Gunung Merbabu

Well it’s been a while since the last post. That’s mostly because I just got back a couple weeks ago from another 3-week stint in Vientiane, Laos, which was the subject of the last post. With nothing “new” to report, it didn’t seem fitting. However, this past weekend did indeed bring about something new: another gunung (remember, gunung = mountain/volcano).  Gunung Merbabu, elevation 3,145 m, was the mission. And a mission it was. Up until now, we have only done day-trip gunungs. This was a camping mission, which, as you can imagine, presents a few interesting Indonesians twists.

You know, the funniest thing about gunung bagging in Indonesia, is that the 2000 m climb is the easiest, or at least most enjoyable, part of the mission. The challenging part is simply fighting through the barrage of logistical barriers that are between you and the starting line of the hike. In this case, it was a classic case of taxis, night trains, and automobiles. As someone once said, sleep is for sissies.

It all started with a Friday, 4-pm departure from my office in Bogor, which for those you paying attention, is a 1 to 3 hour Uber ride (traffic depending) from Jakarta. So I’m off in my Uber to Jakarta, backpack packed the night before, enroute to the JKT train station to catch the 7 pm to the central-Java city of Semarang. Oh ya, Amy is in Canada on a walk-about, so this is a Rob-solo mission. The train is on time, and all systems are go for the 6+ hour ride. Arriving at 1:30 am in Semarang, me and my new gunung-bagging buddy, Dan Quinn – the co-originator and keeper of the website Gunung Bagging (www.gunungbagging.com) – look for our driver and “guide” who is supposed to meet us.

Being Indonesia, where just about anything could happen, we are amazed to make phone contact with our guide, who is, equally amazingly, in the parking lot waiting for us. So far so good. Into the vehicle and off to another locale to pick up another couple team members arriving by bus, and we’re heading for the trailhead near the town of Salatiga in the interior of central Java. If yer keeping track, it’s about 2 am at this point. Sleep is so overrated, isn’t it?

Arriving at what the locals are referring to as “basecamp” at about 4:30 am, we have a couple hours to kill before daylight. Besides, our guide has to go grab his buddies, who he has arranged as our porters. Porters? I know, what’s that about? It’s a thing here. Kind of like no one cleans their own home and cooks their own meals, no one carries their own pack. Who am I to go against tradition? Besides, it’s that local employment thing. You just kind of have to. A bule carrying a large pack means he/she is taking food off the table for one of the locals.

So ya, the crew is the 4 bules (me and 3 Englishmen: Dan, John, and Jon; average age, 58ish), the local “guide”, and his 3 buddies who are the porters (average age, 19ish). Ok, when I say “guide”, I think I have eluded to this in earlier posts….”guide” means a guy who lives nearby and may or may not have ever been where you are going. It’s a crap shoot. The porter thing was new to me as well, and, as it turns out, “porter” means some guy who may or may not be able to carry your stuff or be able to do anything, period. In this case, it turned out to be a group of chain-smoking teenagers who were in worse shape than I will be in 30 years from now. More on that and how we ended up just carrying our own packs down the mountain. We considered not paying them for their incompetence, but you know, that would have just been too colonial.

OK, so 6 am, we’re off (ya, no sleep, whatever….I thought we agreed that was for sissies). The hike up the mountain was actually quite beautiful and surprisingly rigorous. The top section was shockingly vertical ish, requiring scrambling and other “advanced” moves. All in all, a very nice way to spend 8 or so hours getting to the top of a volcano. The views from the top were spectacular, and really showed the beauty of the landscape when seen from afar. In every direction there were the tell-tale volcano cones making up this ring of fire they call Indonesia. Ah, life is good, if not only for the moment.

The euphoria of being on top of the world ended when we realized, after spending a couple hours lounging on the summit, that it was 4:30 pm (gets very dark, and very cold at 3145 m, at about 6 pm when the sun takes its leave) and there was no sign of our fearless guide or porters. I know, isn’t the guide supposed to be guiding us, i.e., in front of us? You would think so. But this is Indonesia. So ya, having only our day packs with water and snickers bars, we didn’t have our gear, and it was getting dark and cold. OK, time for plan B. We had no plan B.

Our only option, other than freezing to death on the summit, was to go down. We back tracked down to where we thought “for the love of god, they must have made it to at least here!”. It was the last good flat camping spot before a long steep downhill into the rice paddies below. We had to just wait here for them. It was a tense hour or so. The thought of spending a very cold, and very uncomfortable night on this ridgetop was starting to become a reality. Eventually, we could hear their coughing below us, and they emerged onto the ridge, pretty much when there was maybe 5 minutes left to set up a tent before total darkness set in.

It pretty much killed them. The worst part, however, was learning that they really had no gear of their own. Apparently, in addition to sleep, tents and sleeping bags are also for sissies. What?! Yes, they had no gear. It was now pitch dark and about 3 degrees C. Oh come on….this is ridiculous! Rule number one in Indonesia: never assume anything, regardless of how obvious it is to anyone else in the universe. So ya, luckily there were enough other chain-smoking teenagers camping on the ridge that they found some blankets and tarps they could huddle under. My guess is they got zero sleep, which, is not good if your job is carrying heavy loads in the mountains.

So, day 2, or is it 3? Anyway, it’s Sunday morning, 4 am or so, nice and chilly, up for a sunrise hike back up to the summit. It’s an Indo thing. Everyone wants to be at the top for sunrise. Whatever. Who am I to buck the trend? It is really quite amazing and beautiful, so despite my questioning why we are going back up to where we have already been, it turned out to be very spectacular.

Now, breaking camp at 7 am and coming down brought on a whole new set of challenges for our young chain-smoking friends. Thinking “we’re going down, how hard can it be?” turned out to be inaccurate. After going down for about an hour, then waiting another hour or so for them to arrive at our location, we just ripped the damn packs off their backs and carried them ourselves. The point of being a ridiculous situation had long passed, and we were well into the insane. It no longer made any sense to regard this feral pack of chain-smoking adolescents as people who may be of some use to us. The real crux of the situation being, we had a train to catch!

So that was it. We strapped on the packs and headed towards the bottom, into our awaiting vehicle – thankfully the driver turned out to be the one solid pillar of reliability in the crew – and we were whisked back through the rice fields of central Java to catch the 4 pm train back to Jakarta, and yet one more Uber ride home. I made it back to my bed in Bogor with 2 minutes to spare before midnight. I slept like a baby.