here be dieng...I caught a bus to the next city from Jogja, Magelang, another to Wonosobo, then another to Dieng, which wound up through narrow roads on mountain slopes, terraced with farms. I arrived in Dieng at about 5, got off the bus and directly opposite me was a little hotel which my friend recommended to me. I got a cheap room, stashed my bags and then went for a wander around the village. I had nasi goreng/fried rice for dinner, during a blackout. Then I walked down the other side of town, found a group of teenagers around a fire in the middle of the street. That’s the nightlife in Dieng, roll a tyre into the street and set it alight! It was warm, and pleasant if you stay upwind of the smoke. I was really cold, even though I’m tasmanian. I think I’ve happily adapted to the Jogja heat. We chatted for a few hours about australia, I played them australian music on my ipod, it was good fun. I went to bed at about 10pm, with the intention to get up at 3am for a morning hike to see the sunset from a mountain, but I was woken up at 11 by really loud voices outside my room… I listened, realised it was in english, and opened my door… there were 4 of my australian friends from uni (hi andy, james, lindsey and martha!!) Neither of us knew the other was coming to dieng, let alone staying in the same hotel! Anyway, the walk was postponed cos it was raining like crazy all night and morning the next day.
hindu templesAfter the rain stopped I went for a walk to check out the Hindu temples (sorry, that’s the other thing in Dieng, the oldest Hindu temples in Java), then the others turned up – its obviously a small town, if we keep finding each other – and we all bussed out of town to go to a hot springs area. It was beautiful, in a steep mountainous very green valley, and hot sulfur water comes out of the mountain. Bathing pools had been built around the springs, and my god it was HOT!!! We wore sarongs and sat inhaling hot sulfur… rotton eggs! We were a source of amusement for the indonesians, our skin is so white, and we’re so untalented at getting changed modestly in an open area. I think the people who were already there sms-ed their friends, cos 10 minutes after we arrived heaps more people started coming to see the crazy foreigners.
more diengWe walked back up the steep mountain slopes back to the main road, and wanted to eat. We are always skeptical of bus drivers who say that the nearest ‘warung’ is far, because that means we’ll catch his bus. It’s not necessarily far, he just wants to get money. He said its far, we asked other locals, they said its just down the hill. So we walked down the hill, and it turned out to just be a tiny shop, sellling a few food items, as well as cigarettes, shampoo, water etc. so we had to catch a bus anyway, and got off in a tiny little town, with 1 place that looked like it had edible food. We almost filled the place, but even so the whole town came to watch us eat and say astoundedly ‘do you speak indonesian??’, even though they’ve just heard us speaking. Kids were peering over the windowsill, the adults were crowded in the doorway or on the floor… we’re a source of constant entertainment! Once we had managed to extract ourselves from their gleeful hospitality, we caught a bus back in the direction of Dieng.
bathing area on the right hand side of the valley, above the riverI got off the bus earlier than the others, to check out a crater near Dieng. I walked and walked up a hill, through the mist, just before the top I saw a tree… I thought it looked familiar, and realised it was a gum tree!! A huge one too. There are actually gum tree plantations in Sumatra, and I think some types occur naturally in Eastern Indonesia, closer to Australia. This was just all on its own… who knows how it got there. At the top, everything further than 30m away was densely covered in white fog, including the lake. Trees and whiteness were the sights. I got a lift back to town with 2 indonesians who were also looking at the fog, I was ‘dibonceng’ (taken on the back of the bike), but there were 3 of us! 1st time I’ve been on a bike with 2 others, and it probably wasn’t the best situation to try it in! the road down the hill was so steep, and had more holes than bitumen. The wheels sort of slid around, making my bum slide. And bikes are only designed for 2 people (thank god, really), but that means they only have foot stands for 2 people… bad luck if your leg muscles give in on speedy road! We got back to town all nicely, me with a piece of gum tree to surprise my friends.
That night we had a hot mandi (shower) to clean the sulfur off… it had to be hot, cos the water is icy at 2000m! even in indonesia. But because running water in indonesia is usually only cold, the hotel owner had to boil it for us…it was amazing! 1st hot shower in 3 months.
We organised to go on the same walking tour as I wanted to do the day before, so we got up at 3am, and walked for many kilometres, out of town, past geothermal power stations, by the time we were going through the highest village in java we were running because we didn’t want to miss the sunrise. We climbed and climbed up a steep zigzagging track up the side of a mountain and finally came out of the forest to see an amazing view… villages and a city spread out in the early morning light in the valley, with 4 or 5 volcanoes behind them. The clarity was stunning, we could even see Merapi volcano, the one behind Jogja, and we were hundreds of kilometres away. The mist was slowly rolling in hundreds of meters below us, a thick white carpet covering everything. We could see both coasts of Java, it made the island seem so small.
me, andy, hiding martha, james and lindsey
volcanoooooooooes
exhausted!!
After we got our breath back and soaked up the view, we headed back down the mountain, back through the potato fields, past what we called the ugliest mosque in central java, it looked like a badly designed greek villa with fat white marble archways that went up and up for 3 storeys, topped off with, rather than a dome, 2 little buildings which looked like houses, or the top of Chinese temples. On top of each was an erratically designed chunk of spiky gold coloured… stuff. It might be gold, apparently these villages are pretty well off from potato farming. But still ugly.
ugly mosque
potato farms... can you imagine climbing to the top of your farm every morning??
We walked down a hill through more potato farms, and next went to a sulfur crater… the floor is covered in yellow sulfur rocks and steam vents, and theres a hot bubbling pool of grey sulfur mud in the middle! Mmm yummy rotton eggs. After that we kept walking through a nice foresty area, to another lake. This one is blueish green, and the water is different colours in different areas because of the specific chemicals coming out of the ground in that spot. Finally we walked back to town, and I think we got there before 9am! Not even late for breakfast. We all went back to bed, and started the bus trip back to jogja at 12pm. I think we got back home at around 6.
No comments:
Post a Comment