Kawah Ijen

Wow - I'm blogging again so soon! Guess the torrential rains are good for keeping me in and getting me to do this...

So, as I write, Flickr is uploading the next set of photos: my weekend trip to Kawah Ijen. Having lost a lot of blog work to a poor internet connection, I have decided to write my posts in Word and then copy into my blog page. [Rob – you indicated considering a similar strategy on your MySpace blog. Amen to that!] I guess ya gotta learn the hard way a few times before figuring it out. Seems like I’ve learned A LOT of these kinds of lessons here in Indonesia! LOL My next, as yet untried, trick for making life a little better here is to wash the towels in one load together, without any clothes. I don’t know if that will help at all, but it is worth a try. All of my clothes come out of the laundry absolutely covered in lint. My previous housekeeper loved to wash the mats and rugs, which contributed a huge amount of lint to the lint applicator machine, also known as the clothes washer. Right now I have a black patterned batik that I don’t know what to do with because it has such an incredible amount of lint, both inside and out… There’s an idea for a stocking stuffer – tape roller!

[Note: When I said to ‘buy Synbiotics’ I had been told that we would certainly be switching rapid influenza tests. Now I’m told that since the new test has almost the same sensitivity in local tests as the old one, and the original price quoted for Synbiotics was a one-time very low price – just to get us to try it, like the crack dealer on the corner – we will stick with our old Anigen tests. Do what you want with that info. My field officers all seemed to prefer the Synbiotics because it was faster and easier to read. I won’t make stock recommendations anymore…]

Now down to the real stuff. Two weeks ago I went on a weekend trip to Kawah Ijen (Ijen Crater) in East Java. My guide and companion, Jonathan, had been there several years ago and wanted to go again. He speaks perfect Indonesian, as well as some Javanese and I-don’t-know-what-else, and is an MD, so I figured it would be pretty safe for going off the beaten path. We took a cheap Asia Air flight out of Jakarta to Denpasar, Bali. Asia Air is the Southwest Airlines of Asia – cheap and no assigned seats. They are notorious for delayed and cancelled flights. True to form, our flight was about 2 hours late leaving Jakarta. We arrived uneventfully in Bali, picked up our stiff little Suzuki in Sanur, and then caught a quick dinner - yummy grilled fish at a lovely beachside restaurant - before heading up the west coast of Bali to the ferry.

It wasn’t a particularly exciting drive, and we really wanted to catch the ferry to East Java that night. No line for the ferry when we arrived at 1 or 2 in the morning. It was a strange port: all the expected lines for vehicles but there were maybe 5 docks and each dock was serviced by a different ferry company. I guess they would take turns being loaded with vehicles. It was a strange contrast to the uniformity of Washington State Ferries. Our Suzuki was one of 4 or 5 vehicles on the ferry when we loaded, and we thought that meant waiting until it filled. Fortunately for us and another vehicle of surfers jammed into a VW van, we didn’t wait long before setting sail in the moonlight. It was a beautiful crossing, lasting about an hour. The water was calm, the moonlight shone on the water, and I could see the hills and volcanoes on both Java and Bali. Lovely!

We rolled into Banuwangi at something like 3 am (Bali is 1 hour ahead of Java so we had crossed time zones twice in about 5 hours) and picked the second hotel we saw. As luck would have it, the owners of this small resort on the water in this industrial part of town had taken much pride in their place, and it showed! The AC mostly worked, everything was clean, the guy sprayed for mosquitos when we asked, and there was even hot water! Plus a decent breakfast of nasi goreng (fried rice) with remarkably good coffee. Yes, it was actually filtered. Hallelujah! All for about $15-20. That was a good find for a random hotel at 3am in a port town on East Java.

After our nasi putih breakfast, we piled back in the Suzuki and went off in search of the road to the crater. The map and directions we had turned out to be pretty good, and we drove up toward the clouds. As we went up, the vegetation became very lush. First it was clove and coffee plantations and then jungle. We stopped for photos at a particularly lovely spot, crowded with tree ferns and with gibbons going ‘whoop-whoop-whoop’ in the background. Very cool. We continued up to the trailhead, signed in, paid our fee, and headed up.

Molten sulfur pours out of vents in the crater, near the edge of the acid lake that covers most of the crater bottom. After the sulfur cools and hardens, it is collected by men who toil very hard in a highly toxic environment and then is carried down to the trailhead in baskets across the shoulders. We saw these guys coming down the trail all day. They weigh the loaded baskets near the top and can tell you pretty accurately how much they are carrying. Up to 80kg at a time was what we heard repeatedly. Hello! That is up to 176lbs! Crazy! No wonder the older ones had really rounded shoulders or calluses on them…

Anyway, up the trail we went, running into these porters constantly. They usually make 2 trips per day. If you take their photo, they will expect a few rupiah. But, hey, if I moved over 300lbs of sulfur in a day from a nasty, vapor-filled crater and made next to nothing to do it, I’d try for photo fees, too! As you get maybe 2/3 to ¾ of the way up, there is a weigh station where they weigh the baskets. They also sell sulfur that has been molded into silly shapes, in cake pans, while still hot. Beyond the weigh station there are fewer trees, and you can see the vapor among the clouds – it looks more like smoke and less like cloud. The trail climbs up along the backside of the crater until it emerges at the crater rim.

When I arrived, I was fortunate to catch an immediate glimpse of the turquoise blue lake below, partially revealed through the fumes coming up from the sulfur vents. I waited there for Jonathan and one of the porters who was keeping an eye on us. We crossed part of the rim trail and started our descent. The porter told us the story of a French (?) woman who died a few years before while going down. She fell from the trail and struck her head on a rock; our porter helped carry her body out. The cloud of nasty sulfur dioxide was capricious – here and gone, hiding the lake or, rarely, showing it. About halfway down the steep trail, I just couldn’t take any more of the noxious fumes. My eyes were tearing, my lungs were burning, and so much snot was running down my face that my bangs were getting caught up in it! Enough was enough, so I turned around to get away from it and hike the upper rim trail. Jonathan continued down. He said the fumes were more concentrated as they came out of the vents so you could mostly avoid them. Unless a gust of wind came to blow them on you. In which case maybe you would pass out. He stayed for HOURS, which amazes me. And the workers do it day after day, with a cigarette on their breaks. Yikes. They have installed pipes to direct the molten sulfur and maybe other nasty stuff that comes out from there. The sulfur is blood red (I’m guessing it is an oxide of some sort but will let someone else work out the chemistry!) when it comes out but quickly cools to a transparent yellow and, later, opaque yellow. It pools and, when cool enough, is broken into slabs which are carried down the mountain. Jonathan touched and tasted the acid lake. He even brought some of the water home in a water bottle. Me? I was happy to save my lungs from greater insult and get away with just photos.

Once back on the crater rim, I went alone along a trail going up toward the end opposite from the vents. It was a bit of a scramble at times, especially coming down off-trail, but it was amazingly beautiful. The valley we came from was visible in the distance, green and soft in contrast to the barren and somewhat stark angles of the crater. The light and shadows dancing along the crater walls and turquoise surface of the lake were mesmerizing. Truly beautiful. For my efforts, I had clean views and clean air. Who could ask for more? My eyes, spirit, and lungs definitely thanked me.

After tooling around on the upper rim trail for a good hour, I headed back to wait for Jonathan at the weigh station. And wait I did. While observing the changing clouds, I got to chat with the guys who work at the weigh station and a few other random local Indonesian tourists who came along. Although not really the helpless female, it was nice to be “looked after” by my new friends. One of them gave Jonathan an earful, when he finally came down, for making me wait so long! Lol. We got a bowl of mie goreng (fried noodles) and then headed back down just as the sun was setting. My silent walk through the forest at sunset was indeed renewing, and we got back to the Suzuki right as it was getting dark.

Our next stop was to get back to the north coast of Bali that night. The ferry was more full this time, but it was another lovely voyage. We headed out toward an area Jonathan remembered as being “touristy,” but it was taking a lot longer to get there than he had anticipated. I had been asking about eating dinner before most places were closed, as it was getting late. It finally took the trump card of “I-will-go-into-hypoglycemic-bitch-mode-soon” at 10pm to get his attention to the matter. Fortunately, I talked him out of the first homestay place we saw. The owners were sleeping on a mat on the floor, and the rooms were horribly grungy, they had hung up nasty towels, and there wasn’t even a sink in the traditional wet mandi bathroom. The sagging mattresses with – no kidding – grime and stuff smeared on the wall around them would have been too much for me. I would have hung up my hammock outside.

Instead, we continued on to randomly find a lovely little place, serving only vegetarian dishes, run by a young couple from Jakarta. They graciously made us nasi goreng and gado-gado, a dish of vegetables made with a peanut sauce. [I think I’ll have stickers printed for my Jeep and backpack that say, “Powered by nasi goreng!”] Then off to rest my tired self. The bathroom was the whole back courtyard of the room: a walled-in courtyard with a sink, a toilet, a showerhead, and a large tub/spa all up against the wall, with tile and loose, smooth rock flooring / landscaping. Ah, ha! Outside shower! But it just wasn’t as nice as the one at the beach house…

The next morning we decided to continue along the north coast, then cut across the middle of Bali to deliver me back to the airport in Denpasar. I really, really wanted a little time at the beach, so we parked along the beach and walked around in an area with some dive hotels. The sand was black. A cute little hotel was right there, so we had some cold juice, took a dip in their pool and then had lunch before leaving. I was dying for a salad, so I had a seafood salad with shrimp, squid, fish, and avocado. It was soooo good, and I didn’t get sick! Bali is about the only place I feel safe enough to have salads here, although Jenni and Stacie seem to do ok… But I digress.

We continued along the hot, dry north coast before turning south to cut across Bali’s middle. Things became much more lush as we climbed up and up. There were beautiful little villages and paddy fields all along the hillsides. The flowers and vegetation is so lovely! A small sign said ‘waterfall’ with an arrow, so we stopped. About that time a vigorous downpour started. I managed to keep my camera and Blackberry dry for the walk to the waterfall and back but couldn’t get much in the way of pictures. Amazingly, there was a bathroom at the bottom of the trail, with toilet paper! Ya gotta love that about Bali – they have toilet paper in so many places. We got back in the car and proceeded to drive up and over the top of the hills, passing by two popular lakes almost completely obscured by mist. We stopped for fuel at a town at one end of one of the lakes. That’s where I saw the pig truck. Balinese eat pork, unlike their Muslim friends on Java. These were adult pigs in round, cylindrical baskets, some stacked on each other, in the back of a pickup, presumably going to market. Poor piggies – they looked awfully confused and uncomfortable.

There was a brief stop at the Water Palace near Ubud, where a festival was being prepared for the next day. We caught a shred of the dress rehearsal for the festivities but then had to take off again. After stopping in Seminyak for Jonathan to check email, we continued on to Nusa Dua for another seafood dinner. It was right near where I had eaten in Jimbaran with Stacie & Jenni but wasn’t quite the same spot. Then on a flight – delayed by >1 hour – back to Jakarta. After unpacking and packing again, I got to bed far too close to the time I was to get up.

The next day I had to leave at 7am for a meeting in Anyer, Banten Province, Java. The resort hotel was quite nice; and, during the week it was very quiet. Anyer is about 2 hours from Jakarta and so a popular weekend destination. We had the hotel and beach to ourselves. I swam before our meetings both mornings. The water was calm and warm-ish and wonderful. When not running the AC, I could hear the ocean from my room. Unfortunately, there was no ocean view from the conference room. After 3 days of meetings, we took the bus back to Jakarta. The bus driver made a very poor choice in routes, and instead of the 2 hours it should have taken us to get back, it took 4. Two of those hours were just while stuck in Jakarta traffic. Although it was a chartered bus, it was becoming a 3^rd-world-bus-ride-from-hell. No bathroom and no one stops for breaks while stuck in Jakarta traffic. For the first two hours I obligingly sat next to a PDS/R officer who snored. My MP3 player is a saving grace, but even it couldn’t save me from the blaring of Indonesian comedy that started when we hit the Jakarta traffic. I really think I damaged my hearing between the blaring DVD and the shrieking hilarity of surrounding companions. I moved to the back where I didn’t lose further hearing but froze for 2 hours of AC overkill. To top it off, my Bucky neck pillow vanished in the chaos of unloading. Would have liked it for the flight back to Seattle… :(

So, it was back to Jakarta. I spent last week at PDS/R training in Bandung. Good chance to see some of my officers from Bandung and Bogor – some of whom I had met on my field visit previously. But staying alone in the hotel, eating boring Indonesian food, got old quickly. I had lunch a few times with our translators and joked around with the master trainers, but it wasn’t very exciting. Yes, I did get up and sing at the “cultural” evening. Yes, I was sober. Yes, it was terribly painful. No, I won’t do it again, if I can help it!

Ok, I am 4 photos away from being done uploading. Time to brush my teeth and head to bed. I had a couple hours of tango classes today, followed by the gym, so my dogs are tired. This weekend I am off to Bangkok to visit a friend from the Kili climb last year. Yea! A familiar face! Not Jakarta!

Take care all,

Love, E