tues day 53

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After spending a couple of hours relaxing in front of the tv watching storage hunters last night ( we all have a weakness!) I was quite happy to do a spot of walking and exploring today. So catching a bus to the train station - which also happens to be the location of the tourist information I gathered some very helpful advice ( mainly consisting of a list of prices buses, taxis etc should charge - not what they try and charge - a term ive heard referred to as skin tax!) So, heading off to find the bus station - if you actually look for a station with buses in it - its not the bus station! A bus station in Indonesia is a congregation of anything between 10 - 20 very old vans stopping or not, waiting or not on a road ( not even at the sides of the road!) so you can walk around for a good 10 minutes trying to find a bus station - also half the vans aren't even labelled up - is it even a bus!? Who knows!
After being in Indonesia a week and kind off getting used to the utter chaos I found a bus going my way - and an hour later arriving at the bottom of Tangkuban Prahu ( a 1830 metre high volcano, considered by the Sudanese to be the nucleus of their spiritual world) pleased to be armed with my price list from tourist info - I had the bus driver trying to charge me 250,000 rupiah ( roughly £13) for what was a 30,000 rupiah journey!! ( £1.50) quite a difference! After a bit of a to do he went on his merry way with 30,000 rupiah! I still had to pay 200,000 rupiah entry - its 20,000 for locals. After a 5km steep walk to the top - I had arrived at the large grey crater - feeling impressed with the view and that I had walked to see it I celebrated with a coke - snapped a few pictures and started the descent. This volcano is the most visited in west java and although not having a serious eruption for many years, still spews out huge quantities of sulphurous gases and at least one of its 10 craters is still active.
Standing by the side of the road with my thumb out to any passing buses I got in a jam packed bus to lembang - a town about 10km away to then catch another bus to maribaya - 6km to the west. After arriving at Maribaya I found the start of apparently ( according to my rough guide book!) a very pleasant walk past waterfalls, hot springs, through a forest to Dago Tea House. Paying a further 200,000 rupiah entry, the walk was quite pleasant - nothing amazing - not seeing any hot springs or waterfalls but bumping into 2 girls from Germany, so we walked along chatting. Saw some tunnels which the Japanese used during WWII to hide their ammunition - and never found the tea house which was disappointing as really could of done with a brew. Catching the last bus of the day back through Dago ( where my hotel was) and into the centre of Bandung for the girls hotel - we said our goodbyes and after a full days walking I spent the remaining 3hrs of the evening relaxing - and packing.

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