german | Chaos roaming the world

Having wifi for a night helped a lot with uploading our many, many pictures. So we didn’t mind too much that we had to go out and look for food. Despite our previous experience in Indonesia, many of the food stalls were actually open at 6.45am. With lontong and nasi gurih we had the typical cooked meal for breakfast, something I can now eat but will probably never really appreciate.

Back at our hotel, we got another round of coffee and tea with a plate full of sweet things…I am unsure why they told us that breakfast wasn’t included.

Rocinante had made it through the night in one piece. It was one of these rare occasion when we had to park her just off the street rather than in a private yard or behind a gate. When we had come back from dinner last night, two of the hotel staff had tried to move her which gave us both nearly a heart attack. I was quite worried about the bike throughout the evening.

And off we went. Our goal was to make it to Danau Toba today and have a rest day there, given that we have ridden for 11 days straight now and covered about half of Java and 2000km in Sumatra. This far north, we are now in the region of the Christian Batak people. All of a sudden, Christianity and Christmas are back with churches, roadside Christmas trees and the “Selamat Hari Natal & Tahun Baru”.

If you are now wondering how we can make so many kilometres in Sumatra and still have road to go: Sumatra is the sixth largest island in the world. If you look at a globe, we are now as far away from Wellington as we are from Frankfurt.

Flo’s boots after a bit with a landslide

Roadwise, we are back on the “main road” which is still mostly mud these days (ok, the occasional but very bad muddy bit). Flo was happy that we still have the Heidenau tyres on as they give us good grip on the most grimy surfaces. Landslides occur often in the rain so today we actually gave some money to the workers clearing the way because if they hadn’t, we would have been stuck.

After lunch, it got cooler and we realized that we were at 1800m above sea level with a nice wind that reminded us of NZ. It didn’t take long and we started to have views down from the high plateau towards Lake Toba and the gigantic island in its middle, about the size of Singapore. The “island” had originally been a peninsula but is now separated from the mainland by a channel with a very short bridge over it.

Looking down on Danau Toba and the island of Samosir

Still having to go 50km around the island to its other side, we were getting mighty tired and looking forward to our break from the bike. In the village of Tuk Tuk, there are many guest houses and we had picked one to check out. When we finally arrived and it looked decent, we booked it for two nights and collapsed…for about five minutes. Then chores dawned on us. We organized some laundry as 11 days is stretching our cloths-limit quite a bit. I had ice cream while Flo (“tall and handsome”, remember?) was asked to help carry a generator which looked pretty heavy.

The only other thing we managed today: Have coffee, black tea with real milk and German cake. Yes, there is a German-owned guest house (outside of our price range) with an attached bakery so we got Streuselkuchen and lemon cake. It was sooooooooooooo good! It got even better when the residing cats decided that I was allowed to pat them. 🙂

: Flo’s boots after a bit with a landslide

: Very pastoral scene with geese

: Churches are back in the north

: Very pretty but full of pot holes

: Looking down on Danau Toba and the island of Samosir

: Coming down from a high plateau…

: …to a view like this. Seen from the road

: Shot of what is still to come

: Down at the level of the lake now

: View of a church on the island of Samosir

: View across rice fields, the lake and mountains

: A Christmas tree out of painted green plastic bottles

: Getting an enthusiastic welcome from a puppy

: Puppy wouldn’t even pose for a picture

: Instead, it chose to get stuck underneath my knee

: Our lovely big room

: A German style bakery in the village!

: Including some Christmas decorations!

: Streuselkuchen and lemon cake. YUM!

: Attracting the resident cats for a pat

: The cats were also not big fans of posing for pictures…

It was almost a sin not to have taken a photo of our marvelous breakfast. Then again, some things should be enjoyed uninterrupted. We decided to go all in with the level of the accommodation and have breakfast there. It was excellent: Freshly toasted home made bread, local made jams, fresh fruit salad, scrambled egg and fresh juice. It was so delicious! We even had briefly considered staying another night, but after that breakfast we were thoroughly luxuried out.

View back north where we came from

We took our time and were back on the road by 11 am. By chance of our starting position, our GPS chose a beautiful back road back up the mountain towards our first goal. The three lakes looked cool on the map and as expected delivered on beautiful roads and moderate amounts of tourists.

We briefly dipped down to the lakes themselves, but found little to hold us for longer. The first one was the most touristy and after realizing that we stopped in front of another temple. Half way out of our gear we did a 180° and were back on the road in no time. The second lake was quieter and had the first campground we found in Indonesia on its shores. It was too early to think of camping and the warung had no food – so after a quick drink with lake view we headed for the ridge road over the last two lakes.

at lunch, great spot

Coming in we saw that the ridge road had plenty of eateries with a view, so that is where we were heading for. The road held true with all levels of eateries. We ended up stopping at a top end warung run by a french expat. He had the trees on the lake side cleared and put up tables across the street so that guest could eat with a view. I had a chat with the owner, who it turned out had been travelling quite a bit in his day.

I still did not make it all the way back to our table after that. As happened in New Zealand, a couple on vacation from Germany noticed the German licence plate on Rocinante and we got talking some more. Alexandra and Patrick seemed definitively to be on the nicer end of tourists we encounter. Just earlier that day we had another weird run in with Germans that re-affirmed our dislike for “touristy” areas. We got asked the same disinterested questions and then got ignored while answering because they had to purchase ridiculously overpriced rubbish from hawkers. Anyway, we gave a business card to Alexandra and Patrick when they left and soon after headed out ourselves.

german welcome for a german bike

The last itinerary for the day before finding a place to stay. Back in Dili, we got an address from fellow German traveller Hubert – go and say hi to Richard at his place in Lovina. Aptly named “Deutsches Eck” (German corner) we were in for a rough culture shock. Richard has build himself a good life here, with a family and a good little hotel. As we were ready to head out again to find a place to stay (the rooms here are a bit too pricey for us) Richard offered us to stay on the bale bengong (A 3x3m raised platform with a roof for shade that is out front most houses for chilling during the day). We got a mosquito net and there were even blinds, all for an unbeatable fee for the night. When he threw in the promise of “Leberwurst” and sour dough bread, we could not refuse, could we?

So we stuck around for the night, chatted to Richard’s sons, other guests and German expats that came by and gathered further contacts along what we dubbed the “Leberwurst Connection” – a row of German expats along our further path through Indonesia. Speaking German again and even seeing German dishes on the menu was cool and supremely weird at the same time. Definitively something we will need to process a bit once back on the road.