One of the main reasons that we took our holidays in Indonesia was to get the chance to climb the volcano on the island of Lombok: Rinjani. This is the second highest volcano in Indonesia and is apparently of a similar height to Mount Fuji. It's still active and was throwing rocks around as lately as May 2010. However, the crater now sports its own lake from which another miniature volcano peak is rising - it's this that is the active part. We took a 3 day and 2 night tour which started in the town of Sembalung on the East of the mountain. This area is very fertile and there is everything growing from coffee beans to strawberry plants in the tropical sun! The first few hours was relatively easy as it was through savannah, but then the real slog started. We ascended around 1200m to the rim of the crater to be met by our ever-smiling porters who carried all food and camping equipment in bamboo baskets strung on a pole over their shoulders. To make us feel even more unfit, they race up and down the mountain in flip flops and only seem to stop for cigarette breaks! The view into the crater was breath-taking and worth the blisters. The other 2 members of our group (2 French brothers; Emmanuelle and Aureliene - great fun!) elected to get up at 2.30am and make the final ~1000m ascent to the summit proper, but we were more sensible and stayed in bed and got up at a more leisurely time of 6.30am to watch the sun rise - very romantic. When our 2 travelling companions had returned to the rim, we then set off on the next 5 hours of our walk (can you see why we didn't go to the top?!). Down in to the crater itself and then a visit to the hot springs that flowed out of it helped to ease aching muscles...and also made some improvements on the smell we were starting to generate. I thought that the hike up the other side of the crater to the opposite rim was going to defeat me, but the sheer determination to not be one of the hikers who cries at some point in the trip spurred me on! Again the view of the sunset setting over a landscape in which you are the highest point was breath-taking. That evening we sat around the fire with our guide and porters and chatted and laughed - even though we didn't share that much language in common. We even tried the local Indonesian chili sauce (sambal) that the porters gulped down in huge quantities, although it caused Emmanuelle to cough so violently that he managed to get a grain of rice wedged in his nose!! The next day was all down hill, which was possibly worse than the up, but it did allow us to look rather smugly on the people who were only just starting off on the long slog up. We were dropped back at our hotel in Sengiggi where we lay around the pool for a couple of days - mostly because our legs wouldn't let us get up or walk sensibly!
A hair raising boat ride back to Bali (I was seriously considering stuffing my passport in my underwear so they could identify my body although Matt was taking a slightly more optimistic approach and rubbing sun cream in so that we wouldn't burn whilst waiting to be rescued!) allowed us to finish our holiday in the resort of Sanur.
A lovely 2 weeks away and my walking is almost back to normal...
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