Volcanos and Giant Produce

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I decided to make the trip to Berastagi on my own since Wendy was recuperating still at Lake Toba. I arrived late afternoon and went to the market to look around. Just as dusk was falling I snapped a picture of a monument with the market in the foreground and when the flash went off I heard a crowd of women call out. This old lady right by me seemed to be annoyed and wanted money so I showed her that she wasn't even in the picture and she smiled and waved me away.

I hired a guide today and we had a full day-2 hours hiking up to the top partly just on a road. We saw 2 little monkeys in the trees which my guide said was really luck since he'd only seen 2 previously in the 2 years he's been guiding. Then a long black snake crossed right in front of us-like 4 feet long but skinny. At intervals he would stop and pull out his knife to hack something off a tree or plant to show me. I chewed on some leaves and bark from a cinnamon tree-really potent. Then when I was feeling a little faint after the uphill climb, he grabbed some eucalyptus leaves to smell which totally helped clear my head. Once we got to the top we were able to hike up the rocks and get right next to the fissures (think that's the right word) of hot gas spewing from them and bright yellow sulfur all around. You could see areas with burned plants were a vent had been previously. We walked down into a basin area where there were little pools of heavily boiling water. My guide pulled out an egg and put it in a plastic bag and proceeded to boil it! We checked it at 5 minutes but it was still a little runny. After lunch at the top, we hiked down the forested side so that we would end at the hot springs. This meant 2 hours of slippery cement steps and I was covered in mud from basically my knees down by the end. My shoes will smell nice since I have a plane flight to Bali tomorrow and a lay-over in Jakarta on the way.

Once on the bottom, we walked by the geothermal electricity plant where we could see showers of water pouring down from the evaporating steam from the volcano. The hot springs were a lot nicer than the ones in Danau Toba since there were large pools where everyone could swim or sit out in the open. All of the women had shirts and shorts on while the men just wore shorts so I went in with my t-shirt. Two different groups came over to me to practice their English and out of curiousity and lots of pictures were snapped.

When we got back to town my guide took me around to the main markets. The markets in Berastagi are the largest in all of Sumatra and people from all over come to buy the produce. Everywhere around here there are endless gardens of every vegetable imaginable. And everything was enormous and looked amazing. It must be that volcanic soil. There's a monument of a giant cabbage at the beginning of the city. He pointed out all of the women who had a big red bloody-looking ball in their mouth which made it look like their mouth was constantly bleeding. It looked like beetle-nut that I'd seen in Thailand. My guide-he went by Spirit-said it was tobacco and I saw a lot of tobacco leaves and brown tobacco in the market. He said the men smoke it and the women chew it-even women as young as 12.

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Photos

Berastagi
Is the egg boiled yet?

Berastagi
Hot springs

Berastagi
Giant veggie market