We soon found out making a last minute booking at Bunaken in high season isn’t as easy as it sounds. So we kept looking and found a listing on Airbnb that sounded promising: Sendowan Baru near Amurang, about 1,5 hours west of Manado.
Fortunately we received a really quick reply when we send a message to inquire about availability. We learned later that two of the Dutch owners were actually staying at the property at the moment. Being in the same timezone made communication a lot faster and easier. We booked the flight and they arranged transport for us from the airport. We could have saved some money by finding our own taxi and normally we would have, but this was the easiest way with Jace.
All in all it was quite a trip. The hotel we stayed at in Makassar was easily an hour drive from the airport and our plane was scheduled to leave at 9:30. So we decided to move to a hotel closer to the airport for our last night. The hotel wasn’t great and we didn’t sleep very well, but at least the trip to the airport didn’t take too long. We left the hotel at 7:30 and weere early for our flight with Sriwijaya Airlines (read our review of Sriwijaya here, if we have a choice we won’t fly with them again). The flight was delayed for about an hour, but all in all was pretty uneventful and we arrived safely in Manado. Our little world traveller did really well again too.
Since we booked only one or two days before the flight, all direct flights we’re sold out and we had a stopover in Ternate, Maluku province. Otherwise the flight would only have been about 1,5 hours. But it took us until 14:00 to get to Manado. Mexi, our driver had been waiting for us a long time, but fortunately was pretty cheerful about it. Of course we were also paying him a hefty IDR 500.000 for the transfer, so maybe he was happy about that too 🙂 We stopped at a big supermarket on the way to Amurang and then we were really ready for some peace and quiet. And for a nice place to celebrate Jace’s second birthday the next day.
