13/05/2019 - from Derawan to Rantepao

At 5.30 AM our speedboat left Derawan Island and returned to the mainland. After the 3-hour journey, we arrived back at Tarakan Jetty and were taken on a short drive to the airport. Our nearly 2-hour flight to Makassar was supposed to depart at 12.10 PM. However, it was canceled and the next one with a layover and a flight duration of 3 hours didn't depart until 12.45 PM. So we arrived at the airport well ahead of time and filled the waiting time until boarding. There were a few Indonesian announcements, unfortunately nothing in English, but a murmur went through the waiting passengers. That couldn't be a good sign. Our flight was delayed, another 90 minutes of waiting. Finally, at around 5.30 PM, we arrived in Makassar on Sulawesi Island in Indonesia. From the airport, we took a taxi to the bus station. Once there, we looked for the right night bus to Toraja. We found one and hoped for a very comfortable one. Now we had to wait again as the bus was only scheduled to depart at 8 PM. Shortly before 8 PM, our bus arrived. However, they had to tell us that our bus couldn't go, so we were put onto another one. This one was really comfortable, we could recline the seat back and there was a suitable footrest too. So we could almost lie down completely. Fortunately, because the journey of nearly 300 kilometers would take 10 hours. We settled in comfortably and were able to sleep well. We were supposed to arrive in Rantepao at 6 AM the next morning. Fortunately, our landlord had written us where we should get off the bus. However, we slept so well that we missed our stop. It was only 5.42 AM, so we got off right away and called our landlord. We were supposed to be picked up right away. During the wait, some mopeds with a bench seat in front passed by us. We had said, "Hopefully, we won't be picked up with that because it will be difficult with our luggage." No, we weren't picked up with that moped, instead, 2 "normal" mopeds came. We put our huge backpacks on and rode heavily loaded for fifteen minutes to our accommodation Mama Tia in Rantepao in the Tana Toraja region of Sulawesi, Indonesia.