Tag Archives: free roads

Day 130 – Covering some distance

Waking up on Sumatra, we had to come up with a plan. Wanting to meet up with Flo’s dad in Thailand over Christmas, we don’t have that much time left. Most of the sights we want to see are in the north of the island and the port town that we’re going to ship out off is about 1800km away.

our standard drink, citrus juice on ice. This was lime ... hmmm.

our standard drink, citrus juice on ice. This was lime … hmmm.

So with a bit of a heavy heart, we decided to skip the two National Parks in the south and put some miles on the clock instead.

Luckily, the traffic here is much lighter than in Java despite many trucks using the Trans-Sumatra-Highway. Those trucks are slow and emit whole clouds of black diesel clouds which make it hard to breathe and makes our faces very dirty…but…they are easily overtaken.

A day in the saddle it was. A break for a fruit juice at 10am broke up the morning ride a bit and then we had lunch at a roadside warung. The young staff cracked up laughing about our difficulties ordering food, in a nice kind of way. Food was good, especially the eggplant-chili-plate. When it was time to leave, the same staff asked us for photos. Of course, we obliged. Then Flo asked them for a picture with lead to squeaks and a bit of excited chaos before everyone was ready.

Stopped one more time to buy new chain oil. The owner of the small warung moto was so happy that we stopped at his place and very interested in our travels. With a big smile on our faces, we moved on.

before the rain

before the rain

It started to look like it’s gonna rain and we were getting exhausted so after 300km, we looked for accommodation along the road. The first hotel we looked at was not up to my standard though we briefly considered breaking out the air mattresses and sleep on the floor. We turned it down in the end, moved on to a little shop further down and had another coke and juice. Again, the girls asked us for a photo session. This time, I actually copied one of their poses and she squee-ed like it was her birthday. 🙂

The sat nav told us there where more hotels about 30km further along…so back on the road for us. In the end, we didn’t need to ride that far as we found a roadside motel that was affordable. It even had AC, some power cuts and the cutest pet monkey ever! Even better, it gave us shelter from the massive monsoon thunderstorm rolling in at nightfall.