I tend to jump with excitement whenever I hear of hiking or any other adventure that gets me moving in a quest to get to a summit, waterfall, hidden canyon or a cliff to jump from. So you can just imagine my eagerness to go all in when I heard about mount Kelimitu and its allegedly colour changing mysterious lakes.
Contents
Why are the Kelimutu lakes so famous?
For most people, the trip around Flores begins with a tour to the Komodo National Park to find the lazy Komodo dragons and ends with a short hike to the three-coloured lakes at the 1,690 m of Mount Kelimutu.
Famous for their constantly changing colors, the lakes make it their purpose to surprise you because quite literally you can never know with complete certainty what color they will be when you reach the summit. How freaking awesome is that! They surely aren’t for those who don’t deal well with surprises 😀
The change in colour happens due to adjustments to the oxidation levels of the lakes in conjunction with the content of iron and manganese which literally makes it impossible to even try to predict what their colour will be an hour, a week or a month from now. It’s all in nature’s hands and that’s why visiting the lakes is such a cool and totally unpredictable experience.
Where are the Kelimutu lakes?
Once I landed into Labuan Bajo (LB) and had a proper look at the map and how long it would take to get from LB to the Kelimutu lakes, I was blown away by how far south on the island the lakes actually are.
Located in the Kelimutu National park, the lakes are just 12km from the base village of Moni. However, most people head over to the closest larger town of Ende first before continuing the journey down to Moni. From Labuan Bajo to Ende you’re looking at a 10-12 hour drive or a quick 40min flight.
When to visit the Kelimutu lakes?
Indonesia’s dry season starts in May and generally finishes around October so the best time to visit Flores is between these months if you want to avoid the showers and have a pretty good chance of seeing a nice sunrise when you reach the Kelimutu summit.
Seeing the lakes at sunrise is honestly the best time to visit the lakes. An hour or so after sunrise it gets so hot and so sunny that the views, over the lakes or anywhere else really, get really compromised because of the haze. It’s hard to explain but honestly, as soon as the sun rises up completely, the higher up you go, the less you’ll be able to see and enjoy so wake up early and trek for sunrise.
Is it safe to visit as a solo traveller?
During my entire trip through Flores I was travelling solo but I was also really lucky because I was able to meet lovely people to travel with which is why when I got to Kelimutu, I was joined by Malou – a friend I made in Ruteng and decided to hike to the Kelimutu lakes with.
Having said that, Flores, in general, felt like a very safe place to travel on my own. At no point did I feel uncomfortable, unsafe or scared. It was nice to have someone with me which is why I would strongly encourage you to stay in a hostel or in Antoneri Lodge which is right at the heart of Moni. That way you have higher chances of making a friend and maybe hike to the lakes together, not because it’s unsafe to trek on your own, not at all, but just for the company.
The lakes are popular so it’s highly unlikely that you’ll be trekking on your own even if you wanted to. It is almost guaranteed that there will be other hikers going up at the same time so relax, you won’t be on your own even if you don’t find a buddy to trek with.
Staying connected whilst in Moni
As far as I was able to find out, there is no WiFi connection anywhere in Moni, one of those super cool proper remote places … riiight?! So before heading to Moni, make sure to get a local SIM card to know you’ll still be connected, especially if you’re travelling solo.
My SIM card company of choice, and the one I keep using, again and again, is Telkomsel. To my surprise, I had signal pretty much everywhere in Flores and in Moni as well so I do recommend them if you want to stay tuned.
How to get to the base for the Kelimutu lakes?
If there is one good thing about the popularity of the Kelimutu lakes, it’s the abundance of options when it comes to reaching the base town of Moni.
The preferred, and highly unrecommended if you ask me, option which actually most travellers seem to opt for is to fly from Labuan Bajo to Ende and then hire a private driver to comfortably transport you to Moni, hassle-free. I mean, where’s the fun in that 😀 Not to mention that if you do this, you will be skipping on a whole pack of adventures hidden right in between Labuan Bajo and Ende.
But whether you decide to fly to Ende or actually do a whole trip from Labuan Bajo to Ende either with a bemo (the local minibus public transport), a scooter or a shared car, getting from Ende to Moni at least should be packed with adventure.
It only takes about an hour to get from Ende to Moni, so test out your negotiation skills to land on a good price and hop on a bemo or get yourself a scooter and stop along the way to take in the views. The road is windy but in a perfectly good condition and the views over the valley will reward and convince even those obsessed with an AC, a driver and an overall 5* comfort that having the freedom to jump on the brakes and stop whenever you want is totally worth the hassle 😀
Once in Moni, to get to the base for the hike, I recommend going by scooter, either one you would drive yourself or you’ll get someone else to drive you in case you don’t feel comfortable on a scooter. It’s way cheaper than getting a private taxi and really it’s such a short 20 min drive that why pay the steep price that the locals will try to charge you for a private car.
Where to stay in Moni?
When my bemo dropped me off at the closest crossing for The Geckos Homestay which I and Malou had booked, I knew we had made a bad decision reserving this place. Moni is a tiny tiny village, so tiny it took less than 5 minutes to enter and leave the place which is when I realised that The Gecko homestay wasn’t even technically in Moni. Or at least I wouldn’t class it as being in because for me the village was literally one short main street which was basically also the main road. With only a few warungs in the area (all along the main street), staying in The Geckos felt far. It was only a 30min walk but considering we were only in Moni for a day, we kinda wanted to be right in the buzz 😀
So having stayed at reception for about 30 min waiting on Malou to arrive on her scooter, the fact that no one even acknowledged I was there convinced me, even more, to find another home for the night.
This is when I stumbled upon Antoneri Lodge on Booking.com. The place was all that we needed, close to it all, with a yummy pancake breakfast served right after the sunrise hike, comfortable beds, within budget and surprisingly had an available room. Moni really is tiny so the relatively decent places to stay fill up real quick so search for your accommodation now and try not to leave this one for the very last minute.
Hiking for sunrise
We arrived in the late afternoon pretty exhausted from the drive to Moni so as soon as we settled into our home for the night, we headed straight out to get some food and satiate the hunger we had been ignoring for hours.
The quest for a dinner place took about 5 min simply because the options were just a couple. Delighted we had a pretty easy choice to make, we excitingly started to flip through the menu pages of a super cool place called Mopi’s place. The food was basic, the vibe buzzing, the people smiling and the music on point so we couldn’t have asked for a better way to start the Kelimutu adventure. In fact, for the tempeh lovers, Mopi’s place was the first place I got introduced to my all time favourite tempeh sate dish so this place has a special place in my personal archive 😀 but let me go back to the point.
Excited to crack on with the sunrise hike that same evening (and not delay the gratification any longer 😀 ), we rushed to bed straight after dinner eager to have set up the alarm for 4 am.
With eyes semi-open, batteries sort of recharged but excitement helping us to ignore the exhaustion, we rushed out of bed as soon as the alarm clock went off. It was time for adventure! We had about a 20min scooter drive to the base for the hike with a 30 min hike to the lakes to follow afterwards. So we were totally on track to get to the top by 5:30 am.
We hopped on the scooter, my friend driving and me sleeping, I mean “holding myself tightly” :D, at the back. Just a couple of minutes later I thought that either I was going mad, wobbling from side to side or we had a bloody flat tire. For better or for worse, it was the latter. We had a freaking flat tire, at 4 am, on the day of our sunrise hike, in a place where public transport or taxis were just an illusion. So we had another annoyingly easy choice to make … go to bed and wake up early to find someone to fix the scooter.
In a place as tiny as Moni where you can find very little on top of the basic 2 places to eat, 1 kiosk to buy water from and a few homestays to crash at, to our surprise and fortune, there was a local scooter guy who could fix anything, literally! Slightly relieved that at least we had a solution (locally), we dropped the scooter off for repair as soon as they opened around 8 am and went ahead to indulge on our banana pancake breakfast.
Aside from the shockingly express and cheap scooter repair service we got (1h for about IDR 50k), the day was slowly starting to get better when a lovely Spanish couple from our homestay who had just returned from the sunrise hike told us that the sunrise was sh** because it was way too cloudy and hazy (YEEEEES 😀 ). Suddenly we felt like maybe it was a good thing we couldn’t do the hike that night. You could see a smirky smile popping up on both mine and Malou’s faces. Both of us were thinking “haha, at least we didn’t get screwed with a shitty sunrise” – mean I know but hey, we did travel far for this sunrise 😀 so don’t judge much!
Not only did the Spanish made us feel better helping us enjoy the pancakes even better but they also offered to sell us their tickets for half the price. As it turned out, when you pay for your IDR 250k ticket to the Kelimutu national park, you can re-enter as many times as you wish within 24 hours. So we had an idea … how about we get these guys’ tickets for IDR 250k both, check out the lakes during the day and then pay full price for the sunrise hike the next morning. Ambitious but we were in!
Having paid for the 2 tickets, we hopped back up on the repaired scooter in a quest to see if we got a deal or got completely scammed 😀
After what was a pretty horrible, jumping from one hole into the next scooter ride (as you can see from the map above it was a pretty shocking windy road), we reached the park entrance or what was a whole line of locals ready to take our money 😀 We politely explained we had already bought our tickets and handed them over for inspection.
Note: In Google Map the unnamed location is Antoneri Lodge. It may not be on Google but it’s a pretty decent place so don’t let that stop you from booking it for a night. Also, it was undergoing a big renovation when we were there so you’ll be even luckier sleeping in one of their newly refurbished rooms 😀
One grumpy look after another and a line of questions from “Where did you get your tickets from” to “Did you visit the park earlier” all the way to “What are your names and did you sign the book”. What book? – I and Malou started looking at each other clearly not well informed and realizing that we can’t just buy tickets from some lovely Spanish people and expect a seamless no questions asked entry to one of Flores’ most popular and money making attractions.
As it turned out, upon entry into the park, you have to sign your name and country into an entrance book. If later on, you decide to come back (since the ticket is valid for 24 hours), you have to confirm your name and country so that they can verify you have already been to the park earlier, i.e. you haven’t bought your ticket from a lovely Spanish couple like we did 😀
Oh well, it would have been lovely if we had any idea about this or knew the names of the couple 😀 Looking pretty embarrassed and not willing to pay full price to see the lakes in the afternoon, we took our fraudulent tickets back 😀 , turned our scooter around and drove back to our homestay.
Tip: Don’t buy your ticket from anywhere else but the official park entrance and buy it before sunrise. This way if you don’t get good sunrise, you can return the next morning (within 24 hours) to have another go at seeing the sun rising above the Kelimutu lakes.
In the morning, at exactly 4 am again, the alarm went on and this time it was happening! The sky was clear, stars were dotted all over the sky and it looked promising that we were in for a good sunrise.
After a short and super easy 30 min hike, we were finally at the summit. Finally made it to the lakes after so many adventures leading up to it 😀 First the flat tire, then the ticket fiasco but we were there … standing in the darkness waiting for the first rays of sunshine to bring some lightness and reveal the lakes. We knew the lakes were somewhere around us but they were mysteriously hiding in the dark.
As soon as the sun started to slowly rise up, there it was! A beautiful turquoise lake was standing right in front of me. I wow’ed with excitement. I had never seen a lake in such a pristine saturated blue colour. It didn’t look real. I stared at it for so long as if trying to figure out how it was possible for such colour to have been derived at completely naturally.
As the sun was starting to rise higher and higher, I was starting to see something in the distance. Another shade of turquoise was trying to catch my attention as I was slowly moving my gaze towards it. Right next to the lake I was tirelessly looking at, there was another slightly smaller but equally enchanting turquoise lake. But where was the third lake?
From all the photos I had seen there had to be a third lake but even after a few head spins and walks around I couldn’t spot anything resembling a lake. Suddenly, someone shouted “That’s a lake”.
I turned around and I still couldn’t see anything. What were they all looking at? Was I going crazy completely oblivious to what was evidently supposed to be a lake right in front of me? Then someone else shouted, “It’s black”.
It suddenly made sense. The lake WAS black. It was so black it was totally mixing with the surrounding mountains making it almost impossible to spot. I was expecting another shade of blue or green or anything visible but a black lake? Now that was a first!! Relieved that I had finally managed to count to three and spot all lakes, we took a final walk around as if to memorise the views.
After about an hour of wow’ing here and wow’ing there, we started to make our way down, delighted that despite everything, we had an amazing sunrise with some of the most unique lake views we had ever seen.
Disclaimer: The Global Eyes is a participant in the Booking.com affiliate programs through which if you make a booking via any of the links within this post, I would get a tiny commission at absolutely no extra cost to you. 20% of all commission earned goes to support charitable sustainability and children education projects <3!
Looking for more articles on Indonesia?
- What to Eat in Indonesia: The Best Local Recipes
- What it’s really like to visit Wae Rebo without a guide
Liked this post? Pin it for later!
