Lake Toba - Indonesia
5/4/05
Since we didn't know what time the bus was leaving from Bukittinggi we had breakfast early and went to the bus station.
We found a bus going to Parapat - the town next to lake Toba - that should leave at 10 am, but it didn't depart before 11:30 am.
Just half hour after we left, the driver stopped for lunch and wasted maybe another hour.
Parapat is 'only' 800 km away and it is located in the Northeast of Sumatra. So, we crossed a big part of the island and the way is a tortuous muddy mountaineering road.
When it started to rain everybody closed the window and lighted a cigarette, which was hard. Also it is worth to mention that there were many roaches running around and there seemed to be a whole family leaving in Angelique’s seat. They just kept coming out of it. That is what you get in the 'ekonomi' bus.
We stopped for dinner and when we came back to the bus we found the corridor completely padded with potato bags, we couldn't walk on the floor anymore, just over the potatoes.
Plus, here we had some extra passengers, a guy with his wife and two kids could probably afford only two seats and during the night he slept over the potatoes.
Another guy kept burping the whole trip. It was wonderful.
Around 11:30 pm we did a long stop in the middle of nowhere in complete darkness. An Indonesian girl that knew English told us that there was a 'bad guy' outside demanding money from the driver and advised us to be 'careful' with our money because they could maybe come inside.
In fact, and luckily, she was wrong. The problem was with the road, or better to say, the absence of road, that was delaying our trip.
Here we took maybe more than two hours to do 500m. It was jammed with many other buses, trucks, vans and there were hundreds of people outside watching the show. For the vehicles going up the mountain, being pulled by a tractor was the only way to go through the muddy path. In our case, we all had to get off the bus and watch the driver slide down the hill. It was a ridiculous situation, we went back into the bus, had another off road adventure until we hit the paved road again and then everything was 'fine'. The guys that requested the money initially were actually the operators of the caterpillar.
We only arrived in Parapat at 7:30 A.M. the next day.
5/5/05
In Parapat we had breakfast and jumped in a boat to the Samosia island, which lies right in the middle of the lake.
There we found a nice relaxing place and stayed in wide open bungalows.
Lake Toba is in a huge crater of a 100,000 years old volcano. It is the largest lake in Southeast Asia and it is 450m deep.
Flavien, Christian and I rented bikes to tour around the island.
Angie stayed in the chalet to rest from the hard trip from Bukittinggi.
Too bad we didn't know that the place was so nice; otherwise we would have planned to stay longer. On the next morning we left to visit Medan, the city where Christian lived 30 years ago.
Since we didn't know what time the bus was leaving from Bukittinggi we had breakfast early and went to the bus station.
We found a bus going to Parapat - the town next to lake Toba - that should leave at 10 am, but it didn't depart before 11:30 am.
Just half hour after we left, the driver stopped for lunch and wasted maybe another hour.
Parapat is 'only' 800 km away and it is located in the Northeast of Sumatra. So, we crossed a big part of the island and the way is a tortuous muddy mountaineering road.
When it started to rain everybody closed the window and lighted a cigarette, which was hard. Also it is worth to mention that there were many roaches running around and there seemed to be a whole family leaving in Angelique’s seat. They just kept coming out of it. That is what you get in the 'ekonomi' bus.
We stopped for dinner and when we came back to the bus we found the corridor completely padded with potato bags, we couldn't walk on the floor anymore, just over the potatoes.
Plus, here we had some extra passengers, a guy with his wife and two kids could probably afford only two seats and during the night he slept over the potatoes.
Another guy kept burping the whole trip. It was wonderful.
Around 11:30 pm we did a long stop in the middle of nowhere in complete darkness. An Indonesian girl that knew English told us that there was a 'bad guy' outside demanding money from the driver and advised us to be 'careful' with our money because they could maybe come inside.
In fact, and luckily, she was wrong. The problem was with the road, or better to say, the absence of road, that was delaying our trip.
Here we took maybe more than two hours to do 500m. It was jammed with many other buses, trucks, vans and there were hundreds of people outside watching the show. For the vehicles going up the mountain, being pulled by a tractor was the only way to go through the muddy path. In our case, we all had to get off the bus and watch the driver slide down the hill. It was a ridiculous situation, we went back into the bus, had another off road adventure until we hit the paved road again and then everything was 'fine'. The guys that requested the money initially were actually the operators of the caterpillar.
We only arrived in Parapat at 7:30 A.M. the next day.
5/5/05
In Parapat we had breakfast and jumped in a boat to the Samosia island, which lies right in the middle of the lake.
There we found a nice relaxing place and stayed in wide open bungalows.
Lake Toba is in a huge crater of a 100,000 years old volcano. It is the largest lake in Southeast Asia and it is 450m deep.
Flavien, Christian and I rented bikes to tour around the island.
Angie stayed in the chalet to rest from the hard trip from Bukittinggi.
Too bad we didn't know that the place was so nice; otherwise we would have planned to stay longer. On the next morning we left to visit Medan, the city where Christian lived 30 years ago.
posted by Adriano and Angie | 6:16 AM
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