While flying around SE Asia is kinda fun,
it gets on your nerves after a while. Taxis to the airport, the stress of
having to be 3 hours early, do we have all of our documents?, where the h is my
passport!?, getting pulled over at security because you forgot peanut butter is
considered a plastic explosive, wondering if we’ll get through immigration with
the 10 litres of wine we have in our bags…..you know, things like that. So,
it’s kinda nice when a local “we can drive there” mission rears its head.
Although, the craziest thing about living
in the Jakarta/Bogor zone is that everything on a map appears close –
especially to us Canadians who think nothing of driving 3 or 4 hundred kms for
a weekend outing. So when one does the math here in West Java, something like
Bogor to the nearest coastal area with surfing, comes out at about 85 kms, or
“close” in Canadian. 85 kms in Canada….hmmm, once we’re on the highway, I won’t
even have finished my Timmy’s double double before we get there. We can go for
breakfast. 85 kms in West Java…..hmmm, an hour to get to the highway through
wall to wall traffic, trying hard not to run over the guy with the chickens
strapped to his motorbike, then at an average speed of 26 km/hr down a
traffic-choked road that was never designed for automobile traffic, let’s just
say, it’s not an enticing offer.
However, full disclosure. Almost always,
when a bule here says “driving” it means “driver”, i.e., almost no one drives
themselves. We’re in that group. That takes a lot of the sting out of a
4-and-a-half-hour drive to go 85 kms. So ya, I arranged to have our company
driver (yes, our company employees 2 full-time drivers) whisk us away from the
office on a Friday afternoon and drop us at our destination. The G&T’s in
the back seat were quite enjoyable actually J
The destination was the Ocean Queen resort,
a mid-level family-oriented place on the coast just south and west of Bogor
near the town of Pelabuhan Ratu. We were participating in another hiking
weekend organized by the Jakarta-expat hiking group “Java Lava”. This wasn’t
our first rodeo. In fact, if memory serves me correctly, it was my 5th,
and Amy’s 3rd time to this area. It’s pretty much the closest decent
beach-coastal area to us.
In fact, the actual hiking mission was a
repeat of a hike we did last year with the same group. Although, last year’s
mission was a bit of cluster-fudge. In standard Indo-hiking style, Java Lava
had hired 3 “guides” for last year’s mission. The loyal followers of the blog
will know what Amy and I think of local “guides”. “Guide” here means the guy
lives somewhere in the area, hopefully. Whether or not the guy likes walking,
or has ever been to where you want to go, is not a requirement. So, last year,
right about the time the sky hemmed itself in and unloaded a year’s worth of
rain by anyone’s count, our guides got us nice and hopelessly lost. Back then,
we were actually surprised by this situation. Now, it would be expected. i.e., “so
I wonder how long until we are lost…I dunno, maybe another hour”. We got back to the vehicle just before dark.
Needless to say, Amy was not impressed, and
angered not so much by slogging through jungle and rice paddies during a
monsoon, but because we had spent a weekend on a beach, and she hadn’t even
gotten her bathing suit out. So, this year, the arrangement was: I go on the
hike, Amy hangs out in a bikini, lies on the beach, and does yoga. Unbeknownst
to either of us, there were no guides this year, so needless to say, the hike
went swimmingly and perfectly according to plan. Although, I did return from
the hike, just in time for the afternoon rains that you can set you clock to
around here. Amy had a good day in her bikini though. Everyone’s happy! J
The hike itself turned out to be fantastic.
A 20-kms loop that took us about 8 hours, and travelled through a nice mix of
forested hills, kampungs (villages), rice paddies, and traditional villages.
The area is sparsely populated (extremely unusual for West Java), and borders
up against a National Park called Gunung Halimun (Misty Mountain). In fact, it
could be among my favourite Indo hikes thus far. We had lunch in a traditional
village and chatted up the local ladies who served us “kopi lokal” (local
coffee).
Hiking in Indo (West Java anyway) is a mix
of getting out into some forest, walking around rice paddies, saying “pagi”
(hi/good morning) to the locals working the fields, getting mobbed by school
children out in the kampungs, and maybe getting to the top of a mountain
somewhere. The trails are footpaths that thread together the maze of rice
paddies and kampungs that, no doubt, were burned in by the locals before the
beginning of time. Hiking in Indo is also about sweating like a toilet, and
trying to maintain your body temperature below boiling point. Imagine riding a
stationary bicycle in a sauna, wearing a rain coat. J
The familiarity of it all is becoming nice.
It’s nice to know that bringing a sweat towel is critical, along with a fresh
t-shirt for the ride back, and that you really cannot bring too much water. I
have also figured out that a waterproof pack is essential for me. Not so much
for the rain, but to keep my sweat from soaking the entire contents of my pack!
It’s also nice to actually know the area, and have some idea of what you are in
for. Our fearless leader, Nick, a Brit who has been here forever, and one of
the Java Lava organizers and owner of the Ocean Queen, is now a familiar face
and a fantastically fun guy to chat with over a few cool Bintangs.
All in all, great weekend! Now, back to the
grind as the say.
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