Again it’s an Adventure that it was on my plans doing but I got to unfortunate misinformation with my hitchhikes and unreliable maps. Fortunately I got to the point in which I can recommend it and fill some of the information holes I had.
Still it’s not gonna be easy and it would be better if you have your own cross country motorbike.
Starting from Kendari the best is to ask to go to Wanggudu (a small empty administrative town).
From there to Padalere to take the motorbike road to Tocalimbo (or simply Limbo). It shall be about 100km of crappie road so plan to stay overnight on the road if you started from Kendari or spend the whole day doing it.
That at leas for now will allow you to avoid 5km of hyper muddy mountain road on the provincial road. I did it and the trucks backfell.
There is not gonna be much hitchhikes as the area is mostly deserted, but that shall not put off daring adventurers 😀 (I palmed to do it and by far I’m not the craziest out there).
Then when you get to Limbo (so cool to say that, specially now that the church says it doesn’t exist :D) on the shores of Danau Towuti. There I thought it was the problem, where to go next! However through my alternative way I discovered where to continued from Limbo 🙂
There are few boats and a personality flouting wooden ferry on the morning-noon that go from Limbo (on the southeast shore) to Kampung Baru (on the north west shore) and the other way around, so crossing the biggest lake in Indonesia with magnificent views 😀
Then from there to Soroako (try the street food on Soroako!) and crossing Danau Matano to Nuha (or Nua) is a easy feat, that’s the one I did in reverse. There are small 4 legged stable boats that continuously do the 20min crossing for 25.000r, they can also cross your moto (I saw one impossibly carrying 3 motos and many passengers :P).
From the small 8 houses settlement of Nuha to Bateleme, there are no towns, so the hitchhike is difficult. I had to walk for 1h on the mid day equatorial sun :P. The first half of the road, until crossing the province border, it’s quite potholed but easily doable, after its good road, shadowy by rubber trees close to the end.
On addition there is a road from Nuha to Malili, around the lake, but considering that the Alpha male took the wheel of my ride at that point, but was instead copiloting until in the potholed road, then I assume the road is terrible from there on and you need experience. The beginning did look terrible.
I would say the crossing takes at least 2 days depending on the boats that you find to cross Towuti, but count on 3 days to be sure.
As always count on people super happy to see you, many pictures taken of you, remoteness, untouched scenery, cristal lakes, striking views and unknowns 😀
Good luck and Adventure!
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