Getting there is half the fun

Indonesia Photos Part 1: Gunung Merapi

Ok here we go, finally what all (3) of you have been waiting for, photos from Indonesia!

After getting the hell out of Jakarta on the "bus ride from hell" I found myself in Yogyakarta. The first thing I did was to sign up for a volcano trek up Gunung Merapi, which means mountain of fire. It is one of the most active volcanoes and errupted for 10 years straight! It is one of the 16 "decade volcanoes" because of its high activity. It's also Indonesia's most active volcano, and Indonesia has a lot of them! So who can think of a better idea than to climb it?! In recent years the mountain has been off limits to treks. We were able to make it to the "third" out of 4 stages, just below the crater. It was too dangerous to go any further because of falling rocks from the dome. Out of 12 people, 8 of us made it to the last plateau where we spent the night freezing on the ground at 4am.

This is where we spent the night, more or less, from 4 to 5am. Me, Matt, the Swiss girls and a guide managed to squeeze into this sort of structure from days of old. I have no idea what this thing was or how it got there but the 4 rusted walls provided at least some sort of shelter on the exposed plateau. We spent an hour freezing on the dirt ground before trying to make a fire.


It was one of our guide's first time doing the hike, and he was actually colder than any of us! Our guides tried somewhat successfully to make a fire at 4:30am out of the few wet bushes on the otherwise barren and very windy plateau.


While hunting around for more things to burn we stumpled across this patch of lava! OMG!


Here's the group of us at the plateau at around 5:30am. We're all happy because it's getting light enough to start hiking down! From left to right: Antia (Swiss), the 2 Australians with their handmade toques, me, Eve (Swiss) and Matthieu (French).


Here's a pic of Matt and the ridge we folled down. I didn't get any good pictures of the most interesting part of the trail, the steep part above in the clouds. But still, in this one you can see it is pretty steep and devoid of life (except a stray French guy).


Hiking down we dropped below the clouds to the glorious sunrise at 6am. We followed a rocky ridge down to where the vegetation started again, where we met Peter and then later Julia. Regrouped, warm and happy we just chilled out on the ridge for about an hour watching the sun expose the surrounding landscape. Here we all are happy to be warm and not on some dark, windy, rocky ridge: me, Antia, Julia, Peter, Matthieu, a guide, the Australians and Evelin.


This was our view for the rest of the hike down, Gunung Merhabu!


Back down in the valley we hiked for another hour through tobacco plantations. Here's what it looked like:


There were great views in every direction the entire hike down. Here's one of my favorite of some other volcanoes in the distance as the sun is rising.


And finally the last one. This is Gunung Merapi from the mountain town of Selo, our starting point. The clouds have risen enough now to see where we made it to. We hiked the the last bump just left of the bowl.


So here ends the pictures from my first day and a half in Indonesia. There are way to many to post here so check out the gallery for more!

Posted by Evan at 8:36 PM