Larantuka port town on the eastern tip of Flores Island, Indonesia
Region Guide

East Flores

Maumere & Larantuka — a Catholic coast of candlelit processions, pristine dive sites, ikat weavers, and beaches that most travellers never reach.

Destinations in East Flores

What East Flores is Known For

Semana Santa, Larantuka

The Good Friday procession in Larantuka is the most powerful Catholic ceremony in Southeast Asia — a 500-year-old Portuguese tradition carried through candlelit streets to the sea.

Maumere Diving

Babi Island and Pulau Besar (30 km north of Maumere) offer pristine reefs that see a fraction of the traffic of Komodo. Visibility regularly exceeds 30 metres.

Weaving Villages

Sikka, Watublapi, and the villages around Maumere are famous for ikat weaving — each village has a distinct pattern. You can watch weavers at work and buy directly.

Adonara & the Islands

Watotena Beach on Adonara island is one of the finest stretches of sand in eastern Flores. The island is reached by a short ferry and sees almost no tourists.

Tanjung Bunga

The far eastern tip of Flores — where the island gets its name — is about as remote as it gets. Danau Asmara, a crater lake near the cape, rewards the journey.

Key Experiences

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Why Bother with East Flores?

Most visitors to Flores never get east of Moni. That's precisely why you should. East Flores rewards travellers who make the effort: dive sites with almost no competition, traditional villages where weaving is still an everyday practice, and one of the most extraordinary religious spectacles in all of Asia — the Semana Santa procession in Larantuka, a Portuguese Catholic tradition kept alive for five centuries.

The infrastructure is thinner here. ATMs are fewer, roads are narrower, and English is less common. But the trade-off is an authenticity that the more-visited west of the island has mostly lost. East Flores is Flores as it was before the tourism boom.

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