then we start the 1,200 mile trip up the Queensland east coast with plans to sail to Indonesia in August.
Keeping with the apolitical nature of this blog, thought my dedicated reader might relate to this thought:

Wuerker, Politico

Paul