"So, it’s been over a month now since I’ve left Vancouver, so many amazing times have come and gone it’s unbelievable. The fact that it has been a month already blows my mind! From partying my life away, meeting new people, to climbing the second largest volcano in Indonesia, to doing absolutely nothing and just enjoying every moment of staying out of the sun because I’d already started peeling; it doesn’t get better than this.
Gili Trawanagan was quite the time itself. I don’t even know how I ended up spending three weeks on that speck of white sand? Wake up, eat, internet, eat, snorkel, eat, drink, repeat. It wasn’t too bad! Anyway I did get away for three days, to Mount Rinjani! What an experience that was.
Imagine doing the Grouse grind (for those of you in Vancouver reading this) five times in one day, with the sun beating down on you and the rainforest radiating relentless amounts of humidity to top it all off; with only one and a half litres of water for the day! It was that bad. Also, my friend Scott and I got screwed twice as bad! The rest of our group started at 8 AM, whereas we started at 12:30 PM! That meant we had to catch them, at the fourth camp, which was about thirty one hundred meters, in half the usual allotted time. I made sunset by a mere minute, while Scott missed it by a mere minute, it was something to see. Later on, Dinner came around and we had some decent Nasi Goreng and then retreated to our tent to get some much needed rest. Luckily for me however, they pitched the tent on half flat ground and half a steep slope; and I was second into the tent meaning I was half on the slope half on, real comfy! Furthermore our sleeping mats did absolutely nothing for comfort as well as heat insulation and I must’ve had one of the worst sleeps of my life that night. I woke up face first in the side of the tent from rolling down the hill at least ten times, and I also couldn’t sleep on my right time because Scott was sick and insisted to stay on his left side pretty much the whole night! Oh, that was only day one though.
Day two, wake up, tomato sandwich and a small pancake for breakfast. Everyone knows how much I love tomatoes! I ended up just putting crackers in between the bread and having a bread, on bread, on bread sandwich. It sucked! The day began with a quick twenty minute or so hike up to the rim to behold the most beautiful sight I have ever seen in my life. We stood there in awe for awhile, then confirmed that we were on for the three day trek, and off we went down the trail into the crater. My god, what a pain that was. It was literally one of the steepest mountain faces you could ever walk, easily a fifty degree angle. At first, it was amazing finally walking downhill! Then, after two hours or so, my quads and knees were begging to hit the lake and just rest for a while. Upon arrival we got just that, times ten. While our porters cooked us lunch, we went into the hot springs just a short walk away. The first hot spring was amazing, just warm enough, with a twenty foot waterfall cascading into a smaller drop off that you could stand under, having your neck muscles massaged, relaxed. Then we headed up to the boiling hot spring at the top above the waterfall! It literally was so damn hot you couldn’t go more than 3 feet towards the middle or else it got scolding hot, literally. I’m pretty sure you could’ve seriously burnt yourself if you tried to make it to the middle. After getting out of the first pool, I froze. After the second, I was hot for at least a minute after! All of us actually felt light really light headed after getting out, oh and I failed to mention that not even the locals would go in this pool! Soon after, we had a brilliant noodle soup lakeside, with pineapple and tea in the plastic cups that always tasted like the hot water was melting the flimsy plastic. Once lunch was over, the dread of the rest of the day set in. Another four hours of hiking, up the other side of the crater this time! At first, it was a nice meandering path through dry grasslands, which were mostly burnt off. However, suddenly we were at the bottom of one of the most horrifyingly steep hills I have ever seen, at least for walking up anyway. The next two hours were pure pain, and after awhile it just became a task rather than a chore. Once we got to the top though, it was a mere ten minute walk to our camp sight and what a beautiful sight that was! I’d also like to note here that the porters did all of this in flip flops, with sixty pounds resting on their shoulders, like it was no big deal at all, multiple times a week. Anyway, not only were we camping ten feet from the cliff of the caldera rim overlooking the whole lake, we also had a beautiful view of the sunset over the opposite side of the crater. Oh, and a couple Indonesians had carried a various selection of drinks to our camp from the near by town of Sembalung, where we were headed the next day. A solid seven hour walk up. For all that work, I paid a dollar fifty more than I would at most bars for a large bottle of Bintang ($6 CAD) at thirty two hundred meters, incredible that was. After a hefty serving of rice and veggies while watching the sunset we crawled into our tent. Now, the catch was our tents zipper, as well as the rain fly’s zipper didn’t work! Oh, and we had summer sleeping bags that were maybe two millimetres of fleece to keep us warm. So essentially it was a great sleep as well, heaps better than the first night though!
Morning three we were awoken at two thirty in the morning to attempt the summit. When the guide asked us where our headlamps were, we laughed and thought he couldn’t be serious; he was. We couldn’t even attempt it because they didn’t supply them in the “all inclusive” price! Luckily enough for us though, Joe our English friend from the trek attempted it with our guide Cario, and after two hours on the way to the summit they had to turn around because the winds were too strong to make the top! So instead of walking for eleven hours on day three, we got four hours more rest and seven hours of walking. The conditions of the third day were horrible, yet amazing. We were descending through a savannah landscape full of loose dirt, dust flying everywhere, and what was supposed to be very intense heat. The sky pulled a clutch move and went overcast for the majority of the day, saving us from the torturous heat, making life that much easier. Within the last three hours of the trek, Markella the only female in our group managed to roll her ankle on a rock or something in a flat spot trying to take off her backpack while walking, after all the ridiculously high risk and advanced trekking we had done. The trail has only been open since 2010 for trekking into the crater and multiple people have already died on the trail, it’s no joke. Tragic irony that was. The last couple hours were slow and uneventful until we finished as we had to walk slowly with Markella with her two walking sticks. Once done, about ten of us jumped in the back of a tiny suzuki pickup truck and rode through some narrow, winding, steep mountain roads back to Sanur, our departure point; all the way from Sembalung where we finished. It was by far the fastest one hour car ride of my life, Indonesian driving really keeps awake you could say. Consisting of passing in on coming traffic, barely missing passing vehicles because the roads are so narrow and watching scooters go by within two feet of the side of the truck just barely scraping by the mirrors.
Later on we got a ride all the way back to Sengiggi on the west coast of Lombok where we figured we would stay for the night and catch a boat over to the Gili’s again. We ended up running into one of the best live bands I’ve ever heard! The guitarist ripped the solo of Hey Joe by Jimi Hendrix so damn perfectly it was ridiculous, I don’t think he missed a note! Such a good way to finish an epic adventure alongside new friends and expensive beer. We woke up the next morning to some torrential down pours and when they came to a stifling finish we decided to head over to Bangsal Harbour a little ways up the coast of Lombok to catch our boat back to Gili T.. We arrived around 1 PM and found out that the public ferry which costed a dollar fifty would not leave if there were not twenty or so more people along with us, and we were the first ones on the list. Instead, we ended up haggling the price down on the private chartered boat to eighteen dollars each instead of twenty one which included trying to offer them clothing of ours and all. That was that, and we paid the lucrative fair to get back to home sweet home, Gili Trawangan. We had a one day lay over on Gili T. and headed back to Kuta, Bali. We immediately indulged in the cheap priced food and six dollar an hour massages a couple times too!
Now, here I am! Sitting in Singapore trying to make up for two weeks of absence from blogging in a couple hours that I could be out sight seeing. Hey, thats the way it is though. I’m sick of staring at this damn screen though. Philippines in two more days! Monad Shoal here I come, named the number eleven dive site in the whole wide world by Asian Diver Magazine! I love travelling, it has its ups and downs, but I can’t get enough. I think I’m getting a severe case of the travel bug.
Here I am, signing off, I need a shower and some food. Photos of the trek are soon to follow, but I’ve been on this stupid computer for four hours.
-Shane.