Banjir and Puncak

---

On Monday Rima, Adee and Muhammad organised a trip to the mountians for us. We decided we should try to leave early to avoid the Jakarta traffic but when we got up we discovered that teh few hours of rain in the night had flooded the roads and neighbouring suburbs (banjir). This made meting up with Muhammad a bit tricky as he had to walk to somewhere where a car would go! Eventually we met up and set off through the flood waters toward the tollway and Puncak. We made a brief stopin the flood tog rab some sweet corn from an opportunistic bloke who had set up to sell corn to people stuck in the flood. The mountains were beautiful, it is much cooler and misty with fantastic gardens (tea, vegetables and ornamental) and brief glimpses of the towering mountains as the fog and rain shifted around...unfortunately our camera battery was low so we only got a few shots! We visited a massive flower garden that had displays of different gardens and themes from around the world. We got lost in a 1 hectare hedge maze and stuck during the rain in a cactus garden. There was water gardens, fountains, formal English hedging, Balinese, Japanese and more! We also drove past a stall selling the biggest bakso balls any of us had ever seen! one ball feeds five people! For those of you who are not Bakso connoisuers these balls are a sort of meatball, usually the size of a walnut or maximum golf ball size, the ones we saw were like grapefruit!

---