Bogor Blog

PPLH and Gunung Penanggungan

Jul 5th, 2010

Our small bungalow with Penangungan in the background

We decided to escape from our German and Dutch friends who were smugly still enjoying the World Cup, with both their teams playing quarter final games. Actaully, we managed to watch Brazil lose to the Netherlands before leaving on our trip, leaving the Dutch celebrating in the pub. We decided to return to PP Linkungan Hidup (PPLH), a sort of eco-centre near to Surabaya, and try to bag Gunung Penanggungan.

Gunung Penanggungan is a relatively small volcano (1,650 m), but one that is dotted with Hindu temples and really accessible from Surabaya. We left Bogor early in the morning for Jakarta Airport, and arrived in Surabaya to meet up with the PPLH driver who was waiting to pick us up. By 1 pm we were eating a nice organic lunch including tempe and tahu, and drinking good juices and Javanese coffee. PPLH has a good restaurant, nice simple accommodation (with solar heated water for the showers), a medicinal plant garden, and seems to do good business from its meeting room. It’s got a nice vibe and does reasonably well in some environmental education – worth a visit.

There was some confusion over the best time to hike, since we had not planned to hike for sunrise, or even to get up before sunrise! PPLH organised our guide, and we agreed to start at 3 am so we would be at the summit early, before the heat and the clouds arrive. It worked well – neither of us were feeling too energetic, but we started the hike at 450 m elevation and made it to the summit in about 3.5 hours. We had good view of close neighbours Gunung Welirang and Arjuna, both over 3,000 m and Welirang is really quite active. We could also see Semuru (Java’s highest peak) to the southeast. The summit is quite pleasant with an old grassy crater, where we encountered approximately 30 children who had climbed a different steeper route to the summit (yes, many “Hello Misters” were exchanged).

The decent is a bit trickier than expected, since the steepest part is quite rocky and loose and so there’s lots of sliding and having to concentrate on where you’re putting your feet. A few tumbles were taken. On the way back down there’s a chance to take a closer look at some of the temples, most of which are small, but actually very well maintained. As we re-entered the forest near the starting point there were some great old trees, but mostly the forest is very degraded and taken over by agriculture as high up the mountain as possible. The trail is really quite free of litter though, and our guide was great, and picked up any plastic bottles that as usual people throw to the floor everywhere in Indonesia.

After a much needed mandi (shower) we had another fine lunch before being dropped off at the airport to come home. It really was a short weekend getaway, but otherwise it would have been another weekend of late night football and catching up on office work. Gill has now climbed 11 volcanoes/mountains, and Andy 14. Will we reach 20 Ribus this year….?

Gunung Penanggungan

Posted in: Gunung Bagging.
Tagged: East Java

Gunung Merbabu and Solo

Jun 21st, 2010

by Gill.

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For the long weekend at the end of May we decided to head to central Java to climb Gunung Merbabu and to take in the sights of Solo. We flew into Semarang on Thursday night and took a taxi directly to the hill village of Kopeng, where we met our trip organiser Pak Totok. It was straight to bed as we arrived late and we were aiming for a 5 am start the next morning. We dragged ourselves out of bed at 4.30 am and forced some fried rice down our necks before setting off for the trailhead in an angkot with our two porters. By 5.45 we were already on the trail. After about 15 minutes the porters stopped for breakfast; we knew then it wouldn’t be a record breaking climb in terms of speed. Andy and I hiked on ahead and waited at several points for the porters to catch up, including a 1.5 hour break with a nap at lunchtime! We learned our lesson on Tambora – don’t get too far ahead of the porters, especially if it looks like rain, as they might decide to stop for the day without bringing your tent to where you are waiting! The forest was pretty along the way, not too dense and as we got higher it turned into grassland with sparse trees. We got some good views of Gunung Sumbing and Gunung Sindoro to the west.
After lunch we took some of the weight out of the porter packs to speed things up a bit, but the weather was already closing in – luckily we were only caught in the rain for about 10 minutes and then we got back out of the clouds the final push to the summit campsite. The camping area is actually on summit 4 (from a total of 7). Summits 4 through 7 are spaced along a ridge and all have great views; summit 7, at 3171m is the true summit. The weather brightened up and we got some great views over to Gunung Merapi smoking and looking mean to the south. After a dinner of noodles and bandrek (a hot drink made from ginger, pepper and palm sugar) it was an early night for us after our lack of sleep the night before.
We were woken up about 3.30 am by the arrival of a large group of Indonesian students who were hiking up to see the sunrise, and we got up about 5.30 and joined them for the sunrise. After breakfast (porridge and nescafe) we set off to conquer the true peak which took us about 30 minutes. After admiring the view we dropped off the other side of Merbabu and made our way back down to the village of Selo which lies between Merbabu and Merapi. Pak Totok was waiting for us in his trust angkot and we found a car in Selo to take us into Solo.
After arriving in Solo, it was first stop for a shower and then off for a cold beer and a very nice Italian meal at the cleverly name Oh Solo Mio restaurant. Solo is famous as a center for Javanese culture and arts and has thriving traditional dance, music and arts scene, including handmade batik fabrics with traditional patterns. The next day we took a look around the town which was smaller and nicer than we expected, with many old shophouses down small lanes in the old quarter. We visited the kraton and another palace, ate some very good street food (srabi, a pancake with rice pudding and banana on top, and tahu kupat, tofu served with rice cakes cooked in a banana leaf) and of course bought some batik. Then it was time to hit the road and fly back to Jakarta ready for work on Monday morning.

Gunung Merbabu

Posted in: Gunung Bagging, travel / jalan jalan.
Tagged: Central Java

Lake Toba and Gunung Pangulubao

May 2nd, 2010

by Andy.

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Our accommodtion - traditional Batak style

A trip planned a last minute turned into a really great weekend, including relaxing and eating great food on the shore of the giant Lake Toba and bagging a very seldom climbed mountain – Gunung Pangulubao.

We flew to Medan, arriving in the early evening and after some bad food and a juice in the hotel, we headed out to enjoy a few cold beers in the small cafe bar, strangely right next to the huge local mosque. The next morning, our driver picked us up and we headed south along the busy trans-Sumatra highway, before turning west and starting to climb into the mountains. After about 4 hours driving we arrived in Parapat, which is the main place to catch a ferry across Lake Toba to Tuk Tuk. Parapat gets a bit of a bad write up in the Lonely Planet, but it’s a pretty nice place with a decent market square and places to eat. It is much better to head across the lake, and we chose to stay in the popular Tabo Cottages, which has accommodation in traditional Batak Style houses, a bakery, and really good food. Tuk Tuk is pretty quiet, and when you walk though the village, most of the restaurants and cafe bars are empty – you are probably going to be the only customers.

The gunung bagging obsession meant that we (i.e. Andy) wanted to go and climb Gunung Pangulubao, which is a “Ribu” with more than 1,000 m prominence. On Saturday morning we took the boat back across to Parapat and met up with the guide who we had arranged to take us to the start of the hike at Taman Eden. Most of the locals only hike up the local viewpoint called Bukit Manja, but we wanted to carry on and get to the summit. The forest on the slopes of the mountain is in good condition and from the viewpoint you can see down to the valley containing the road and the huge expanse of Lake Toba. From the forest got increasingly dense and mossy and we had to crawl through, under or over old trees and deadfall. It was really great and we saw orchids, the endemic climbing pitcher plants and black gibbons. It was a great hike and it’s good to bag a seldom-climbed Ribu.

After the hike, we made it back to Tuk Tuk and relaxed with good food and some cold beers. The next morning we rented a motorbike and headed off around Samosir island. It was Sunday and the roads through all the villages were lined with local Batak people coming back from church. Each village has a church, which are mostly in a German style because of the German missionaries who brought Christianity to the area. The cool air and rural setting is really wonderful, and there are some really interesting Batak houses and graveyards/tombs. We’d like to have had more than half a day to explore, but we had to return to make our way back to Tuk Tuk and then back to Medan for our flight to Jakarta.