After a long bus journey from Bukit Lawang we arrived in Bergastagi absolutely shattered. I promptly refused do climb any volcano as i thought my legs might fall off! I wanted to chill out at Lake Toba then stop and climb Mount Sibayak on our way back to Medan in a few days time. After some food and drink I felt much better and made an agreement with han and Carolyn that i would climb the volcano at 7am the following day if my shoes were dry! They were still soaking from the jungle trek so i was pretty confident there would be no climbing the next day! Unfortunately we had to make a decision that evening as we had book a guide and transport to lake Toba following the climb.
We booked to go the jungle route up the volcano with a guide, have lunch provided, visit the hot springs on the way back down and then be taken all the way to Lake Toba. It cost more than the local bus but saved us lots of time and hassle and for less than 10 pounds it was a bargain considering the journey takes about 5 hours.
So, we all had an early night and got up about 5:30am to get ready for our volcano climb. Mount Sibayak is over 2000ft high so its doable but not easy. I have banana porridge for breakfast (regular meal now!) and tea with condensed milk (try it - it's amazing!) which set me up for my challenge!
We were picked up by our guide, Gilly, and driver at 7am and taken to the edge of the jungle. It started off pretty easy and i was thinking it was a doddle compared to the trek in Bukit Lawang! I was feeling highly fit and healthy until the scrambling and crawling parts arrived... by the time we had nearly reached the top i thought my legs were going to drop off. I still don'y know how i made it, my legs just stopped working! My excuse is that a leech had attached me half way up the volcano and must have sucked out half of my energy.
I cannot begin to describe how many leeches there were in the jungle part of the volcano - they were everywhere! I spotted on on my ankle and lept out a little yelp (well, maybe it was more of a scream) and Gilly came to my rescue. he pulled the leech off and it was bleeding quite a bit - yuck! After that i was paranoid about getting bitten again so every 2 minutes i was checking my feet, and more often that not there was at least one leech on my shoes.
The climb was well worth it when we got to the top - took about 3 hours or so - the views were fantastic. The volcano is dormant but still had sulphur and steam coming out of parts. I have never seen a volcano before so don't know if it was big or small - it looked big to me though! We stopped at the top for lunch which was Nasi Goreng (spicy rice with a fried egg). This is one of my favourite Indonesian meals although sometimes it's a bit too hot to handle!
It was chilly at the very top so we headed back down after a 20 minute rest - it was sooo much easier walking down! After about 2 hours of walking we arrived at the hot springs, which were more than welcome. We stripped off to our bikini's and relaxed and soothed our sore muscles for a while before getting in our minibus and heading back to out hotel to collect our big bags.
We picked up all our stuff, including our fresh, clean washing and got back in the minibus and headed to Lake Toba. On the way we stopped at a beautiful waterfall that was just enormous - the largest waterfall i think i have ever seen. While we were there we met some Indonesian schoolgirls who were dying to talk to us. They were about 13 or 14 years old and they were so cute because they all wanted to stand next to us and talk to us. They even asked if we were on facebook and wanted to add us as friends! After chatting for about 5 minutes we said goodbye and continued on our journey to the Lake... i will write about this in the next story.
