...we climbed a volcano...

and I cried on the way down.

Mount Rinjani is on the island of Lombok, and is the second highest volcano in Indonesia. Pay a man enough money, and he will guide you up to the top and have a friend of his carry all your stuff as well.

Indonesia was the first stop on our world trip. With no plans and no itinerary, we were able to make it up as we went along, and that saw us on the island of Lombok before long. After an eight-hour ferry journey (next time we'll get the speed boat) we arrived in a place that we didn't know...and then were told we needed to get a bus to Sengiggi. Our faith-in-human-kind filter was on high and we thought everyone was ripping us off and trying to capture us for our obviously superior organs - but in the end they just wanted to get us to Sengiggi.

Scooting around on a scooter

Sengiggi is somewhat of a ghost town. There were not many activities except for scooting around on a scooter, drinking cheap beer, watching fat people try to parasail, dodging the hustlers on the beach trying to sell you trinkets and gecko trinkets, and having the runs. Phill perfected the last activity after some dodgy ice in a refreshing Coke, and I provided much entertainment to the lady at the corner store trying to act out Phill's symptoms. Endo-Stop, for those playing at home: look for it by name.

Luckily thanks to some massive storms our guided hike was postponed a couple of days so Phill could rebuild his strength. We still started our hike in the rain, in the dark, and sweltering by sunrise. We had a guide and for the life of me I can't remember his name, and we had a Lombokian sherpa who carried a pole across his shoulders with two massive baskets holding all our camping and cooking gear. Phill and I had nothing to worry about except one foot in front of the other. For eight hours. Up.

The view from the crater rim - volcanic
ash and smoke

We went from dense farmland with little chicken sheds every now and then, through dense jungle, into denser (more dense?) jungle with monkeys, and finally to a clearing from which you could see for miles, if it wasn't cloudy. The exploding part of the volcano itself is in a lake in the crater of the greater volcano. Our camp for the night was just below the outside ridge, above the lake with views to the west and Bali (apparently). We shared camp with a lovely French couple who we overtook at one of the rest stops on the way up. Even with their minimal English and our appalling French, they managed to invite us to their home for a visit in France (although I may have asked if they would sleep with me tonight, which gives it a bit more context). Our guide (let's call him Dewi) cooked up an awesome meal for us - fried rice with fried eggs and veges, on the top of a volcano! How do you carry up eggs without breaking them?? Fair dinkum. We had a good look around the crater, got lots of photos, then went in search of the perfect place to have a shit.

Look, over there! It must be a perfect toilet spot!

It's an important camping skill, finding that perfect toilet spot. You want enough coverage to provide privacy, but not too much to block the undoubtedly awesome view that turns a toilet stop in to a 'Bliss Piss'. You need loose soil and ground coverings so as to either dig a hole, or cover up the unmentionables once the procedure is complete. A slight downward gradient affords more comfort on the haunches, but beware the risk of runoff. And toilet paper - don't forget the toilet paper. Never leave the toilet paper to someone else, for such a big responsibility is often too overwhelming for lesser skilled individuals.

So we camped the night in torrential rain, with the mangy dogs who had followed us the whole way up whimpering outside our tent, rain sneaking in every which way, the ground feeling particularly volcanic-rocky underneath us, and the I-Phone battery depleting so I couldn't read any more 'Classic Books on the I-Phone' to send me to sleep - Alice in Wonderland just didn't cut it.

Looking surprisingly chipper after a night
with no sleep.

The next morning, the storm had cleared a bit and we were able to see to the sea (not very far, really) and our next destination - the Gili Islands. We had another hearty breakfast courtesy of Dewi, and began the clamber down. I'll tell you this for free - hiking up inevitably means hiking down, and it's not as satisfying. Hiking up you've got a view to look forward to, and...well, that might be the main reason. Hiking down - you've seen it all before! The only difference is which muscle group you're using to the extreeeemmeee. I've never been in so much self-inflicted or inevitable and unaviodable pain...who would have thought that hip muscles could take such a beating? I started crying about two thirds of the way down, when everything just got a little bit emotional. I hadn't slept the night before, my muscles were seizing up so that I could only take a step down with my right (or left - irrelevant) leg and I was at that ten-days-away-from-home-and-shit-we've-got-alot-more-bloody-adventures-to-get-through stage of homesickness. I was hot, sweaty and dirty. Thank god I had found that perfect toilet spot the night before; the thought of that view got me through.

And then we made it down. Remember that time when we climbed a volcano...and I cried on the way down? I forgot it soon, because these were our next activities:

Going Tom Hanks on a coconut

 

 

Getting acquainted with the reefs off Gili T

Watching the sunrise over the afore-mentioned
Mount Rinjani

Dressing and posing like my mum

Watching the torrential rain from the
comfort of a bar which also sold
particularly cheap alcohol.

Where: Mount Rinjani, Lombok, Indonesia

When: February, 2010