Tag Archives: Sumatra

Day 138 – A little bit of nothing

We overslept due to staying up late, talking to Yana and Robin. So instead of catching the ferry at 6am, we got up and had breakfast at 8am. Yummy honey bread rolls with tea/coffee which is not the usual thing you get.

Leaving the lake shore not by ferry but by land...

Leaving the lake shore not by ferry but by land…

After breakfast, we had to deal with a dilemma: The next ferry leaves at 10am or we can drive 50km more and skip the transport across water altogether. Keen on getting back on the road after our rest day, we decided on the latter option. It wasn’t even that frustrating to retrace our steps as it usually is. Going back up into the mountains, we had to deal with a new phenomenon: Bad sight due to low hanging clouds. The resulting mist led to a couple of eerie but beautiful shots of the road.

Neither was it fun to ride on

Neither was it fun to ride on

Then we continued up the western side of the lake to cross over to the other side in the north. This road, leading from the western side of the lake to the eastern side, was the worst road we had been on for a long time. Maybe we have just gone full circle as this road rivalled the ones in Timor-Leste. Every dip, every intersection and every crest was simply gone, replaced by a mud hole full of stones, mud puddles and deep, deep truck ruts. Flo even dropped the bike once, luckily not into a mud puddle so at least we were spared the pig-like look.

One of the hallmark pictures of Sumatra

One of the hallmark pictures of Sumatra

Flo and I were both ready to kiss tarmac again when the “road” ended after 15km and we were back on the proper stuff. The next kilometres flew by until it started to rain. More than a drizzle, not quite a tropical torrent, we stopped at a roadside warung to have a coffee and see if the rain passes or if we have to put on rain gear. The warung food was rather unspectacular (Pop Mie with an egg was on offer) but the coffee and tea were good, hot and sweet. The lady also sold real oreo cookies which we finished in one go to our hot beverage. The best thing about this warung though was that it had a row of windows on the other side, looking out over a valley covered in rain clouds. It looked very much like a picture that might pop into your head if you think “Sumatra”.

Flo got first class treatment at the barber's

Flo got first class treatment at the barber’s

After the break, the rain had stopped. However, with the slow going and the rain break, we were now far behind our planned 300km for today. We kept going for as long as we could but there was no way to make up for the “lost” time. So we changed the plan rather than force it. The city of Medan was the new goal for the night and we found a very efficient, clean but cheap hotel which caters to airport passengers.

On our usual evening stroll looking for food, we came across a Barber shop. It was the first one that we have seen in Indonesia and Flo’s beard badly needed some shape so we went in. It was quite the luxurious treatment: A haircut and trim for the beard and then a hot towel face massage. I started getting a bit jealous of the “feel good” treatment Flo got…

Day 137 – Pleasant interruption

Nina spots all the cats

Nina spots all the cats

Relax and recharge, that is what we proscribed ourselves for today. The sun was out when we crawled out of our room after a decadently long sleep in our King size bed. Falling out of the bed. This was presently followed by an equally decadent breakfast.

After that, we went on a brief stroll around Tuk-Tuk to make use of the sunshine while it lasted. Truly brief though, and soon we were back at our Hotel, hogging Wi-Fi, milling about and doing some light blogging. Around 11 am two outside guests arrived while we were just finishing one of our blog posts. They had been around last night, and I could not help but comment on their rather lavish breakfast order. A brief conversation at shouting distance was sensibly brought to an end when we joined them at their table. Which is also where we spend the rest of the day!

Sorry Robin, 3/4 with eyes closed. I'd say that's a sign of inner calm

Sorry Robin, 3/4 with eyes closed. I’d say that’s a sign of inner calm

It was refreshing to be able to have an intelligent conversation with like minded people. Since Jogja, we were either missing the company or the language skills for it, but it was just the thing to get us in a good mood again. We sat with Germans Yana and Robin all day till 11 pm (way past bedtime for us ancient folk). The two are on a gap year / vacation before starting university. I must say, I was much impressed at the wisdom both of them already possessed – I am not sure if I was that good a company 10 years ago ;). It seems the FSJ (voluntary social service year introduced after the end of the draft) is good for some solid character building.

Thus, the day passed, as food and drink flowed in to keep up our discussions on traveling, politics, life and everything else. Not much to blog about really, other than to say that we had a great time. Maybe we will even meet the two of them again later on our trip.

Day 136 – Danau Toba

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

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

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. 🙂

Day 135 – Duality and decisions

Should we stay or should we go? Follow the Lonely Planet’s tips, Ulrich’s advice or our gut feeling? For the first time in months we have something of a goal ahead: Getting to Kuala Lumpur before our Indonesian visa runs out and fly up to Thailand to visit my dad for a bit. Maybe this is what makes both of us restless. Or the overwhelming size of Sumatra. Where to stop and explore and where to push through? It is too big to try to do all of it justice in the time we have left.

There are 12 days left on our visa, minus a small contingency to avoid putting us into a tight spot at the end in Tajungbalai. Two more things we both want to do for certain: spend a day at Lake Toba and see the Orang Utans at the rehabilitation center in Bukit Lawang. Getting there equals five to six days of riding. So eight days in total, with four days to spare at the end. Another day spend at a location would be on the cards, but in the end, we could not bring us to use it now.

With uncertainty and that storm of thoughts in our minds we left Ulrich early in the morning, the Bukitinggi regions left unexplored with the intention of reaching lake Toba in two days. Day 10 of almost pure riding since we left Yogyakarta. 2500 km behind us, it feels so close. Still, more than 1000 km to go … the worlds sixth largest island is getting to us.

Crossing the equator! This calls for an excited jump!

Crossing the equator! This calls for an excited jump!

Even before lunch, we hit a mighty important place regardless of our musings. Here, pretty much in the middle of nowhere we crossed the equator. What a milestone! From Wellington! We made it! First crossing the Tropic of Capricorn in Australia and now onto the northern Hemisphere. Neither of us has ever crossed the equator in anything but a plane. We made it roughly half our way, a quarter of the way around the world (ok, 1000km short …). Nina was so excited that she justly broke our “no souvenir”-rule and bought a t-shirt (she drove a hard bargain to get it, though).

The road continued to alternate between amazing and horrendous from here on out, but the traffic was always light and made up for it. Our stop for the night was in Padangsidempuan, an un-remarkable town half way between Bukitinggi and our destination on the peninsular /island of Samosir. The room was cheap and clean, on the ground floor and the WiFi was good.

Day 131 – Squatting

We had an almost perfect start to the day. Instant noodles for breakfast were made even harder to stomached when we learned that they were not even included in the room rate. We could have had cake!

we followed this river for a good while

we followed this river for a good while

Regardless, or maybe because of that, we got onto the road super early. Before 8 am, we were well on our way towards our target for the day: Pagaralam. The Lonely Planet has a side note about some monolithic statues in the area and it seemed better than sticking to the Trans-Sumatra Highway.

The ride was a much needed breeze, with sunshine, cool morning temperatures and very light traffic. We had the first 110 km done before 10 am. From here, we turned off the alternative highway onto a real back road. The GPS has been set to shortest distance avoid unsealed roads. I was a bit nervous about the shortcut we were about to take, but it worked out perfectly. For the next 50 km we followed a sealed single track mountain road, through forgotten little villages, forest covered peaks and deep gorges. But even here, squatters have started to transform the peaceful mountain road into the customary one long roadside village that we got so familiar with on Java.

Thanks for the food rescue, it was delicious!

Thanks for the food rescue, it was delicious!

We were still riding in sunshine for the most time, with the occasional cloud providing some welcome cool, but we could already see the big thunderstorms building up behind the mountains to the west. With only short breaks not to break our stride we arrived in Pagaralam just in time for lunch.

For some reason, we picked the only place in town that sold meatballs exclusively. Nina asked for vegetarian food as always but was turned away at first, after Yeni, the resident English speaker was called to translate. As we were about to move on, Yeni came back and said that they would be able to dish something up regardless, so we sat down. Once again we were blown away by the friendliness and helpfulness of the Indonesians. We were the only ones with anything other than meatballs and we tucked in. The food was great, but way too much for us.

we got reminded of Quasimodo ...

we got reminded of Quasimodo …

On our way out we went through an almost customary round of photos and selfies with the staff and selected guests. Everyone is super friendly about it, so we don’t mind posing. It still is super weird, though. I take it as a tiny sliver of the experience that celebrities go through. Just that we have not done much to deserve that attention other than being white and coming to these places on our own.

With directions from the Bakso place, we found a hotel (we decided on a different but brand new one on the way to the one we were looking for). The sky was already darkening at a disconcerting pace, so after unloading the bike we quickly got back out in search for the Batu Beribu. These stone carvings of squatting humans are thousands of years old. We started with directions from the roadside and then added directions from the locals along the way. In the end we passed it three times before honing in on the place, just before the rain set in.

We made it back to the hotel just mildly wet and before the really heavy rains set in. This gave us ample opportunity to catch up on the project for awesome (http://www.projectforawesome.com/) via the hotel WiFi and rest. There are 850km ahead of us until the next milestone, and 1600 km in total on Sumatra, before our time in Indonesia is up. We are starting to look forward to catching up with my dad and his partner over the holidays and to savour Kuala Lumpur in the new year.

The day ended again on a highlight. Yudis, the lone staffer in the hotel that night offered us a taster of his afternoon snack (a kind of fried spring role with sambal) and we got talking. He is a real charmer and his English was plenty enough to have a good chat. We had coffee and tea served and sat with him until evening prayer time.

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.