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Tag: lombok

• trekking mt. rinjani: day 3

  Posted at 10:52 am by jasminedesirees, on January 28, 2015

  Continued from Trekking Mt. Rinjani Day 1 and Day 2.

  On the last morning of our trek, our guide Jamal woke us up at 2:30 AM to start our trek to the summit of the mountain.

  Even as we were crawling out of our sleeping bags, we weren’t sure if we were going to be able to go or not. The wind had been howling all night, and it was absolutely freezing outside.

  

  

  We all huddled together in the porters tent for tea and biscuits, and Jamal explained how the next few hours would go. We would be hiking for 3 hours, in the dark, up the side of the rim, across a narrow strip that was only one meter wide at some points.

  On either side, it was a straight drop down.

  Once we left camp, we wouldn’t be able to come back unless we came back all together, because there were a couple of places on the climb where you could take a wrong turn, especially in the dark, and end up lost.

  

  

  Jamal told us we could go if we wanted, but he wasn’t going up with us, one of the porters would take us. Only about 5 of us decided to make the trip. Derek didn’t come, luckily, because I wore every single piece of clothing both of us brought.

  I wasn’t even sure I was going to go, when I went back to the tent to get ready, but then I figured I’d come this far, so I stuffed a Snickers in my pocket, and pulled a pair of socks onto my hands, and headed out.

  

  

  

  I made it exactly 5 steps before I tripped over a rock in the dark and fell flat on my face. Luckily it was so dark that nobody else noticed, and we all set off.

  I regretted my decision almost immediately. It was freezing, windy, and dark, but the worst part was that the closer we got to the top, the more the ground went from dirt, to volcanic ash. Every time I took a step, I would sink up to my ankles, and slide backwards a little bit, so for every 2 steps I took, I was only moving one step forward.

  

  

  

  It was realllllllly hard, but if you’ve ever met me, you know I am reallllllly stubborn. After two hours of climbing, a couple of the guys in our group decided they couldn’t keep going, so they huddled together behind a rock to wait for the rest of us to come back down. And then there were four of us.

  We got up to the top just as the sun was coming up. The view was gorgeous, you could see the whole island, and the Gili’s off in the distance. The relief of finally being done climbing was the greatest feeling ever.

  

  

  

  We sat up there for about an hour, and then when we started getting really cold again, headed back down to camp. Going down was so much better than going up. The volcanic ash, so treacherous on the way up, was a blast on the way down, and we ran flat out, sliding the whole way. I only fell twice.

  

  

  Breakfast was ready for us by the time we got back down, but I felt so sick that I couldn’t eat anything for the rest of the day. We packed up camp, and headed back down for 6 more hours of hiking down to the base.

  We stopped for lunch at a rest stop, and were accosted by a particularly brash group of monkeys, and I laid in the shade and dreamed about Sprite.

  

  

  When we were an hour from the bottom, I finally couldn’t take it anymore (I had blisters) and had to take my shoes off and finish off the rest of the hike in the barefoot/in my flip flops. I had the dirtiest little monkey feet in the whole world.

  

  

  The trek ended in a little town with a store, and the first thing I did was buy myself a Sprite, and lay down on the ground. It was the single most glorious thing that’s ever gone into my mouth.

  We loaded into the back of a truck for the hour drive back to the trekking center, grabbed our stuff, and went back to our homestay to shower for the first time since we’d left, and sleep for the next two days straight.

  

  

  I just went back and re-read all three of these posts, and it sounds like a pretty miserable experience. It really wasn’t, it was amazing, one of the best things I’ve ever done. It was really hard, I just want to let you know what you’re in for, but I guarantee you won’t regret it.

  I mean you will at the time, definitely, but like three days later, once you’ve eaten, slept, and showered, you’ll feel invincible.

  

  

  Posted in Indonesia, travel | 2 Comments | Tagged hiking, Indonesia, lombok, mt. rinjani, travel, trekking, volcanic ash, volcano

• trekking mt. rinjani: day 2

  Posted at 8:18 am by jasminedesirees, on January 26, 2015

  (Check out part 1 and part 3 of Mt. Rinjani)

  On day 2 of our trekking expedition on Mt. Rinjani, we were woken up just before sunrise, so we could eat breakfast and get going. The second day is the longest day, with the most hiking, about 10 hours to the stopping point for the second night.

  Nobody slept very well, and it was pretty cold when we first woke up, but the porters were awake long before we were, and made a fire and had hot tea waiting for us so we could relax and enjoy the beautiful sunrise.

  

  

  Then we set off down the mountain. Our route for that day was to climb down inside the crater rim to the crater lake, and then climb back up the other side of the crater rim to get to the base of the summit, which we would be attempting the next morning.

  We left camp about 45 minutes before our group of porters, they have to break down camp, and pack everything up, but they are so fast, and have been doing it for so long, that they caught up with us, and passed us, almost immediately. They have to beat their group to the next stop so they can have a fire made and lunch cooking when they arrive. They are pretty much amazing, true story.

  

  

  The initial descent was pretty steep, there were some hand railings, but they were precarious at best. A couple people wiped out, but there weren’t any serious injuries. The sun came out full force about halfway to the lake, and it quickly became very hot.

  It took us about 3 hours to get down to the lake, and by then I was so hot I just kicked off my shoes and ran into the water. It was freezing, but the view was incredible. We were stopping at the lake for lunch but a short hike away from the stopping place was a natural hot springs that we could go swimming in while we were waiting to eat.

  

  

  The water was bright green, and smelled like sulphur. I didn’t go in because I was not feeling good at all by then, I went and had a nap in the shade, but everyone that went in said it was awesome, and that they felt much better afterwards.

  

  We ate lunch, and then started the hike around the lake, and up the other side. It was very strange though, there were dead fish all over the place along the edge of the water. Like hundreds and hundreds of them.

  We asked our guide Jamal about it, and he told us that the President of Indonesia had wanted there to be fish in the crater lake, so he had helicopters full of fish dropped in, but then they couldn’t survive in the water because of the volcano, so they die off in huge numbers. I have no idea if that is true or not.

  

  

  The second half of the second day was pretty brutal. It was gorgeous, hiking through the cliffs with the view of the lake, but it was very hot, and we’d met another group at the lake who were coming the opposite way, and had attempted to make the climb to the summit that morning.

  They told us it was way too windy, and almost nobody made it, and that it was so miserable there were people crying and huddling together behind the rocks. So we had that to look forward to the next day.

  

  

  When we were about 2 hours away from the second night camp, it started to get very steep again, and Jamal told us it was the place where most people get hurt, if they are going to. It was pretty sheer cliffs, and there were occasional hand rails, but it was almost worse to use them because sometimes they would pull right out of the ground.

  

  

  

  Jamal told us a story about one hiker who fell there and broke almost every bone in his body, and a group of porters had to carry him out on a stretcher. It took them a day and a half to get him out of the crater and back to a hospital, and he screamed every time they jostled the stretcher, which I’m sure happens a lot when you’re climbing down the side of a mountain.

  Needless to say, I was superrrrr careful after that.

  

  

  

  We eventually made it up to the top, and our tents were set up, and supper was ready for us since the porters had beat us there by about two hours. As soon as we got there I collapsed into the tent and vowed never to get out again.

  We were up really high by this point, and the clouds were swirling all around the tents, it was amazing. I left the tent door open so I could watch it without moving.

  

  

  

  We ate an early supper, and went to bed right after sunset, because we knew we’d be getting woken up at 2:30 AM to try to make the trek to the summit of the mountain. We didn’t even know at that point if we were going to be able to go, because if it’s too windy they close the climb.

  

  

  

  You have to do the climb in the pitch dark to be up there for sunrise, so it’s already pretty dangerous without adding gale force winds. Jamal told us he’d wake us in the morning, and we’d find out then if we were going.

  

  

  The first night we’d been kind of in some rocks against the cliff, but the second night we were out in the open with no shelter.

  The wind was blowing so hard that the side of the tent kept blowing down and covering our faces while we were sleeping, but I was so exhausted from the last two days that I slept like the dead, and didn’t move at all until Jamal stuck his flashlight into our tent.

  

  

  To be continued on day 3…

  

  Posted in Indonesia, travel | 6 Comments | Tagged crater lake, hiking, Indonesia, lombok, mt. rinjani, travel, trekking, volcano

• trekking mt. rinjani: day 1

  Posted at 8:00 am by jasminedesirees, on January 21, 2015

  (Check out part 2 and part 3 of Mt. Rinjani)

  As I mentioned here, while we were in Indonesia in Lombok, we ended up doing the 3 day Mt. Rinjani hike. I had never heard of it before we got to Gili T, and it sounded kind of cool, but also, every single person I’d met that had done it said it was really, really hard.

  You could tell who had just gotten back from the hike when you saw them out on the streets of Senggigi, because they just looked completely shattered.

  

  

  We kind of thought it would be cool, but didn’t really look into it that much, and then one day D and I just kind of looked at each other and were like, “When are we going to be in Lombok again? Let’s do it”. So here is the story of our Mt. Rinjani trek, broken out by day:

  On the day we left, we got picked up from our homestay in Senggigi, around 5am. We each had a backpack with the warmest clothes we had, and 400 Snickers bars.

  We got dropped off at the climbing center in Senaru, and they gave us banana pancakes for breakfast. I hate banana pancakes, so I was playing with the monkeys climbing in the trees instead.

  

  There were about 10 people total in our group, from all over the world. We had a couple guys from the UK, a girl from Spain, a Canadian couple, and 2 Danes, a mother and daughter. The mother was in her 60’s, and she was very impressive. It was a very hard 3 days, and she kept up with us the whole time.

  Our guide was named Jamal, and he was very sweet and funny. Each group goes up with a guide, and a few porters, depending on how many people are in the group. The porters’ job is to carry all of the camping supplies: tent, sleeping bag, mattresses, food, water, etc.

  

  

  They hike up the mountain carrying extremely heavy loads balanced on both ends of a bamboo pole, usually wearing flip flops, and holding a cigarette in one hand. They only make $15 USD per day, and the goal is to eventually become a guide, but speaking English is a job requirement, so many of the porters use their time with the trekking groups to practice.

  Jamal told us his first day as a porter he made it up to the crater rim, but it was so hard that he set his load down and cried.

  

  

  The first day was pretty hard, it was up hill the whole way (obviously) and it was pretty hot outside. We stopped for a break every 1KM, so I just kept telling myself that I only had to make it to the next rest stop.

  This went on for 6 KM (it was 8 KM total the first day).

  By the time we reached the lip of the crater rim I was completely exhausted and I kind of thought I was going to cry when I realized we had 2 more days like that, but the second I came up on the ridge and saw the crater lake, I immediately forgot about how hard it had been to get up there, and I was so happy we made the trek.

  

  

  It was the most amazing view I’ve ever seen. I got a huge adrenaline rush, and spent at least an hour running all over trying to get pictures from different angles, and just enjoying the view. Beside me, a guy got down on one knee and proposed to his girlfriend.

  

  

  We set up camp on one of the mountain cliffs and the porters made us a delicious dinner. We stayed up chatting, and watching sunset over the mountain, and hung out for a bit just enjoying the view and the millions of stars we could see.

  I remember thinking that I wished it was warmer out so we could just sleep outside under the stars.

  

  

  

  It was incredibly windy up there, I barely slept at all because I was freezing, and because I kept thinking we were going to get blown over the edge.

  

  

  During one particularly nasty gust of wind our tent collapsed, and the cover blew off, so we ended up sleeping outside under the stars anyway. Be careful what you wish for.

  

  

  To be continued on day 2….

  

  Posted in Indonesia, travel | 13 Comments | Tagged Indonesia, lombok, mt. rinjani, travel, trekking, volcano

• lombok: kuta beaches

  Posted at 10:07 am by jasminedesirees, on January 19, 2015

  As I mentioned in this post, the beaches in Kuta Lombok are some of the most beautiful out of everywhere we visited.

  We spent one whole day on a moped going around to see as many of them as possible, and we didn’t even make a dent in how many there are to see (there is one with pink sand, but it’s a bit of a struggle to get to).

  

  

  Our first stop was Mawun beach, about a 20 minute moped ride from Kuta. I must have taken about 500 pictures while we were there, I couldn’t get over how beautiful it was.

  We arrived around 9 a.m., and there wasn’t a single soul there except for two ladies selling fresh mangoes from a little hut.

  

  

  I’ve heard that Maya Bay in Thailand is the most beautiful beach in the world, and it’s gorgeous, but Mawun should definitely be in the running, and we had the entire thing to ourselves.

  Apparently the tourists usually don’t get there until later in the day, and the locals come and go early.

  

  

  

  After Mawun we stopped in at Seger Beach, Tanjung A’an, and Gerupuk, which is a great surfing beach for beginners. We didn’t really have any idea where we were going, except for Mawun, we were just exploring and creeping around everywhere, taking rights and lefts to see where we’d end up.

  

  

  We eventually drove east of Kuta until the road ended at one last beach. We were pretty sunburnt by then, so D stayed on the moped under a thatched awning, and I went down to check out the beach.

  

  

  

  I can’t remember the name of it, but it was breathtaking, and there were dozens of fishermen standing in the water up to their waists all along the cove, wearing straw hats and trying to catch their dinner.

  

  

  

  We eventually found our way back to town, where I bought 5 popsicles and then passed out in a heat stroked coma for the rest of the day.

  

  

  Posted in Indonesia, travel | 1 Comment | Tagged beaches, beautiful beach, Indonesia, kuta, Kuta Lombok, lombok, mawun, travel

• lombok: kuta

  Posted at 7:57 am by jasminedesirees, on January 15, 2015

  One of my favourite places in Indonesia was Kuta in Lombok (not to be confused with Kuta Bali). We took a mini-bus there for the weekend while we were waiting to see if we’d ever get our passports back.

  It was about a 3 hour bus ride, we didn’t know anything about the place, and we had no place to stay, but I’d seen enough pictures of the amazing beaches there to know we definitely had to check it out (I have tons of pictures from all of the beaches, but they definitely deserve their own post).

  

  

  The bus driver let us out in the middle of town, and we shouldered our backpacks and walked about 10 feet to the nearest homestay, where we got a room with wi-fi and breakfast for $5/night.

  We were in Kuta Lombok in late October, so just at the beginning of the rainy season, but we had absolutely gorgeous weather. I’m pretty sure I got heat stroke, but it was worth it.

  Because it was the start of the rainy season though, there were hardly any visitors there, often we were the only people in the restaurants or shops.

  

  

  Kuta is not much of a tourist town anyway, it’s very laid back with amazing surfing at many of the different beaches, and it’s off the beaten path enough that a lot of people don’t make it over there, but I saw a few signs for big resorts being developed, so that will likely change in the next few years.

  

  

  We had a great time creeping the town and exploring the surrounding area on a moped, playing with the baby goats that wander around everywhere, and eating at some amazing restaurants, we only had 2 days there but I would have liked to stay longer.

  

  

  The only thing I would mention as a negative thing about Kuta is that there are a lot of children there working to sell bracelets and blankets to tourists, and it can be a bit overwhelming, especially if there aren’t many visitors there at the time.

  

  

  It’s hard because you want to help them, but we’d traveled enough by then to know that it actually isn’t helping them to buy things from them on the street, because that’s just incentive for them to spend more time selling on the street to support their families, rather than doing kid things, like going to school.

  

  

  The kids would come up to you in restaurants, or while you were walking down the street and show you their goods, but if you expressed any interest you would be mobbed by any kids that were in the area, trying to get you to buy from them. I saw older kids beating up younger kids to get them out of the way, it was really sad.

  

  

  There are a couple of restaurants we visited in Kuta that donated a portion of every meal sold to helping the kids so they no longer have to work on the streets. As I learned in Cambodia, if you want to help, there are ways of doing it that won’t end up doing more harm in the long run.

  

  

  If you have a chance to visit Kuta Lombok, definitely do it, especially if you are a surfer. I promise, you won’t regret it.

  

  Posted in Indonesia, travel | 3 Comments | Tagged beach, Indonesia, kuta, Kuta Lombok, lombok, surfing, travel

• lombok: senggigi AKA how not to renew your indonesian visa

  Posted at 10:10 am by jasminedesirees, on December 18, 2014

  After Gili T, we took a boat ride over to explore Lombok for a couple of weeks. Our first stop was Mataram, which is the main city, where we stayed for 3 days while we were trying to get our visas extended to stay in Indonesia another month.

  I didn’t love Mataram, it’s very busy and crowded, and everything is kind of far away so it’s not really walkable, and the traffic is so crazy that I didn’t feel comfortable renting a moped either, but there was some beautiful architecture and an amazing mosque that was being erected near our hotel.

  

  

  There are agencies in Gili T, and Senggigi that will renew your visas for you, but we figured we could do it ourselves, so we went into the main government building to try. If you are going to do this, make sure you dress very conservatively. Lombok is a Muslim island (as is most of Indonesia, except for Bali) and covered shoulders, closed toed shoes, and covered legs are required.

  I don’t think it would be very hard to get your visa done this way, in retrospect we should have just waited and tried to figure it out, but there were so many people, and the language barrier was too much, we just felt overwhelmed so we decided to use an agency in Senggigi instead.

  

  

  It seemed like a good idea at first. We dropped off our passports and paid the money (about $60 each) and they told us our passports would be done within 4 days, with the new stamps. So we rented a moped and did some exploring, hung out by the pool, and enjoyed our few days in Senggigi, it’s a really cute area with lots of beaches and good restaurants.

  We went back on Thursday to pick up our passports, and nobody was at the office, even though it was well past the opening time. Sometimes things work a little slower over there, so we thought that was fine and kept coming to check in every few hours, but nobody ever showed up.

  

  

  I had taken down an email address and phone number, and given them my email address in case anything came up, but we never heard from them, and when I tried them, both the email and phone number were out of service.

  We decided to check back again the next day, but there was still nobody there, and when we asked the neighbouring business if they had any contact info, we were told that he was almost positive they had packed up their business and moved back to Bali. So that was fun.

  

  

  We ended up going to the tourist police station which was quite nearby, and they couldn’t have been friendlier, or more helpful. They eventually tracked down the guy and called him for us, and he told us we would have our passports back on Monday (5 days late) and was confused about why we had contacted the police.

  We were supposed to be leaving for a 3 day trek up Mt.Rinjani (more on that later) so we had to push that out by a few days. On Monday we went back there to pick up our passports, and still nobody was there. Finally someone showed up, but he had no idea what we were talking about.

  

  

  

  We refused to leave without talking to someone, eventually another guy came, an Australian, and he told us that our passports were in Senggigi, ready to go, and they would be there any minute. We waited another hour, until finally the guy we had originally given our passports to called him, and told him that our passports were still at the renewal office in Mataram (where we had originally gone to renew them ourselves) and we’d have to go there to pick them up in person.

  We did that, we were super annoyed, but we would have done almost anything to get our passports back by that point. Once we got back to the renewal office, it took about 20 minutes, we went upstairs, got our photos taken again, and got our passports with the updated visas.

  

  

  I’m not saying you should definitely renew your visa yourself, but it’s more expensive to go through an agency, and you will likely end up having to go get it yourself anyway, since most of the time they need to redo your fingerprints and photographs.

  So it all worked out in the end, our time in Senggigi was great, except for that minor hiccup. I’ve never seen so many palm trees in my life as on Lombok, and if you are there and looking for a great place to eat, check out Cafe Alberto, it’s right on the beach, has an amazing view for sunset, and has the best mushroom ravioli I’ve ever had.

  

  Posted in Indonesia, travel | 2 Comments | Tagged beach, Indonesia, island, lombok, mataram, passports, senggigi, travel, visa renewal

• lombok: trekking essentials

  Posted at 8:00 am by jasminedesirees, on October 21, 2014

  Tomorrow we get up at 5 a.m. for a 3-day trekking expedition to the top of Mt. Rinjani, an active volcano. We did trekking in Thailand, but that was more of a hang out in the jungle for a few days, eat some curry, and smoke some bush weed sort of situation.

  This is more of a see that incredibly tall mountain, maybe try to get to the very top by hiking for three days in the blazing Indonesian heat kind of thing.

  I don’t know what’s going to happen. I don’t know if we’ll make it. I don’t know if I’ll have to be carried back down.

  But I do know that we did not bring enough Snickers.

  

  Posted in Indonesia, travel | 1 Comment | Tagged Indonesia, lombok, mount rinjani, travel, trekking, volcano

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