How to Visit The Fairytale Wae Rebo Traditional Village in Flores

Facts About Wae Rebo Village 

✔️ The iconic cone-shaped houses are called “Mbaru Niang”, which loosely translates to “Drum House”. 

✔️ Each Mbaru Niang hut can house up to 8 families. 

✔️ There are 6 main cultures on Flores Island, of which the people of Wae Rebo belong to the Manggarai Tribe.

✔️ Tourists have only been welcome at Wae Rebo since 1997, and the Mbaru Houses were foremost renovated to meet the massive resulting tourism demand in 2008

✔️ It is currently inhabited by only 1,200 people 

✔️ At 1,100 meters above sea level, it is one of the highest villages in Indonesia. 

My Top Tips For Visiting  

✅ Know that there is no cell service in and around the village (goes without saying, but there’s also no wifi!)

✅ Bring Cash: Even if you’re taking an all-inclusive guided tour, you will need it to pay for the “Welcome Ceremony” fee, or if you want to buy any souvenirs. 

✅ Know that while there are bathrooms, they are very limited – I recommend bringing wet wipes and hand sanitizer!💡 BEST HIKING/CAMPING SANITARY TIP! If you put hand sanitizer on a wet wipe and use that under your armpits, it will kill the bacteria that cause stink. I’ve used this so many times, for example when I was camping in the desert in Egypt.

✅ Cover your legs!  There are LEECHES on the path up to the village, I wasn’t bit by one but our friend who was in sandals was. 

✅ Take motion sickness pills – For the incredibly bumpy drive there.

✅ Bring bug spray – It’s quite buggy on the way up. Once we were actually in the village the air was cool, and the bugs weren’t a big issue.  

✅ Know it’s COLD in the village at night! – The village is pretty high up, and it was chilly (especially by Indonesian standards), at night. 

✅ Bring A Portable Power Bank – When we went there were electricity and charging ports available, but some other travelers reported power outages during their tour. 

✅ TAKE A TOUR! Unless you make friends with someone from in/around Wae Rebo village who can act as your guide or are okay with hiring a random person on-site, you need to take a tour in order to not fall victim to their tourism mafia.

How To Get To Wae Rebo 

Wae Rebo Traditional Village is located around 110 KM from Labuan Bajo, which is the port city for the island of Flores that most tourists fly into from the much more popular island of Bali. It’s most common for travelers to fly in order to get to Komodo Island from Bali, and then stick around after in Labuan Bajo to explore Flores overland and visit sites like Wae Rebo.

While Google Maps says the drive from Labuan Bajo to Wae Rebo is 3.5 hours, it’s not taking into account that the road on the second half of the trip isn’t a road at all – more like a riverbed of stones 😭. Because of the road’s condition, the second half of the trip was incredibly slow-going! 

👉 If you’re taking a tour that includes 4-wheel drive vehicles, you’ll have an easier time of it than we did on scooters.

🛵 Via Scooter

When we did the drive on scooters it took 6 hours, including a stop for lunch. If you go quickly with no stops you could do it in around 4-5 hours. We did the unhinged 5-hour drive over the bumpiest roads, hairpin turns, through running rivers, and 6-inch-deep-mud (which my scooter got stuck in and I had to be pushed out!), all while avoiding wild cows and kids chasing our scooters down for cash. 

👉 Renting Scooters in Labuan Bajo: It was 300K ($20) for the 2-day scooter rental. We had the worst scooters ever for this drive – mine was at least 10 years old. Even though we had a local from Flores arranging our scooter rentals for us, pretty much no one wanted to rent a good scooter for the drive to Wae Rebo because of the wear and tear you put on a bike for that trip. The first half we were going over proper paved roads, but the second half was loose gravel and giant stones. One KM of driving took as much as a half hour of driving towards the end, the roads were in such poor condition. 

🚗 Do You Need A Tour To Visit Wae Rebo?

Yes – due to the tourist mafia (more on that later!) running the traditional village, you either need to use a tour service or hire a local guide yourself. It’s very important that if you choose to hire a local guide independent of a tour service it’s a guide from Wae Rebo village or the closest city, Ruteng. This is because the locals are very territorial about the tourism industry surrounding Wae Rebo, “local” doesn’t just mean someone from Flores!

🚌 Taking A Bus To Ruteng (Self-Guided)

You can also take the daily bus from Labuan Bajo to Ruteng. The bus has to be booked in person, and typically doesn’t have AC and gets very crowded. From Ruteng you can get a motor scooter taxi where you hop on someone’s scooter to the start of the hike. From here, you will have to hire a local guide from the village to reach Wae Rebo. 

💡 Tip! Since the bus from Ruteng to/from Labuan Bajo only runs once a day, you might have to spend an extra night in Ruteng to be able to catch one going back.

About The Wae Rebo Village “Mafia” 

The reason you need a tour or local guide to go to Wae Rebo is that, like many other spots in Indonesia, its tourism is run by a form of local “mafia” that makes sure – sometimes by force – that the locals are directly benefiting from the tourism money their site is bringing in. You can argue until the cows come home if this is a good or a bad thing – in the case of Wae Rebo, I personally am on the local’s side. Although it’s annoying to HAVE to book a local guide since there’s no reason you need a guide in the first place (the path is a straight shot to the village + you’re already paying an entrance fee once you get there). 

If a traveler refuses the help of a local guide, the tourism mafia may use intimidation or retaliation to get them to comply. For example, the start of the trek to the village is in a remote location. You need to park your scooter or motorbike at the trailhead, there’s no public transportation that goes all the way there. My local friend said that if a traveler refuses the local guide, the locals might slash their tires while they’re at Wae Rebo –  When they come back from visiting the traditional village, they’re left stranded at the trailhead. 

Basically, locals are fiercely protective of their tourism dollars, even if that leads to a worse experience for the tourist bringing in money in the first place, and hurts their reputation as a popular travel destination in the long run. Is it frustrating? Yes. Can you really blame the locals for it? No. 

👉 The truth is, the required local guide for the Wae Rebo trek is more for the local tourism economy than the traveler’s safety. At the end of the day, it’s only 200-300K IDR to pay for a guide, it’s not the end of the world, and these people are born into circumstances with very limited opportunities and need the tourism dollars to survive. 

💡 Tip!  The easiest way to avoid the “Tourism Mafia” at Wae Rebo is to travel with a tour company that will arrange everything beforehand.

💰 How Much Does It Cost To Visit Wae Rebo? 

The official entrance fee to Wae Rebo Traditional Village is 350,000 IDR ($25), + the 100K for the “Welcome Ceremony” and bribe for the watchman = 450k IDR ($30) total. We also spent 300K ($20) for the 2-day scooter rental, 100K ($7) on gas, and another 100K ($7) on food. Roughly $57 altogether for two days.

💸 Total Costs To Visit 💸

💸 Total Cost for Self-Guided Driving Yourself = 900K IDR ($60) 

🚗 Total Cost To Do An Organized Tour With A Driver = $150 – $500 per person, depending on the size of your party and tour service used. 

🚌 Total Cost To Take The Bus To Ruteng = 450K Entrance fees & mandatory donations, 200K mandatory guide, 200K each way for bus, + 100K each way for scooter taxi + lunches = 1.2 Million IDR ($80). 

About The Hike  

I was actually stressing about the hike to Wae Rebo because it had been described to me as a 3-hour straight hike, and we reached the starting point of the hike late in the day. Luckily for us, the difficulty level of the hike up was greatly exaggerated. Only the first half hour of the hike is a steep upward climb, after that, it gradually levels off.

🥾 Hike Difficulty: All in all, the entire trek took us around 1.5 hours, but the length and difficulty of the hike for you will depend on your fitness level. 

My Experience  

Overall, my experience at Wae Rebo was a positive one – but that was because of the gorgeous scenery, and the adventurous time we had reached the village, rather than any sort of cultural experience. How were we treated once we were at the village? Well, that was bad. Kinda comically bad if I’m being honest. 

Right from the entrance my local “guide” (he was local to Flores, not necessarily Ruteng, so we had to bribe our way in), was like: “Quick!!! Give me 50K IDR”. We complied and he walked up to the guy sitting watch at the entrance to the village and slipped him the three 50K IDR bills (around $10 US), in a handshake bribe. 

This bribe wound up being needed because we didn’t have a TRULY “local” guide (our friend was from Labuan Bajo, Flores – not Ruteng. We only made it past the tourism mafia because we went very late in the day). I was confused because we were already paying the (pretty high, for rural Indonesia) 350K IDR ($25) entrance fee for the village, but it was just one of several ways we were going to be nickel-and-dimed on our trip! 

About The “Welcome Ritual” 

This was the funniest part of our trip – We got to the village later than everyone who took a real tour and we missed the “Welcome Ceremony”. Everyone we talked to made a big fuss about us missing the Welcome Ceremony, and said they were going to put on a second one, just for us. 

I thought, “Well that’s just the sweetest thing! They’re gonna put on a special ceremony just for us!”

The title “Welcome Ceremony” summoned to my mind something like a performance or a ritual. In reality, the “ceremony” was just us paying another 50K IDR each 😂 (No wonder they were so fussed we missed it!!!)  The Welcome Ceremony was us sitting in front of one of the village elders while he officially welcomed and blessed us, and in return we each handed him 50K IDR ($3.50). Not a large sum of money, but it’s not optional – no one is allowed to enter the village without being “blessed” (and paying for it!).

Our Welcome Ceremony was kind of comical. In our party, we were three travelers from different countries; an Indonesian (our friend who was acting as our guide), a French person, and me, an American. Part of the “Ritual” is the village elder welcoming you by your country. The village elder decided for himself that I was from Mexico (???) which was just so freaking funny and random after 6 hours on a scooter and a two-hour hike. 

The Village Elder’s welcoming went like this: 

Elder: “We welcome you, travelers, my brothers and sisters from Indonesia, France, and Mexico” 

My friend interrupts him: “Sorry, United States”. 

Elder: “Ah yes, Indonesia, France, United States, and Mexico“. 

There was no swaying him! He had decided at least one of us was from Mexico. 

We couldn’t keep it together and pitched into a giggle-fit during our “Welcome Ceremony”, so it’s a good thing it only lasted two minutes! 

What We Ate 

The tourists were served separately from the villagers in the two conical houses set aside for their use on long mats, family style. We had boiled eggs, sambal (Indonesian chili paste), greens, chips, and bananas. It was very tasty, and perfect after a long day! At meal times the villagers would set the table for the visitors but then left to eat separately. 

For a homestay experience, I thought this was really odd that no one from the village was eating with us. Other traditional village homestays I’ve done in the past, for example on Lake Titicaca in Peru, you actually join a family for their meals. But at Wae Rebo, mealtimes (and in truth, for the entirety of our trip) the visitors were kept separate from the locals. 

I was also told after by my friend who is a Flores local that the food we were served (eggs, rice, sambal, banana), while Indonesian, wasn’t specifically traditional dishes for the Wae Rebo people – They were just trying to feed the tourists coming to their homestay as cheaply as possible 😂.

The Vibe 

One of the coolest things about the trip to Wae Rebo is you’re all sleeping, eating, and hanging out in one communal room with the other travelers. So, while there wasn’t really any socializing with the actual villagers, we hung out with other travelers from Jakarta, Flores, Italy, and the Netherlands. Someone brought out some Arak (Indonesian Moonshine) that they had trekked up with them, and people stayed up all night chit-chatting and drinking. After a long day of driving and hiking, I was in bed by 10 PM, but it was a great experience to socialize with other travelers from all over the world regardless of language barriers. 

Where We Slept

We all slept surprisingly well! Maybe it was from the long day of travel + hiking the day before, the refreshing mountain air in the village, or just the Arak (Indonesian moonshine) from the night before, but I was completely conked out from 10 PM to 6 AM when we were woken up for sunrise. There are two traditional huts devoted to housing the tourists in the village, and each one sleeps up to 30 people. The bunks are squished together with no space in between, but there was only one other group in our cabin when we went so we had tons of room to spread out.

Is Wae Rebo Worth Visiting? 

For me, yes, 100%. I’m always honest on this blog, so I’m not going to just say that it’s the best place in the world and perfect for everyone to add to their Indonesia travel itinerary. While Wae Rebo Village is an unfortunate victim of tourism sucking the life and soul out of a place, it’s also one of those fairy-tale locations that I truly cannot believe exists in the real world – let alone a spot I’ve been lucky enough to visit in person! 

Wae Rebo actually looks like the amazing photos you see of it on Instagram, and that’s both a good and a bad thing. Lots of tourists are just there for the photo opportunity, and in fact – besides the opportunity to socialize with fellow travelers – that’s really all Wae Rebo is. 

Other traditional village homestays I’ve been to in the past focused on cultural experiences: showing travelers the way of life in these villages, and how they ate, lived, dressed, and celebrated. Wae Rebo really doesn’t do much of that. The only time the villagers interacted with the tourists was when they were trying to sell us things; which were mainly woven bracelets and coffee.