Rock scrambling & Bundu Bashing

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Selamat Siang!

Im 2 months into my Jakarta-work-adventure and Im starting to feel like it's all rather normal! I guess it means that I am settling in! 😉

Not THAT much has happened since my last blog, but last weekend's events made me decide to share some more pictures with you!

From 16-10 until 18-10 I left the island of Java to climb Gunung Agung, the highest volcano in Bali, measuring 3100m at its true peak. Most people, both local and tourists, summit the mountain at 2900m on a more convenient side of the crater. But my hiking group of choice aka Java Lava decided to take a more challenging, off-the-beaten-track, route. At 2300m we branched off from the more established path to traverse over the lava flow to the other side of the crater to find its highest point. This definitely increased the adrenaline level of the climb as we are now just rock scrambling right across the lava flow without a particular path to follow. FYI: Mt Agung erupted last in 1964/8 and has not been active since. The terrain was steep and very unstable which made us slightly slower than expected and we therefore summited about 20min after the clouds started to pull in.. i.e. stacks of clouds & howling winds on the summit and only very limited view..
Yes, disappointing, but we saw amazing views on our way up, including the spectacular sunrise over Gunung Rinjani (in Lombok) at the start of our hike. It would just have been great to have a full view of the size of the crater while standing on the rim!
We decided to take a different, slightly longer, route back down the mountain as the lava-flow-cross was not everyone's favourite surface to descend on. Yet our plan B wasnt too great either. The 5h decent was super steep with loads of loose gravel to lose your footing on!! Which I did a countless amount of times... I had to apologise for the foul language to the person behind me at the end of the descend... 😊

The 3rd day was spend relaxing in Bali! 5 people from the 11 who joined the hike signed up to go climb Gunung Rinjani in Lombok straight afterwards so they left again early morning to catch a plane to Mataram. Considering the state of my legs now, Im VERY happy I had work commitments 😉
So after an extensive brunch, during which I stacked up on the bacon as this is something that is absolutely not readily available in muslim Jakarta, I took a taxi to Legian where I went to go visit my friend Rosa who has recently arrived from Ibiza to spend 6 months in Bali. Unfortunately at 5pm it was already time to return back to the big city, but every minute of my 2.5day Bali holiday had been worth it!

PS: There was a minor earth quake again in Jakarta, and believe it or not, it happened yet again while I was flying to Bali!!

Other events in Jakarta;

I went on a day trip to Puncak, a mountainous area 2h outside Jakarta. It is known to be the most rainy place in Java and it has stayed true to its name as this is now the 2nd time I go there and every time the beautiful tea plantations are covered in clouds & a non-stop drizzle.. But it's nice to get out of the city, and of course eat some more good food! 😉

I also did another few trail runs, of course. This time the Jakarta Free Spirit group also organised an off road run in Sentul. We started at 6am to start a 18-20km run which was planned to take approx 3 to 3.5h. At about 11am we were still lost in the mountains, yet the GPS claimed that we only had 4km to go, but the actual route of the 4km was not really specified... And since we spent the last 1.5h bundu-bashing, anxiously removing leeches from our legs and saving our last few sips of water, we decided to call it a day! We organised transport to take us back to our cars.. Sounds disappointing but we decided that 5h of trail running was definitely sufficient for a random Sunday morning!

Of course there are also pictures of dinner dates, coffee dates, karaoke sessions, and more running activities with TGIS (Thanks God Its Saturday - by the Hash)

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Comments

[nina]

Settled?
Enjoying and settling in:-)