Yet another travelling experience – what should have taken 12hrs between Jakarta to Yogykarta took 24.  We’ll spare you the nitty gritty and just give you a quick overview.

To avoid the (generally) overcrowded and smokey public buses, 5 of us hired a private mini bus for our journey.  We were an hour late leaving so to creep back some time the driver drove like a god damn looney, to the point where we had to threaten violence before he slowed down.

About 4 hrs in we got a puncture had a quick change and were back on the road.  Not for long.  At 1am we got another and of course had no spare. After two hours of sitting on the grass verge he loads us in and drives 25 mile (on the flat) to the nearest town.  A new tyre and rim and we were off again for a few more hours. 

At 9am he woke us to change buses.  It was nice and clean and we were delighted to be leaving the arsehole behind.  Fuck me pink, about 4 hours in, this (new) bus starts chugging and, eventually, comes to a halt. Several belts with a hammer and we were away again. This process happened about 10 times before the bus finally gave up (thankfully).  He had only gone and completely smashed the fan so the engine overheated to the point that the battery points had melted – we have no idea why he thought hitting the fan would solve what could have been as simple as dirty fuel. 

We waited 2hrs before we decided to cut our losses and jump on the next public bus.  Thankfully the mood was lightened when a local played us a few of tunes on his guitar. Finally we arrived at our destination – it’s a lesson learned public buses from now on!

Just a few photos of our experience.

Bus no.1

Bus no.2

Public bus.

Having re-charged the batteries in Lake Toba it was time to hit the high road for a long and gruelling overland from Medan in Sumatra to the capital Jakarta, Yogykarta and Mount Bromo in Java and finally across to Bali for Christmas.

Not a lot to say about Jakarta other than it appears to be (like most) very over crowded and polluted.  With Christmas looming it was an excuse for local hoteliers to charge extortionate rates for rooms so four of us ended up sharing two single beds, Sam and I in one and Zoe and Andy (a Scott we just met) in another, all very amusing.

We stayed a couple of nights and went shopping, visited two museums, freedom square, the fishing port and village and took a tuk tuk tour – nothing overly exciting.

There is no denying the beauty of Danau Toba, known to backpackers as Lake Toba.  A 1707 sq km, 450m deep lake, set in a collapsed caldera of an extinct volcano, is surrounded by mountains ribboned with waterfalls and terraced rice fields.

The perfect place to chill-out for a few days among the fun loving Batak people, a way of life and culture we both hold in high regard.  We have not come across many places where we felt we could live, but Danau Toba certainly ticks all the boxes.

We stayed in Tuk Tuk, a backpacker haven, which was simply beautiful and very relaxing.  We caught up on some much needed reading, swam in the lake, rode round the many villages, visited the hot springs (which were shite) and ate in some beautiful restaurants – what more could one ask for.

We hope the photos give you an indication as to how chilled out this place is.  It has to be, almost all of the locals we met seemed to smoke weed all day long, very amusing.  If weed wasn’t your thing then almost every shop advertised ‘the best magic mushrooms in town’, with a few spelling and grammatical variations – hilarious.

Our batteries are now fully re-charged and ready for the big smoke Jakarta. As usual there are far too many photos to pick from so you can check out the rest on the picture tab, no. 45.

Following our camping trip we had a wee ‘jungle party’ with entertainment provided by our guide Ali G – an evening loaded with beer and local herb.

Ali knew every song known to man and played to his hearts content. Zoe played her hand made digery doo – a diving instructor with the lungs of an elephant, so playing all night wasn’t a problem.  I had a go on the drums and the digery doo and failed miserably at both!

As you can imagine it was a very late night and there were plenty of clouded heads the following morning, just what was needed for our 14 hour journey to Lake Toba.

The two day one night trekking and camping expedition within Gunung Leuser National Park was most certainly our best camping trip ever, even beating my Ray Meyers Survival weekend last year and that took some beating.

We met our group on the ferry from Malaysia to Indonesia and have been with them since and decided to trek together. From left to right: Keiran (UK), Catherine (US), Kate (UK), Sam (no fixed abode), Zoe (Canada) and our guide Ali G (Bukit Lawuang).

Within an hour we spotted our first orang-utan followed by a variety of other monkeys and animals. Ali G was fantastic, showing us edible and poisonous plants and foods and explaining the variety of ways in which the locals make a living from the jungle including the rubber plantations, palm oil, coco plants, honey and of course magic mushrooms and weed which was in abundance everywhere. 

It was amazing to see the food the porters knocked up on an open fire, we had sweet and sour chicken, vegetable curry with steamed rice and crackers.  For breakfast it was toasted club sandwiches and bucket loads of tea throughout the day.

The sleep was a little uncomfortable as we had only a sleeping liner and no bag. The noise of the jungle was just incredible but extremely loud.  In the morning we were greeted by a variety of monkeys who came to forage on our left over food – some really aggressive little feckers.

Catherine slipped on a wet rock and either sprained or broke a bone in her foot which meant the porters had to carry her back to base camp – 5 hours!  I fell over a zillion times and ended up spraining my wrist – I blame my slippy trainers. 

Overall, a great experience and enjoyed our group’s company very much.  We all plan to head to Danua Toba (Lake Toba) together in the next day or so.

Hope you enjoy the photos, as usual there are plenty more on the picture tab above no.44.