Lombok

We find ourselves back in Bali today preparing for our morning flight to Padang Sumatra tomorrow morning. We arrived yesterday exhausted from a 5 hour ludicrous ferry ride (looking back, I'm pretty sure the ferry driver was trying to do donuts in the sea) and should-have-been-1-hr-turned-into-4 bus ride. Our amazing days on the island ofLombok heavily out weigh the pain of leaving.

We left the Gili Islands by a long boat ferry ride into Bangsal harbor. Public transportation in Indoesia is always exciting. We usually make a couple friends, hear some good stories, suffer a bit of mortion sickness, and frequently unload from the boats shin deep in water with our bags held high over our head. We hoped into the first Bemo ( atansport van) after a bit of haggling and settled in for the couple hour ride into Senaru. We traveld up the coast and into the interior of the island. Rice paddies, tobacco plants, grey macaques, and little shops selling petrol and snacks line the roads. People stare and smile as you go by and the little kids always yell "HALO!!" We arrived in one piece to Emys home stay ( I say one piece because driving in Indonesia is a skill and an art involving small lanes, a million scooters, and a 'might-is-right' right of way). We were greeted by Hardy, a middle aged Lombok man in a fancy clean hat who speaks a couple of key phrases in many languages. We spent that day exploring the waterfalls in Senaru with a group of French, Canadian, and Danish people. The first waterfall was beautiful, but the second looked like a scene from a movie.

To get there you need a guide (non english speaking of course) to lead you along the irrigation channel, bring you over the railingless bridge with foot wide gaps and cross the river a couple of times. As you approach the waterfall, you carefully navigate your bare feet along slippery rocks. You can hear the roar of the water from away back and the air is full of the mist spraying out of the outfall pool. the waterfall comes pouring out of the forest 80 feet overhead. we stored our stuff in a little alcove or rocks and swam through the crystal clear waterfall pool. The water is sofresh that you can open your eyes under water and see pretty clearly. It was breath taking.

That night we arranged for our trekk upMt. Rinjani. We stared around 10 am the next morning running a bit late as all the porters and guides had to vote in the preseidential election before we left. We spent the next 7 hours climbing straight up. I'm not joking. When you hike up a volcanoe there is no other direction than up. You feel like a huge wuss when you are dripping with sweat, out of breath, and your barefoot porter is carrying all of your food and camping equipment, chain smoking ciggerettes, and grinning fromear to ear. Luckily, we made it to the top in time for the sunset over the Gili islands. You are currently only allowed to climb to the crator rim because the volcanoe inside the crator is active and the gases coming from it are dangerous. At night, you can see lava glowing and creeping down the sides. We spent a very sleepless night on the rim of the volcanoe. Not only is the volcanoe rumbling and grumbling like a thunderstorm, but the wind was literaly blowing the tent so that the side of the wall could hit our noses as we braced ourselves against the ground. At one point, the rain fly was ripped off completly by the wind which allowed us to watch the moon travel across the sky making room for the sun. We would be hiking down the next morning on maybe one hour of sleep. Luckily, working with gravity takes less energy than working against it. We walk, ran, raced, jumped, and slipped down the mountain in about 3.5 hours, and took our first chance to hop on a bus for the beach.

We arrived on Kuta, Lombok ( much different than Kuta on Bali), showered, ate, and went to sleep. We we woke up the next morning after 12 slid hours of rest, neither of us could walk properly. It felt like we had alternated between hour long wall sits and hour long horse back rides for a day. We did nothing but lay around on the completely deserted beach and play rummy. We did manage to move ourselves to eat lunch with our super cool friend Dana who was also sore as she had climbed the mountain as well. The next couple days were spent recooperating and exploring Kuta by scooter. For all the hotels being completely booked, we were pretty much the only foreigners on any of the beaches. The water was beautiful emerald green and the landscape was interesting with karst formations and mangrove like trees gowing out of the sea. Unfortunetly, we had to leave to return to the crazy Kuta on Bali. Now, we are going to go enjoy some ice cold Bin Tang and say good bye to Bali.

A little side note: the supposedly "water proof" camera that leon bought before we left turned out not to be "sea proof". Luckliy, the nice folks we hiked with said they would send us their pics of rinjani. So, we broke down and bought a cheap digital camera today. All in all, this means we should have pictures coming!