(Photos Courtesy of Martine Bergeron & Marc Bergeron, Map Courtesy of Periplus)
Riung village, on the coast north of Bajawa, offers beautiful coral gardens in the Seventeen Island National Reserve, as well as thousands of flying foxes.
The National Park, Pulau Tujuhbelas (Seventeen Islands), in fact has more than 20 islands, but, in a gesture of patriotism, the number was declared to 17, to conform to Indonesia's Independence Day, August 17.
The biggest island is Pulau Ontoloe which is hilly, covered with short grass and a few trees, and fringed with mangroves. On the north coast of Ontoloe Island, the large fruit-eating bats called flying foxes mass in which the mangrove tress.
At high tide, our boat can get quite close to shore, where the bats hang upside down in the tree, thick as flies. A few shouts send them flying , and you can see thousands of the bats, with reddish fur and black wings (in some parts of Eastern Indonesia area, some people eat these kind of bats which are said juicy & yummy! Since the bats eat only fruits...), take off from the trees and wheel around in the sky before setting down again. A magnificent spectacle! these bats are said to forage every night as far away as Bajawa and Ruteng.
(Articles freely quoted from Periplus - East of Bali "From Lombok to Timor")
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