Rantepao Transportation

We hired a car to to Tana Teroja instead, you should take a night bus (IDR$80,000, US$8.00 one way) which we think it will helps to save a lot of your times and money. Since we travel in the day time, we wasted our day time (almost 8 hours) on the car doing nothing to Tana Teroja, no doubt, along the way, it deos offer some good spots that worth to see and visit.

You also need to pre-arrange you local transport to visit all places in Tana Teroja once arrive, but it should not too difficult for you to hire one. Do recuit a tour guide and they shall give you lot of info that needed, at least they know where to bring you to the funeral site.

Most travellers get to Rantepao by (long-distance) bus companies, booked in home-land like we did (trip is about 8-9 hours). One of the best-known is Liman Express, from Ujung Pandang, though there are more companies. You can try to charter a minibus by asking around at hotels or at the market in Ujung Pandang. There are a lot of self-appointed local tour guides and English-speaking young people who can show you around. Motorcycles can occasionally be rented (if they're not broken) and, the alternative to the long bus trip is to fly Ujung Pandang-Rantepao with Merpati ...

When chartering a minibus take care of the price. We booked our trip in the Netherlands and payed a while ago about 200$ (one person) for 5 nights all in ...

The access to Tana Toraja is not easy, first you must flight to Makassar. From here the best way to get to Rantepao is by bus (or car). The journey takes about 8 hours (less if you travel by night bus). There are a lot of companies but first check the buses because some of them are very old and uncomfortable.

One good company is LITHA & CO but there are more and some of them are cheaper and have newer buses.

If you don't want to sleep in Makasar take the night bus (buses can stop at the Makasar airport). Although you'll mis the Torajan landscape.

We can enter Rantepao and tourist spots in many ways. Using bus from Makassar - Rantepao, takes 8 - 10 hours. Rent a car from the airport to the destination takes 7 - 8 hours and using bemo [local transport] after reach Rantepao for continuing to the attraction places. Or still using the same car that already rented from the airport.

My trip from Jakarta to Rantepao, using Makassar as entry point [you can also choose north entry point of Manado or central entry point of Palu]. So I fly from Soekarno-Hatta airport to Hasanuddin airport using Lion Air, early morning. Then continue it with 8 hours drive from Makassar to Rantepao. Here are several airlines which have daily flight to Makassar:
~ Lion Air
~ Xpress Air Celebes
~ Garuda
~ Bouraq

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Sights on your way to Tana Toraya