Volcano adventure

I'm not a good enough writer to describe to you how insane this trek was, but I'll try.

Near the city of Bukittinggi lies Mount Merapi, the most active volcano in Sumatra (there are 35 active volcanoes in Sumatra). Ben, a new Dutch friend I met at the hotel, and I decided to hire a guide and trek up the volcano at night to catch sunrise from the top. We met a guide who's grandfather was a shaman, lives at the foot of the volcano, and promised not only to take us down a different way than most groups go but also to teach us about the wildlife, healing plants, and survival in the wilderness. He told us that we didn't need to bring anything, because everything would be taken care of in terms of food, water, flashlights, etc.

Our guide came to pick us up at 10:00 that night. He had hired a van and driver to get us there. After we paid him and were already in the van, a 20 year old kid hopped in. Our guide told us that he had a bad knee and couldn't take us, hoped we didn't mind, and disappeared. So off we went with our new guide..

Ben and I had the bright idea of checking out of our hotel before the trek. Why should we each pay for a room when we won't be sleeping that night? We thought that we could just leave our stuff in the guide's car. That didn't work out quite as planned, because our guide didn't have a car. So we ended up having to hike up the trail a little ways and hide our stuff in the woods. Keep in mind that this was at night. We made some markers in the trail so that we could (hopefully) find our stuff the next day.

Shorty after we started, the torrential rain began. I'm not talking about just any rain. This is Asian monsoon rain. At first, you get annoyed when any part of you that was previously dry gets wet. Eventually, when you're so drenched that its impossible to be more wet, you stop caring. It was at this point that I started caring more about not getting injured. You see, the trail was very steep. Did I say trail? I meant the river/waterfall was very steep. There were many points where hands were needed to climb further, all while a raging river came down at us. I was climbing with one hand, because the other hand was carrying my flashlight tucked into the sleeve of my rain jacket. I didn't want to know what would happen if the flashlight died.

Safety was only my main concern for a short period of time. The rain was cold, and as we got higher, the air was also cold. The only way to keep warm was to walk faster, so I tried to push the group to go as fast as possible and rest as little as possible. This kept me warm for about four hours until we were about an hour from the top, when our guide informed us that we were more than an hour ahead of schedule. By now the rain had stopped, but we were completely soaked and the temperature at this elevation was very cold. We had to camp out there for an hour because it would be much too cold and windy to wait at the summit. Luckily our guide had some flammable powder (gunpowder?) and dry wood in his bag, so we lit a fire and avoided hypothermia. Ben was a little nervous after our guide admitted that this was his first time doing this trek in the rain. The guide took his shirt off to warm himself by the fire, and was shivering uncontrollably. By the time an hour had passed, I was cold to the bone. I tried doing push-ups and jumping jacks to stay warm. I sat by the fire and roasted my socks like marshmallows, accidentally setting one on fire.


Finally we continued our ascent, this time at an even faster pace. When we made it to the top, our guide lit another fire and boiled some water so that we could have instant coffee. It was possibly some of the best coffee I'd ever had. It was cold and windy at the top, I was still freezing, and we were almost out of wood and gunpower, so I went on a mission to collect all of the trash I could to burn. Unfortunately, there was very little trash around (possibly the only time you will hear me say that). The wind made life hell for an hour, but proved to be beneficial in the end. We dried up pretty quickly, and finally felt warm again hiking around the craters. There are no clear pictures of sunrise because Ben's hands were still trembling from the cold.

Still wet and freezing. When not smiling for the camera, I looked very disgruntled.

The biggest of the craters. This volcano was what I imagined volcanoes should look like: a deep, smoking, perfectly round crater.

Above the clouds.

To our amazement, we were able to locate our stuff the next day and it was still dry! Piles and piles of banana leaves do wonders for keeping the rain out. We finally reached the bottom before 1:00 PM the next day. After 13 hours, 11 of which were spent walking up/down a mountain at a fast pace, we were finally done!

I forgot to mention a few things. Our guide did the trek in cheap plastic flip-flops. He also only had two flashlights for three people, both of which ran out of batteries. Luckily we brought our own flashlights. He brought a change of clothes for himself, which he changed into when we camped out for an hour. It would have been nice if they had told us to bring a change of clothes.. Live and learn.

On the way down we took some pictures of the trail with Ben's camera:

This tree had fallen and was blocking the path. It was more difficult at night in torrential rain.

Even with legs so tired they were trembling, we couldn't resist climbing this awesome tree that was covered in vines. If you zoom in, you can see me at the top.