Stunning Sumatra

I woke up at 5:00am on Sat 25 Aug to catch my flight to Padang, Sumatra. After landing, I was assualted by cabbies (of course). After fending them off, I found a public bus into town. There was another white dude on the bus, so naturally I said hey. Turns out that Jimmy, a tiger field researcher and photographer, had lived in Indonesia for 10 years and knew Sumatra and its tigers very well. He was a super-cool dude, with great stories (he takes pictures of tigers by setting camera traps in the jungle!) and solid advice after hearing about my intended itinerary. He convinced me to return one day to Sumatra to climb a mountain, Gunung Kerinchi. (This mountain had been part of the plan, but I had to cut it as it would take me 4 days to get there and climb it, and unfortunately with only 1 week I couldn't fit it in).
I had planned on heading to Bukittinggi to use it as a base for accessing a volcano: Gunung Merapi. Jimmy gave me instructions (much better than I already had) on how to get there. I said bye to Jimmy and found myself heading towards Bukittinggi.
I got to there in the afternoon, found accomodations and emptied my pack except for things I needed to climb the volcano. I then got on a bus to the tiny town of Koto Baru. It was from here that I was to climb the volcano -begining at midnight and hopefully reaching the summit to see the sunrise. You may wonder why I didn't just find a bed in Koto Baru: there is nothing there. It is a tiny little village; no hotels; no hostels; a few restaurants; a 10 minute walk takes you from one end of the town to the other.
Though I was planning on beginning my climb at midnight, I needed to get to town so that I could talk to people and have enough time to find out exactly where to begin my ascent; I needed to get this done before the sun set. As it turned out, the people in this town are fantastic. I was the only foreigner around and I imagine they don't see too many; the town is out of the way, not on most tourist's ToDo lists, and those that do climb the volcano do it as an extremely overpriced tour package and are whisked away by car right up to the trail, they get out, climb the hill and then come back down and are sent back to Bukittinggi, a much more touristy area of Sumatra. So, as I walked around Koto Baru, people would stop and say the few english words they knew. I found out very quickly and suprisingly easily where to begin my climb. It was now 5pm and I had a long wait before I was to begin. So when a bunch of older dudes having dinner in a restuarant called me over and invited me to join them, I happily agreed. My malay (similar to the Indonesian language) and their limited english (though admittedly their english is bounds ahead of my malay) set the stage for a ton of fun as we tried to communicate: me teaching them some english, they teaching me Indonesian. I will always remember when one of their friends named Angkuagi walked by and they called him over and taught me to say: "Mau minum teh manis Angkuagi?" (would you like some sweet tea Angkuagi). I kept messing it up, or prouncing words funny, and they were in hysterics. I hung out with these dudes until the call to prayer when they had to go.
I still had a bunch a time to kill so I strolled about town; I met up with a bunch of young people and hung out with them for a while. One of the guys, Korea, volunteered to take me part way up the mountain; he didn't want any money, just wanted to hang out. One of the guys, Feri, spoke english and I communicated to everyone through him. We had some great fun hanging out.


Korea and I began heading up the mountain at around 8 -much too early, but I understood that a short way up the mountain there was a shelter of some kind and some people were camping out there, so we'd hang there for a bit before I would go on my way.
At around 10:00, ss we hung out at this shelter, a group of westerners arrived: a German couple, a French couple, and a Dutchman. We chatted for a while. The German dude, Martin, had one of the coolest stories I have ever heard: He rode is bicycle from freakin' Germany to flippin' Kuala Lumpur! All the way by bicycle!! It took him 14 months. He had to make two short flights: one to get into Myanmar (you can't get a visa to get into the country overland), and I can't remember, but there was another short one in there. His girlfriend, Britta, flew into Bangkok with her bicycle and joined him in the last leg of his ride.
Although this was supposed to be a solo ascent, I decided to join their group. I really wanted to get some more info out of Martin about his trip.
The ascent was fantastic. Pitch black, lighting our way by torch, unfamiliar terrain, it was good stuff. Unfortunately we started too early (10:00) and got to the treeline at 3:00am. Above this line was barren rock -and with no shelter provided by the trees, the wind cut through us and our wet sweaty clothes, chilling us to the bone. It has been a while since I have been so miserably cold. We met an Indonesian group camped on the side of the volcano. They said we were an hour away from the summit and invited us to join their camfire for an hour to get warm. It was great: Great group of young guys and girls, and the warmth of the fire was very welcome.
At around 4:00am we continued the ascent. As we neared the summit, the smell of sulphur became more and more present. The summit was really spectacular. It plateaued on the top (hunderds of metres across) and in the centre was a giant crater whose bottom we could not see as we looked in over the edge. The interesting thing is that, while there was one main crater, there were many other, smaller craters also billowing steam. The sunrise was just fantastic. As we watched it come up, forgotten was the cold, our tired legs, and our hunger.


We spent a nearly 6 hours(a lot longer than the 30 min I had planned) on the summit, and even fell asleep (all 6 of us), for about 1/2 hour at the top. The other really interesting bit was the radically different weather on the opposite sides of the volcano. On one side, the sun was shining brilliantly. On the other were thick clouds and rain. Of course it was this other side and the clouds into which we had to descend.
Unfortunately, the descent was slow (as one of our party was having a little difficulty). By the time I got back to my hostel in Bukittinggi, showered, had dinner, and finally got to bed, it was Sunday evening at 9pm. I had gone 40 hours with no sleep (minus the 1/2 hour nap on the volcano), little food, and had exhuasted myslef by spending 9 hours ascending and descending a mountain. I was absolutely thrilled by this first part of my trip. I threw myself onto my bed utterly spent. At around 5am I was awakened by the morning call to prayer (my hostel was very near to a mosque). At this point I was so disoriented, felt as though I'd been drugged, and I couldn't figure out where I was). It didn't matter as I went back to sleep almost instantly. At 11:30 my alarm went off -I had to check out of my hostel by 12:00. I was catching a bus out of town at 5, so I spent the afternoon wandering the town of Bukittinngi...in a daze.
The bus that was to leave at 5 actually left at 7, and so I began a 15 hour bus ride north to Lake Toba (allegedly the largest crater lake in the world); this is a distance of around 400km that I was to cover. Yep, 15 hours; the roads are...well, they're not so good. At times it felt like true offroading -but in a 40 passenger bus.
There were two other Westerners on this bus. Said hello, and thus I met two cool German dudes: Stephan and Knut. These guys had just finished medical school and were on an open-ended travel trip through Southeast Asia. They had gone through the Philippines, through Java, Indonesia, and were now making their way through Sumatra. They were just playing things by ear, seeing where the road took them. And as we talked and I told them about my experience climbing Merapi and my plan to climb another volcano after relaxing on Lake Toba for a few days, they decided that the road took them with me to climb the volcano.

...More to come (soon I hope)