I Climbed a Volcano!

So volcano climbing has been on the bucket list for a while and this past weekend I actually got to go! (Because nothing sounds scary after you move to the other side of the world). We took a LOOONG car ride out of the Jakarta area to climb Papandayan, a volcano that erupted about 10 years ago. The nicer part about the whole thing is that we drove pretty far up into the foothills before we started the hike. So even though we only hiked for about 3 and a half hours, we ended up at 7,500 feet.

We got there around noon on Saturday and our guides fed us food before we started our hike through the sulfur fields. I have to say, I found it pretty funny that the hike was labeled "easy" as it required quite a bit of climbing. In the US it would have been labeled "advanced" with a warning for people with heart and health conditions. While nothing about the trail was tricky or required special equipment, it was very physically demanding. My Fitbit counts every ten feet in elevation as a flight of stairs and it says I climbed 154 flights that the first day.

Once we made it to our campsite, which was also the sunrise location, our guides set up tents for us and cooked us dinner. It was really nice only having to take clothes and personal items and not have to bring up tents and equipment.

The next morning stole my breath away with the sunrise over the peaks.

The second day we hiked around a bit and saw some Edelweiss (from The Sound of Music movie). It only grows above 5,900 feet from sea level.  It was looking a little dry (as it is the dry season here) but we promptly sang just about every song from The Sound of Music while hiking the rest of the day.

 

Then we explored what is known as The Dead Forest. This is where the eruption happened recently and killed off everything with just the tree trunks left.

Then we spent about two hours hiking down the stairs carved into the mountainside and trying desperately not to slip and fall. Thankfully we only had some minor slips and we all made it down with just a few scrapes.

I rather enjoyed my time on the volcano and I can't wait for my next adventure!

Indonesian (Bahasa) words:

Ibu: Miss/ Mrs.

Pak: Sir/Mr.

Terima kasih: Thank you

-Rachael