We didn't fall into a burning ring of fire

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When i was 8 there was the school trip to ontario place at the end of the semester... pretty lame in retrospect. What i will never forget is viewing my first IMAX movie in the Cinesphere, The Pacific Ring of Fire. Mountainous volcanoes spewing lava all around tropical islands and filmed from a helicopter; it blew my young sense away and made me want to see these vast wild landscapes. Now we're here and its not quite as titillating as i thought it would be when i was a child but we did climb our first active volcano yesterday and it was beautiful and surreal.

A relatively smaller mountain at 2095m above sea level, gunung (mountain) Sibayak was once taller but long ago blew its peak off and is now a wide Caldera with several peaks surrounding a large crater full of sulpher vents hissing gas and smoke. The way was once a trail but now a road snakes up the hill 1/2 of the accent. The road is barely passable and is too steep for any vehicles except motorbikes. When the road ends the fun begins as the trail overgrown with jungle and cuts through ash soaked rocky cliffs. With every step the landscape changes further to a moonscape all the while in the distance lies lush, rainy jungle mountains. Once we entered the crater we were fully surrounded by massive crags and sulpher jets, the air thick with that rotten egg smell. Most places in the world wouldn't let you this close to an active volcano but there are just less rules and things like personal injury lawsuits in Indonsia.

You can go as close as ou wish to the raging jets though we kept what we thought to be a reasonable distance of 5 meters. In actuality we have no idea what a safe distance would be but heck, we are already inside the volcano. We explored around for 30 minutes or so but as the rotten gas smell grew and rain clouds began to overtake the precipice we decided to head out of the crater and check out the view from the edge looking out over the vast mountain ranges before heading down into civilization again. We managed to outrun the rain and that is wonderful as the "steps" down were decrepit, mouldy, cement slivers that you had to balance precariously on. We had wobbly legs and aching feet even before half way down but stopped only for a few quick rests as a downpour would make the trail completely unsafe. We made it back in one piece albeit exhausted. The icing on the cake was the bus that is supposed to go from a tiny village (that you end up in on the other side of the mountain from where you begin) was non-existent and we had to walk a further 4 km to a major road where there was much traffic. All the public buses that passed were overloaded with people but out of the blue a pickup truck stopped and picked us up. It was bumpy but better than being crammed into the horrible mini-buses and when we arrived in Berastagi the driver refused to accept an money from us. (So technically we hitch hiked which delighted us)

Berastagi itself is a quaint small city in the heart of the fruit and veggie production region that supplies most of Sumatra and Java. The market is stellar with large piles of veggies, passionfruit, avacados, and other weird tropical fruits like mangosteen and sala. Just being around so much food production makes us happy and we've replaced lunch at a crappy restaurant with a market run followed by feasting. A kilo of avos only runs you a dollar and the same goes for the passionfruit. I don't know of anywhere else except guatamala where such delicacies are so cheap so we are packing them in! This may be a boring place aside from the hiking but it is cool in the day and almost cold at night. It's bizarre for us being so close to the equator and feeling chilly however we are not going to complain. These isn't much to do here but good food tends to make us linger.

After all the hiking we are in pain and declared a rest day. Because the buses are so horrible and cramped and unsafe we are giving it one more day before we cram in and head to lake toba. Our ride here was horrendous and rivaled some of our indian bus trips. We took 2 five hour rides with a 3 hour break waiting for our connection. This basically wasted a day but that is often the case and no big deal. Our first ride was uncomfortable but not too terrible. Our second ride had me hating life, wanting to murder our driver and left me legs almost useless for hours after we arrivd in Berastagi. There were 3 more people that seats (quite normal really) in the bus, it was pouring rain and our wipers stopped working 20 minutes in the drive and our driver was a psychopath moreso than any of our other indo drivers. The seat in front of mine was broken and would recline onto me the whole trip which was fine unless we were accelerating or hit a bump. These were the exclusive conditions of the ride as the road was barely a road and the driver would gun the engine whenever he could and often when he shouldn't. To make it worse he blasted horrible pop music so loud that even with headphones on your music was drowned out. I wanted to strangle him but then we wouldn't have reached this nice locale. We were aware that sumatran road travel was bad but this was just impressively unpleasant. (looking forward to much more!)

Anyways thanks for reading about us and we hope everything well.
Cheers folks!
Brian and Jenna

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Comments

[Dean]

Volcanos and buses
My only experience with volcanos was Vesuvius. No, I take that back; Kilimanjaro was also an old volcano. In any case, neither were active and not as exciting as your volcano hike. I wonder what "safe" distance was. I suspect not as close as 5 metres but who knows. The bus trip that my daughter and I took from Nairobi to Aurusa (sp?) was at least in a modern van but we had 16 + luggage in a van for 12 and I was unable to move a cm in any direction and my legs were in so much pain at the end that I could barely move. Yes, travel is so much fun at times. I continue to enjoy your travels from the comfort of my desk chair. (You are missing all the floods in Queensland. 8 metre walls of water going down valleys and washing out towns and people.)