Gunung Sibayak...

It is now 7:18am, July 16th, and in am sitting on a cold big rock, overlooking the gigantic crater of the mount Sibayak volcano, in Berastagi North Sumatra. I am now stuck on that rock as the fog has grown so thick and all over that all i can pretty much see is my finger tips and my tablet.

Yes, i took my tablet as I knew that being high up on this mountain at sunrise would make me want to write. :-)

This morning I woke up at 3am, after barely getting any sleep (the book I am currently reading, Shantaram, is so good I can hardly put it down to go to sleep at decent hours.)

Berastagi is a transit town between the west coast of Sumatra and its east coast where Medan is kind of located, so it means that there is always some sort of kijang and other smaller trucks traffic through the main road. But also, since it is Ramadan, the streets are usually populated with the Muslims of the town as they eat before the sun rises. When I got out the door at 3:08am with my backpack on and saw that the warungs were still open and actually filled with customers I was quite surprised. They must have thought I was crazy to be walking out so early in the morning. Oh well...

I really wanted to hike that volcano, my first volcano, and be up there for sunrise...despite the fact that the weather has been pretty bad and cloudy since I got here...so crossing my fingers I hit the road with a 10 year old and approximate map of how to get up there.

Mind you, on the map and most tourist info documents it is written in big letters 'do not climb alone, it is dangerous, people have died'...sure just about the right thing to say in order to motive me to actually do it...and to make it a tad more challenging, by night. :-)

Three things i should have done before departing:
1) ask if there are any dangerous animals in the jungle I would have to cross for most of the way? (After all, the jungle reserve is called Leuser Natural Reserve, and if I am correct, Leuser actually means jaguar...I was actually, leuser is just the name of the forest, nothing more)
2) buy some batteries for my head lamp (I have been using my lamp for four months now, and its intensity is not that bright anymore)
3) ask what is the average temperature at the top of the volcano a dawn (only packed a light hoody and a T-shirt, and it is now god damn freezing!)

The volcano in itself is not that high at all, only 2,000m, piece of cake I thought. Ufffff!

The first half hour of the hike was through the town, so slightly lit road, and filled with mean yet inoffensive barking dogs.  I kind of have a fear of dogs ever since I got attacked and seriously chewed on by Edu's boxer in the Dominican Republic 10 years ago. :0(

Anyhow, then is when it started getting a bit tricky. I was the only person on the road. It was so pitch black at the entrance of the jungle, and the jungle was so dense that I couldn't even see the sky, nor the mountain to guide me. And despite the cold, I was sweating like a mad man.

The fact of not having a clue about the wild life in that part of the jungle is what got my nerves shaking the most. Seriously, when I say it was pitch black, I really mean absolute darkness. Every single noise raised so much suspicion in me. It so reminded me of when I was a kid back in the south of france. Between the front gate of our land and the house there was a good half a kilometer of zigzagging steep road through the forest. So when I would come back home at night, after hanging out with friends or playing basketball in the town, it was always the big challenge to climb back home. Every shadow in the darkness made me think it was a wild animal of some sort...to the point that I found a good trick to shorten the scary moment as much as possible: run up as fast as possible towards each shadow in order to prove the fear wrong.

So this morning I had quite a few flash backs of when in was younger back home. Except now i was in a wildly populated jungle, the road wasn't 500 meters but rather a good 3 hours hike. And i didn't have much of a clue of where I was going.

The closer i got to the volcano and the foggier it got, adding to the mysterious darkness of the jungle.

At one point, I got a real scare. All of a sudden I see a big black shadow right in front of me. The road was so steep that what was actually only a big water stain on the floor, arrived right at the level of my eyes. Lol I felt a bit stupid after that.

This volcano is not high at all, but for some reasons, I had such a hard time through the hike. Perhaps a mix of the black night, then air heavy in sulfur, the road very steep, the surrounding jungle, the cold, and just not being sure at all where the hell I was going, yet trying to walk as fast as possible to make it for sunrise, and in less than 3 hours...just thought that if i did so, I would kind of impress the local guides and the people in town. Stupid of me, I give you that much. So realizing how stupid it was, half way through i just started to slow down a bit. (I made it in three hours)

Thank god, when the paved path ended and it was time to actually seriously climb up an unmarked dirt path, I had reached a sort of plateau, and found two small groups of local tourists camping there, and having a very early breakfast (5am! Muslims probably) That's when I realised how badly powered was my headlamp, when one of them pulled out his cell phone to use its flashlight app, and well....my headlamp looked like a dying match next to it.

Anyhow, as these local tourists and I tried to find the entrance to the path, arrived a group of three, out of the blue (well more like out of the black), one guide and two foreigners...so they showed me the way. I stayed on their tale, just so i wouldn't get lost and in case my lamp died.

After a very very steep climb, we finally arrived at the edge of the crater...all along we were hearing noises as loud and similar to the ones you can hear right on an airport tarmac as a few planes are about to take off. Really loud! It was actually the noise made by the boiling water coming in contact with the surface, and thus turning into ridiculously hot vapour. Ufff, it was so cold out that for a split second the thought of laying right on top of the hole shooting that vapor crossed my mind. :0S

The sun, or at least the light was slowly making its appearance revealing a gigantic crater and beautiful rock formation making its edge.
But in a split second, all of it was gone. A huge and very thick cloud of fog and vapor had taken over the sky and the entire landscape, in the meantime, the sun was rising, and we were unable to catch a glimpse of it. Not cool!

I wanted to isolate myself a bit just to reflect and think in peace and so i walked along the edge of the crater. Sat down between two rocks to protect myself from the cold, and ate a banana and an orange, and waited...waited...waited, for a good two hours for the fog to move on so I could see where I was and where to go next.

...yes, I am no longer sitting on that one rock where I started writing this post. Lol

When the sky finally cleared up, wow, what a view, on both side!!! But the group of three had disappeared. Oh well, good for me. :-). Peaceful and totally alone on that big volcano.

...It is now 9am, I am still the only one in the area, my fingers are freezing, but it is so worth it.

From here I can see the whole valley and all its villages. Spectacular view!

...OK, it is now past noon. I just spent the past two hours leaving a big message down in the crater for all passers by to see when arriving on the site. He he! Won't say more, but it has to do with how much I despise Indonesians for littering so much.  Quite a few tourists and local guides stayed observing me as I was crafting the message with big rocks, yet, I processed in such a way that no one could make up what it meant until I finished the whole message. :-)

(Even in the crater, and along its crown, there is tons of littering!)

Now, am just waiting, yet again, for the sky to clear up and the fog to scatter so I can see the path down to the hot springs.

...It finally cleared up.

I really don't understand why everyone in town warns you so much about the fatal risks of getting lost around the volcano, perhaps for guides to make money. But seriously, a blind man could find his way around without a problem during day time.

Anyhow, I quickly found an alternate path to go down and 'quick' to the hot springs. Gosh I so wanted to get there quick and soak myself in a steaming hot sulfurous bath for the rest of the day.

Took me about an hour to make it down through a very rough bit magically secluded and steep jungle path, down what used to be actual stairs but now due to various earthquakes are just chunks of slippery concrete here and there, very slippery. The best part of the way down was the last third of the hike. A gigantic forest of giant bamboos. Just divinely beautiful to be wandering around such impressively noble and sober trees.  I bumped into two guys who were cutting down some bamboos to make building material as well as basket weaving material. One of the guys was totally and very eloquently fluent in English. Stunned me so much in such a location! He gave me directions to a shortcut to the hot springs...ufff almost there, at last. :-)

I finally made it to Purnama Air Panas. Wow! A beautiful little rustic yet adorable house, at the foot of the jungle and volcano, with a couple of little hot pools filled by the water coming directly from the volcano. The pools were uncovered. As I slowly eased myself into the water, it started pouring rain. Magical! I was there, soaking in the pool, the hot water against the cold air created thick floating vapor pierced by the heavy falling rain drops. And I was there, all alone, in the middle of it, overlooking the jungle, my body in the hot water and my face being washed off by the rain, in the middle afternoon. I was once again the only one there...at the exception of one white little dog lounging on the side of the pool, and a couple of cats strolling around looking for food.

After a few hours of soaking while reading my book, my skin had aged a good 30 years at least. Time to take a freezing cold shower to rinse  the sulfur off my skin and head back home. Uffffff the walk back to the main road, another hour of walking was fantastic. The base of the volcano is populated by tiny farming villages, growing all sorts of vegetables. Reminded me a lot of Toraja, without the water buffaloes, but with the monumental jungly mountain.

What a fabulous and long day this was. Quite a perfect day in so many ways.

Got home, took a little nap, ate a banana pancake, and went back to sleep at 9pm. Exhausted...