Adventure to Mentawai

In December of 2019, we planned and booked a trip to a pretty remote corner of Indonesia for March 2020.  Naturally, since the entire world was shutting down, we had to cancel that trip but still had a paid week we hoped to use. It took almost 3 years to finally find a time when the resort was open and we had enough time to make the trip! 

It's not an easy place to reach. First, you have to fly to Padang on the island of Sumatra. Not a difficult trip if you live in Jakarta and can fly 90 minutes. Then you have to spend the night and catch a 3-hour ferry early the next morning. From that village, it's only a 15-minute boat ride to the resort. Coming back, the ferry leaves late in the afternoon so it requires another overnight in Padang before you can catch any flights the next day. A 7-night stay in Mentawai requires 10 days, so we were thankful to finally have the time to enjoy it without missing any school.

This was our first time to Sumatra and the west coast has dramatic mountains and lots of volcanic peaks. Padang is a big city with about a million people.

The Padang architecture and food is well known all over Indonesia and I loved seeing the airport as we landed.

We saw nothing western at all in Padang! We stayed at the Mercure hotel, which is international and had clean rooms and good food, but most everything else we saw was very local.  I had hired us a driver for the afternoon to take us around and he helped us choose a good place for lunch. Fuja is one of the most popular restaurants and it had the days fresh catches grilling constantly for all the patrons. The squid with padang sauce was delicious!

We learned pretty quickly that there isn't a whole lot to see in Padang. Most of the more interesting sights were a 2-hour drive away, so the driver chose to take us to a remote village with a pretty beach. 

The road was only completed here about 2 years ago so it was only accessible by boat until then. They take their boatmaking seriously and it was interesting watching the guys work on them.

This is the school house for a few dozen kids. We bought them all a snack and the little village market and they were beyond thrilled.

I didn't want to take pictures of the kids but the goat didn't mind. He was one of the happy residents of the village.

We returned to Padang at sunset and enjoyed dinner at the hotel.

Early the next morning, we were ready for the big ferry! No idea what to expect on here but it was a lot nicer than I had hoped. It was organized chaos getting everyone and everything on board and we pushed off right at 7am. It's a 3-hour ride to the Mentawai island chain.

The mosque on the water looked so pretty against the mountains in the distance.

On the ferry, they had bootleg movies playing constantly and full volume. Some of them worked, some of them didn't. It definitely didn't help with the motion sickness!

Once we reached Tuapejat, our resort boat was waiting to take us to an even smaller island called Silabok.

These islands are pretty remote and the tourism is mostly all geared around surfing. To the west is nothing but open Indian Ocean. The color of the water is incredible.

We were warmly welcomed to Aloita and learned that the resort was only open for a few weeks over the holidays. The 16 of us that arrived were the only guests at the resort (that can accommodate up to 40) so it was exciting to check in and have the place all to ourselves! Also excited to learn that each of the families had a surfer who loved it but enjoyed it as a holiday, not a lifestyle, so we were all on the same page.

Our villa was gorgeous and had 3 separate bedrooms.  A nice welcome since we'd waited 3 years to see it!

The best part was the porch! It had recently been upgraded and widened and we had a full bed swing to enjoy, along with couches and a table.

We spent a lot of time relaxing and reading out here.

I got things decorated immediately because it was already December 23rd!

All the surfers went out the minute they could that afternoon and I enjoyed a thunderstorm under the cover of our amazing porch.

When the rain cleared up, we had to go for a swim in the perfect water.

The resort has a big dining area and a separate living area. We checked out the ping pong table and pool table after dinner and knew that we were going to have a pretty incredible week here!