Berastagi \ Brastagi has a volcano. let's go there then!

              So, I left Bukit Lawang around 9 and ended up back in Medan around 3 hours later When I got off the bus,I was approached (within 2 seconds) by this guy wondering where  was going and do I want a taxi. All I wanted was some space for 15 minutes to get my thoughts together before heading to Berastagi. So, I found a spot maybe 15 yards from anybody and just sat down.Within 2 minutes , a guy was over and asking me random questions.I think at this point a few of the locals knew I wanted a bit of space and the guy backed off.A local security guard came over and started telling me the prices of stuff at all the stalls an where I could find an atm. He seemed like a cool guy who was just willing to talk as apposed to looking for something. He was  telling me that he was working here for 10 years so he knew most people there.So, I tested one of his prices that he quoted out and bought a Nasi Campur by the local foodstall.
I had a go of the rice with bits and pieces (That's what Nasi Campur translates as) and It perked me up enough to grab the next bus out of Medan (Pinang Baris bus terminal) I asked two guys how much did the journey to Berastagi cost. one said 8000 and another said 20000.Of course , I asked in english.I think it's time to start speaking a bit of Indonesian ('Barapa an'  means how much....satu ribu is 1 thousand ,15000 = lima belas ribu    20000 --- dua pula ribu...now, if i can learn 1 to 10 , i'll be set!)
So, I got on the bus and nobody got on for another couple of kilometers. At that point, 3 girls got on and I thought they looked Japanese so when I heard one of them say 'english', I asked them if they were traveling. Of course, they were from indoensia and i am guessing that gir just said that I was the english guy at the back of the bus. I really should stop guessing where people are from. Anyway, one of the girls was keen to improove her english so she asked the most common question asked to me over the last week....hello meeeester, where you from? - 'Ireland'. where you from? (the question is ALWAYS repeated) - ireland, do you know it? -no- (I am really surprised.I thought one or 2 people might not know about ireland but it seems like nearly everyone (with the exception of people who are watching the football)) has never heard of Ireland. [The people who have heard of Ireland nearly always go ,ah, ireland Robbie Keane!] but I digress. That girl kept staring at me every few minutes (It was  as if I had a mole on my face) At one point she asked why I was going to Brastagi and I mentioned having  a friend there (which is stictly not a lie. i was talking to a guy from couch surfing from Brastagi) Anyway at one point she asked if I knew any Indonesian so i did the usual satu, dua,tiga malarky. Then she called me handsome. It was at that point that I realised one of two things.
a.) Her english is very bad
b.) Her eyesight is very bad.
during my riveting conversations, I decided to take a few photos out the side of the bus .here are just some of them.

women working in the rice fields

View of a town from the side of the road

flowers, trees and vegetables. what more do you want!

At this point , one of the guys at the front of the bus shouted at me but I was so focussed on taking pics that I hadn't a clue what he wanted. The girl that kept staring at me told me he was crazy. After a couple of minutes , i understood him.He was gesturing with his arms pointed upwards.I think he was asking if I wanted to go on the roof. The whole bus laughed at him but if i realised what he was trying to say, I would definately have gone for a visit to the roof with all the heavy bags!! I don't think it's a s safe as staying on the roof of a jeepney though!
      Anyway, the minibus conductor shouted at me that we reached my stop so I had to elbow about 5 people and step\squash someones lunch to get to the door of the minibus.I think the whole bus waved me goodbye at that point!
The first 2 things I saw when entering Brastagi were the monument at the top of the centre and a few murials situated beside the monument.

The monument adorning the town

This plaque  greets you as you enter the town

I found a hostel in the  centre of the town and threw my stuff in the room (I went for one with a shared bathroom as the bathroom looked fairly clean to me. ) 

The room that I am staying in

I went to lock the door but the door was a bit dodgy at the bottom so you had to give it a kick such that it would close properly. The guy (Peter) sleeping next door heard the commotion and we had a pretty interesting discussion about life and stuff. He was telling me he had travelled all over the world for years. He was one of the original backpackers who had travelled with little or no money in their pockets way back in the late 80s and the travellers  today are not the same as they do have money but stick to a budget (and some of them spend as little as possible in Asia such that they can waste it all drinking shots in oz.)     I am hardly a world traveller but he gave me a lot of good advice like try to speak Indonesian and the Indonesians might beless inclined to take more money. To be honest, if I were in their shoes, I would probably rip me off also but I would try to stick to the loud foreigners first!!
    Anyway afterf an hour or so, I said my goodbyes to Peter and went to grab a nasi campur.

These dinners are class and they cost less than a euro

I went for a quick walk around the market .

The bright light(s) of Brastagi

where I bought a small pot of ice cream (it was the first ice cream i have had  in quite a while.)
and headed back to the hostel to have a look at the fish aquarium.

Tonights supper.....not

At this point, it was around 10.30 and I bumped into peter and another guy chatting outside the rooms on a type of verandah. The rain was belting down. I didn't thinkmuch of it untiil i retired to my room 30 minutes later and felt a wet patch on one side of the bed. The window was noot fully closed and a bolt was missing from it . the rain had come through the window and drenched one part of tthe bed...eep!!!

Oh No, the latch is missing!!!

 ah well, the next morning the window was fixed up before I set off on my walk to the volcano!
       I set off to find the volcano around 8.40. As I was walking past the monument seen in one of the pictures above, a guy stopped and asked me where I was going. I saidf the small volcano and he pointed to a bus but I wanted to walk so I did what I normally do, ie: put the head down and start walking bristly! I took a few photos while walking up the  road.

The goose staring at the camera was screaming goose noises at me. It was almost human!

These look like cabbages

More veg. There seems to be a lot of stuff growing at the bottom of the volcano

Cool vista from here

cool contrast of colours here

Nice countryside

The fields just run into each other

As I was taking these pictures a minibus coming from the opposite direction stopped and the driver shout at me, 'photo,photo' .I am not joking when I say that there us a scene in 'Father Ted' where Fr Jack grabs an emty tea cup and says 'photo, photo' .This was THE EXACT SAME thing!!

I didn't ask him to pose, he saw the camera and acted 'cool'.

Eventually, I  got to place where you had to pay 4000 Rupiah to pass. I signed in. I  asked one of the guys 'how much is a journey up to the volcano'. He said it cost 600,000 for a car. I decided to walk.
      The route up to  the volcano is not that clear so I had to  ask 3 or 4 people (Guys who I bumped into along the route) for directions. Everyone was super helpful though!
      At one point , I was told to walk (what looked like) into the jungle and up some random steps!!
here are just a couple of photos of the walk...

Pace yourself John, It's a long way up!!

Note: I HATE when people refer to themselves in the third person :-)

View down from the sprawling road 

There seems to be a lot of green here. It must rain quite a bit

The road up to the volcano is not great.

(This could be a pic of some place in Cavan\Most places in Ireland during the 1980's) 

I must be on the right track! 

The volcano is hiding behind the cloud

Steps the the top of the volcano (hidden amongst the undergrowth!)

The undergrowth is getting heavier, eep!

I am getting closer to that cloud!

I must remember the way down!

The path to the top has turned an ashen colour!

lots of flowers grow oround the volcano!

Can you see the steam??

An impressive sight!

Inside the volcano (If you look closer, you can see People have signed their names!)

Can you see the tinge of yellow??

The smell of sulphur (like rotten eggs) was fairly powerful here!

                     While climbing up the mountain , I started chatting to a couple . The girl was from New Zealand and I thought her boyfriend had an American twang....I am getting worse at this guessing game! (He was from Connemara but he had lived in  New Zealand  so he (Excuse me :he= Cormac Her=Joey)) had a hybrid Galway/New Zealand accent which sounded like nothing I have ever heard before. An original accent! cool! Anyway, As I have the directional powers of wrong way Corrigan (Look him up on the google!) The 2 guys reckoned it was a good idea to wait a few minutes before making our way down the mountain. Good move as the mist descended fairly rapidly and going down the mountain would be quite dangerous in that mist.  We started down the mountain and at one point we inadvertently straayed off the beaten track.A few local kids saw this and after they had finished laughing , (which was quite a while!) walked by us down the easy route. We followed them down (At this point it had rained for quite a period of time so the rocks /stairs/ferns were fairly slippy) for a couple of miutes before we continued on (with confidence shattered :-) ) About 45 minutes later, we had reached our destination (some hot springs) yay!

Cormac and Joey stocking up on some well deserved Nuts after walking down the volcano

(Sorry about the quality of the pic. My camera seems to absorb all the water )

The hot springs were class! At the same time, I came very close to fainting as I was exhausted from the walk! There were maybe 6-7 pools of differing temperatures so I tried as many pools  as possible (without fainting /falling asleep!) There were only the 3 of us and a local couple there.At one point, the girl wanted to improve her english so I got the usual questions 'what is you name', 'where are you from' . I learned Ireland in Indonesia is Irlandia so from now on I will say I am from Irlandia! Most of the locals have not travelled much as they cannot afford to go anywhere. It makes you think...well, It made me think how lucky  I was anyway!

I am MILES taller than everyone here!

After leaving the Hot springs we decided to get a minibus back to Berestagi. As I was talking to Joey, a girl cam over and asked if she could have her photo taken with me. I said 'cool' and then kids came from every direction to get in the photo! They seemed to completely ignore Joey and only noticed Cormac when I told them he was from the same country as me!!! I reckon,It was the funniest moment of the trip so far.

Smile for the camera!

Now, does anyone want an autograph!

          After this ....ahem...adulation, it was time to head back to the hostel. Later that evening I met up with Cormac and Joey for a few pints in a localhostel come bar. I found out that the guys had been to Bukit Lawang also and there friend who joined us for some beer had been there also! We all chatted about the 'Bukit Lawang' experience for a couple of hours and then it was time for bed! This time the window had been fixed, so my bed was dry! yay!
          Cormac and Joey headed on to Lake Toba the following morning and I decided to take it easy in Brastagi , just going in to various shops / restaurants and talking to the locals. One of the guys invited me into his shop the next morning at 2 am if I wanted to see the Italy Germany football  match. It was a tempting offer but I turned it down as I would never have got any sleep that night otherwise!!! I have to watch one match of that tournament though!!!!!
     

Hey Jungle boy! (Bukit Lawang)

I  decided to head up to Bukit Lawang as I heard that there is a jungle trek there and I have never tried anything like that before. So, I had to find a way of getting from my hostel to pinang baris bus terminal- (around a 13km trip) I herd that you could grab the number 64 minibus in that direction but I could not find the bus for love nor money so I asked one of the local police and he pointed me in the right direction.I waited by the side of the road while he flagged down the bus and I was on my way. 30 minutes later, I arrived on the street which  contained the minibuses that drive to Bukit Lawang. You don't hve time to breath here before someone is on top of you trying to find out where you want to go. I mentioned to one guy that I wanted to go to Bukit Lawang and he said 40,000 RP. I walked on down the road and another minibus quoted 20,000 to go to the same place, so I hopped in.

Minibus on route to Bukit Lawang

I took a couple of photos on the bus during the journey. Here is one of a field which contains some kind of food. Note that the are strings running along the field. II saw this in the Philippines also. Apparently, these scare away the crows from eating the food (The crows are too savvy for the scarecrows but this seems to work!)

the lines of plastic scare away the crows

There seems to be lots of flowery designs on the streets. They seem to brighten up the street anyway!

Medan

View of  a field just outside Medan

I heard that this was a predominantly muslim country but there does seem to be quite a few christain churches dotted all over the place.

A church hidden amongst the palm trees!

The following house looked like there used to be a row of houses but al of them fell down just leaving this one behind.Subsequently, I saw quite a few houses like this one. They look a bit odd as there seems to be plenty of space to build a wide house but it seems that they built upwards instead of outwards.(from a western perspective!)

common enough style of house over here

loads of rice fields as far as my eyes can see

Nice contrast of colours in this pic!

I think this is a corn field

Anyway, the journey to Bukit Lawang took around 2 and half hours. Once we arrived at the bus terminal , I hopped out and noticed that the was a table tennis table out in the open air. yay! So, I had a quick game of table tennis before talking to one of the local toursit guides.He recommended that I should try the 3 day 2 night trek so I signed up for that one and grabbed a room down by river that flows through Bukit Lawang. The river itself flooded in 2003 and scores of people were drowned during the floods. In 2005 the Indonesian government built a bridge for the Bukit Lawangians. I walked over the bridge at one point and noticed that there were a couple of planks of wood rotting/missing from the bridge so if you ever come here, be careful when crossing the bridge!

View of the house where i stayed and the jungle in the background

View of the river

Anyway, as I was getting settled into my rrom , I heard a bit of a commotion outside whereupon I saw that there was a badminton court. I have dabbled with badminton during my time so I decided to ask for a game.

The fabled badminton court

After about 5 minutes of playing with the locals, I started thinking to myself...either the locals are REALLY good at badminton or I am quite useless! To be honest, I  think it was a bit of both! At one point,I went to smash the shuttlecock and I was sweating so much , i lost the grip of the raquet and it flew out of my hand ,past the guy on the other side of the court (just avoiding the 6 people watching the game) and landed a couple of feet from the river. I have never seen people laugh so hard at my 'shot'! I thought to myself, 'take it easy or you might accidentally hit someone with the raquet'. After this, the guys just served really easy serves to me , you know the ones where you hit the shuttlecock really high in the sky so your opponent has all the time in the world to hit it! This continued for maybe 7 minutes while I struggled to hold onto the raquet!.I think it was around this point when one of the lads politely told me to sit down! It was nice to play the game but my 'skill level' was not on the level where it was enjoyable for the other lads which was a pity.
  Anyway, i should be talking about the trek in the jungle so I will do that now!

The path of no return...well....until you return!

As we entered the jungle, We passed by a Cocao plant.

                                       
                                                                                                 Cocoa plant

but I wasn't here for the cocoa. It wasn't too long before we got to see a glimpse of the 'punky monkey' sitting down in the trees.

Contemplating life

Really long tails

             I wanted to see some Orangutans.It did not take too long before One of the orangutans noticed us from his spot in the trees. My guide Sepri was telling me that this particular Orang utan was not unfriendly so it was ok to take shots but be ready if they start to become unfriendly and run in the opposite direction fast!
By the way, There were signs entering the jungle about the decline of the Orangutan

So , I was not able to feed the Orangutan . This was fine for me when I saw the size of the creature staring at me from the trees!

I am only going to take a few photos Mr Orang utan!

He really has powerful arms and legs

Maybe, I should start running about now

That's a better viewpoint for you AND me Mr Orangutan 

(The beard looking hair on his face indicates he's a male orangutan)

I'll be off in  minute and you can have your territory back again Mr 'tan!

After staring at the Orangutan for quite a while (I am not sure if I was staring at him or he was staring at me)we decided to make a move to try a catch a glimpse of some white gibbons.So, we swathed through some dense jungle (seethe way I am building up the tension?? yeah, me neither)

I think they need a gardener to clean up this place!

The white gibbons make a really loud noise when trying to attract the other white gibbons.They never come doen from the top to the trees though.This makes it very difficult  to catch a glimpse of them.Here is a shot of them from a distance of (I would guess) around 50 metres.

                     It looks like they see the camera from that distance! This is amazing to me as I could hardly see them at all!

At this point,it felt like the animals were looking at me just as much as I was looking at them. The punky monkey seemed to be following us!

He looks like a gremlin!

mmmm mandarins

smile for the camera...1,2,3 cheese!!!!!

we decided to leave the punky monkeys and try to find some other animals. I noticed that there was one particular insect that seemed to be crawling all over the jungle. The insect would bite but could not sting. here is a close up of the insect.

These insects were everywhere in the jungle (specifically on the bag that I was carrying)

We strolled into another part of the jungle whereupon we stumbled onto another Orangutan who was perusing\Guarding his area

This is all mine, There better be no intruders on my land!

This is the position the orangutan takes before going for a pee and before you think it...yes, I did but no I was not standing below the orangutan at the time, phew!

I think he sees \senses\smells us

I think now is the time to run!

After gettting a warning from the Orangutan, it was time for some passion fruit.

So many seeds! 

(My leg looks as hairy as the Orangutan!)

I guess I should show a view of the location where we ate some fruit. It was hard to get the light right for the shot as some parts of the jungle were quite dark!

Blinding sunlight....don't look too closely at this picture!

While eating the passion fruit, we noticed 2 pairs of orangutans (mothers with babies) in the trees and I waqs able to get a couple of pic of them. Actually, I forgot to mention ,at one point, ealier in the day while we were looking at one orangutan, he suddenly ran up the tree. A lot of the wildlife started making noises and my guide started running towards higher ground.I did not know what was happening for a minute but then Sepri told me there was an earthquake. Personally, i did not notice it but I was the only one in the whole area not to notice it and freak out!

Baby orangutan with mother, 

Note: the mother never holds the baby, the baby always clings to the mother

I think I might have angered this Orangutan by just being here!

A tree view of a creepy  crawly

Lunch time consisted of Nasi Goreng wrapped in a banana leaf. Everything seems to be wrapped in banana leaves around here!

yummy food!

I was joined by a visitor at one point.

Hey, that's my tomato

Mother back with baby (and tomato) chilling out

It's still a mystery to me how the baby seems to hang on!

One is an animal who grunts a lot and smells a bit...

 the other is an Orangutan

Maybe, I should get out of the way!

At this point , it was time to head to the river and cool down/observe some lizards. The water was not too deep at some parts so it was fine to just sit in  it and get sunburned (probably!)

some water

                                       
                                                  When sitting in the river, be careful no lizards bump into you!

All the animals seem to show that  territorial pose quite often!

He looks a bit like a small dinosaur!

Our hotel for the evening (the kitchen is the other tent)

Move one stick from one part of the left hand side of  the equation to another to make it a correct equation!

evening dinner

After finishing up the evening dinner, it was time for bed. I was not sure what to expect as I had never slept in the jungle before but it wasn't too bad .The sekadas were not too loud and the rain hitting the tent was a soothing sound (especially as I was sitting on the inside of the tent!)
       The next morning started with a banana pancake drenched in condensed milk.

Full of Bananity goodness

After we finished our breakfast, I decided to head for a quick swim in the river

This part of the river is deep\safe enough to swim in

The tent (The bamboo sticks are left behind but the chef (Wak) takes his plastic cover\roofing with him and places it on the next set of bamboo sticks (that we are going to stay this evening)

After the swim, it was time to explore again, An orangutan came pretty close to me with her baby at one point.

High Five!

If you ever come to the jungle, watch out for a leaf that looks safe but is essentially a thorn bush which will stick into your clothes\skin.

The guide told me that there is no poison related to the leaf so that's a relief!

After a couple of hours, we noticed a pair of black gibbons.The black gibbon is not as shy as the white gibbon and does not have any problem coming down from the trees.

yes, we are friendly too!

This guy wants to investigate the weird looking animal walking around the jungle

There is that stance again!

Looks like the guys want to go for a dance!

break it down!

looks like they are playing cards now!

Look! Thats a royal flush. I win!

No, You cheat! I am out of here!

That gibbon is such a drama queen!

I am the winner!!!

I only cheated a small bit. hahaha!

I am the  animal on the left

I have been told that you can make bamboo soup but unfortunately, it is not on the menu today but we can use ferns from the jungle that look just like this!

mix this in with  some vegetables and cook, bagus!

We stayed at this point by the river on day 2 (there is a strong enough current here)

Unfortunately, there were a lot of jagged rocks in the  river so swimming was too dangerous but bathing in the river was fine.

Try walking on these rocks with no footwear on! ouch!

Wak setup the tent about 2 hours before sunset . I grabbed the good bed , I think

My bed is the one on the far right of the tent (I used my bag as a pillow)

Sepri told me about a lot of interesting facts about the jungle and beyond the jungle also. (95% of which is unrepeatable!) Here is a flower , when crushed can aid .....a man when....aaaaaaaaa,,,,,trying to conceive.

If you  (where you=man) crush the yellow part and put it....emmm....somewhere...then if you want to procreate, you have a better chance of procreating. (That last sentence was a difficult sentence to write! ) 

Cool looking frog

The second nights dinner, sardines were on the menu today along with tofu , them leaves mentioned earlier and some crackers to go with the rice

After the dinner, I decided to stay outside for a while and stare at the stars. This was cool once i made sure that i didn't walk into the river! Then, the bed was calling!
The following morning I got up to the vision of a family of makaks gathering at the river.

These guys are hanging around the camp as they know there will be some food soon!

The makaks tend to hang around in families waiting  for humans to throw out the breakfast to them. So, They had  to wait 20 minutes before any food would arrive at their feet.
            At one point, I had to go to the toilet.As I was in the jungle, I had to find a quiet place away from the beaten track and let nature take its course.As I was in the process of such course, I felt a pain on my achillles heel, I looked down and from my viewpoint, it looked like some kind of insect had bitten me. I flicked it quickly off my foot and proceeded to finish my business. A couple of minutes later, i looked at my heel and there was blood everywhere . At that point, i felt a pain on my other leg. I had  a closer look at that leg and noticed that what I had thought was an insect was in fact a leech.aaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaarrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrggggggggggggggghhhhhhhhhhhhhhh!!!!!!!!!!!!! All I could think of was that scene in 'stand by me (you know the leech scene--- [http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9OP4cZM-Y54] eep!!!)'. Luckily enough, there were no more leeches on me so That was a HUGE relief!
            would you believe the batteries in my camera ran out at this point so i did not get the time to shoot the rafting in the tube downstream all the way back to the homestay! I had already taken a pic of the tube the day before, so I will describe what happened.
I sat in the central (big) tube while the 2 guys (who kneeled in the other 2 tubes) paddled  down the river to our finishing point. 

My transportation downstream!

                 It was a long 2 and a half days but I needed some light relief so the table tennis table was calling out for me! Before  headed for the table, I grabbed some of my clothes from the homestay. The guy that owned the place called me 'Jungle boy' about 5 times while I was walking through the honestay!!
                 To be genuinely honest , although the jungle trek was cool, i think i preferred the craic\fun around the table tennis table (especially when my patented top spin shots came off!!!)
                At one point, I saw one of the lads (standing by the table) limping badly and I assumed he had twisted an ankle. He saw me looking (it's not just the locals who stare!!! I must remember to stop staring!) and then showed me one of his kneecaps. He was on a motorbike in Medan 2 years ago when he got knocked off his bike by a car. His knee looked pretty bad to me. He was telling me the Indonesian doctors told him that they would have to amputate but he didn't want that so he headed to the witch doctor instead who gave him some liquids. I don't think any amount of liquids would be able to fix his knee though. He seemed like an interesting bloke who just wanted to practise his English (That is REALLY common over here!) He nearly keeled over when I told him I was 36. [Over here if you are not married by 25, people assume there is something wrong with you (I have been told enough times!) ] so when I told him I was traveling alone at 36 , he really looked shocked. To be honest, he asked me to guess his age and I said 18. He was 30!!

World championship of table tennis (Bukit Lawang edition)

Later that evening, i attended a barbeque which took place right beside a meeting of all the local guys associated with the treks. I don't know about meetings back home but this one was a humdinger. The arguments were flying all over the place! Then, my guide from the trek (Sepri) played some Bob Marley music and everyone seemed to chill out quite quickly. Bob Marley really is a legend!!
Anyway, it was time to move on to the next destination Berestagi\Brastagi so I grabbed my gear around 9 the following morning and took the local bus to Medan and back out of Medan to the volcano in Brastagi!