Going to Makassar in January was like little getaway for me. After long vacation at the end of the year 2014, my first days in January were full of meetings, training and preparation for projects. So, I was very eager having an opportunity to run away for a while.

At the same time, one of my colleagues got married in Makassar, that made my friend and I decided to visit her and took one day trip exploring Makassar.

My friend had searched through Internet and found one local tour that looked very promising and offered us reasonable price for one day tour. We only had to pay IDR 350.000 each person. It was included with lunch even though we didn't know yet where we were gonna have lunch.

Our itinerary would be Rammang-Rammang, Leang-Leang and Bantimurung. My friend wished she got a chance to see sunset at Losari Beach.


It was Friday, January 16 and we were waiting our local guide. The rain poured down and all I could do was praying that the weather turned to be good while we were at Rammang-
rammang. At 8.15 AM, our local guide arrived at our hotel and introduced himself as Ayit, later on we called him Mas Ayit.

Rammang-Rammang Pier

He told us that the forecast for that day was rain all day. We can only hope that bad weather would not be our obstacles to enjoy the tour.

Breathtaking view of Rammang-Rammang

Here we go!!!!

Rammang-Rammang is located in Maros, a city near Makassar and it took us around 1 hour to go to Maros. We passed through empty road lined up with rice fields on the both sides for almost an hour and suddenly Mas Ayit stopped the car. 'We have arrived,' he said. And we just saw him with blank face because we saw nothing but road and rice fields. 

But, quickly, he asked us to follow him to walk down a little path and voila, there was a hidden pier and motor boats. That's the Rammang-Rammang Pier located. We couldn't take the motor boats immediately because it was still raining, so we had to wait for a while. 

Traditional house on the side of the river

Luckily we didn't have to wait forever. As soon as the rain stopped, we used one boat to go to Kampung Berua where we could see karst mountains and beautiful rice fields.

While driving eeerr or boating along the river, we saw karts mountain in the distance and lined up of mangroves on the river side. 

Let's enter the 'cave'!! Well, not really...

It took us around 30 to 45 minutes to go to Kampung Berau. Finally, after enjoying the view and the rain (yes, it was raining again while we were in the boat), we arrived in Kampung Berau where there are only twelve families living there and all are family-related. Ha..! 

Their houses are not close to each other as inseparable by rice fields and fish ponds.

True beauty

We didn't waste the opportunities to take pictures, lots of pictures, precisely!! 

Mas Ayit then directed us to go to a particular house in the middle of that beautiful place. 

Oh, I forgot to mention you that the view is amazing. I didn't use the past tense word because I know that until today, it is still beautiful. So serene and at that time my eyes were spoiled by the green mixed with the black color from karts mountain and the greyish cloud. Magic!!

To go to the certain house pointed by Mas Ayit was really a quite hard work. The path was very slippery because of the rain that we had to take off our sandals/shoes and use our unskilled foot to walk very carefully in the edge of the fields.

Some of the path became so muddy, there were times we had to walk on the bamboo that laid down on the ground.

Walking on the slippery road wasn't easy because of these two reasons. One, I tried not to fall to the fields but my foot sank into the mud all the time. Two, it was getting harder due to walk on the slippery bamboo with barefoot.

Learn to walk on slippery bamboo

Well, got to tell you one trick. Use the inside of your foot to center your strength and balance, then move your foot by changing the position outwards like a crab walks sideways. Was it crab walk or penguin walk??? Never mind... the most important at that time, I did it well... Proud me!!

In the middle of the hard journey, the rain was pouring down once again and it made me more nervous for I had to walk carefully and really really wanted to get to the house as soon as possible.

Once we arrived at the house, the rain stopped. I just looked up to the sky and said,"Seriously???".

Even a cat enjoy living here

At the house, Mas Ayit introduced us to the family, an older woman whom I called Ibu and an older man whom we called Daeng. Daeng is the leader in that village whose house is usually used as a place for tourist to sleep over. We were asked to write in a guest book and I wrote that my purpose coming here was to escape from my work! True..

Ibu said that she would make us lunch and suddenly Daeng got up and went to the fish pond near the place where we put our boat.
I noticed from distance that he could walk with ease on muddy road.

Transplanting of the seedlings

We enjoyed the beautiful view and teased some village people who were just doing transplanting of rice seedlings. There were three of them worked side by side, every person made a line of the seeds without using a ruler or something, yet the seeds were in straight line. They worked very fast even in the rain, moved from one side to another.

After a while, we saw Daeng walking from the fish pond bringing some fresh fishes. It was a pure joy to have our lunch cooked from fresh fishes. 

Daeng with the fishes

It took around 45 minutes for Ibu to cook our meals while we're having chat with Daeng. He told us that in January, they had big flood ruining all over the fields and they'd lost all the fishes. 

They had to use boat as transportation due to the water height was around 2 meters..

Thank God when we were there, there were no flood and that was the perfect time for them to plant rice seeds.

Men talk

When the lunch was ready, we were just overwhelmed.

Our menu was rice (of course, duh!), milkfishes (bandeng), goldfishes (ikan mas), noodle (ooh, it can't be wrong) and delicious sambal (chilli paste).
You know what, those fishes were heaveeeennnnnn.. Tasted good, smelled good. Love it very much.
Just close your eyes and imagine you are having lunch in the middle of beautiful view, calm weather and delicious food. That's exactly what happened to us that day!!!

An hour later, we continued our journey. After saying good byes to Daeng and Ibu, we went down again to the muddy road, had little chat with the village people before departing from that place and took our boat once again.

Back to our car, we were heading to Leang-Leang, located not very far from Rammang-Rammang. Leang means Cave or Goa in Bahasa Indonesia. Well, I recommend you to go to Rammang-Rammang and Leang-Leang because not only those places are awesome but the view along the way to those places is remarkable. Breathtaking. Seriously...
All you will see are rice fields and most often you will spot something interesting such as granite stones in the middle of the fields, that kind of stones that were usually found in beach area.Some call it stone garden.
Mas Ayit told us that thousand years ago, that place was once an ocean, therefore no wonder we could spot granite or sometimes starfishes and oysters relics in certain areas, especially in Leang-Leang.