The Jungle Book: Gunung Merapi, August 29

Gunung Merapi

Most of the day today I spent staying off my feet in preparation for the sunrise hike of Gunung Merapi (Mountain of Fire) that began at midnight. Merapi is Indonesia's most active volcano and in 2006, it's last major eruption, 28,000 villagers were evacuated. I had a nice big dinner around 8pm then met the tour operators at 10:00pm for the two hour drive from Yogyakarta to Gunung Merapi. Not sure who else was doing the trip, I was shortly joined by two Polish girls, two Russian ladies and a Dutch guy. The drive was nothing special, although it felt like we were driving out to the Blair Witch Project site as it was completely dark, we had no idea where we were going and the driver didn't speak a word of English. It was funny because no one had a clue what to expect from this trip as we weren't told anything about it except bring water and warm clothes.

We arrived at the rest house around Midnight and waited there with a cup of tea until 12:30 when we were introduced to our guides. From there we were off. The hike began on a road for the first 500 meters then turned into a narrow dirt path. Although we had flashlights, we barely used them as the moon was bright enough to lead the way. About two hours into the hike the wind really started to pick-up with gusts around 45mph so it was a bit cold. It was amazing though that I never once felt tired, even though it was the middle of the night, since I was running on pure adrenaline. At 2:30am we came across a group of Indonesian kids who were huddled around a big pan of noodles they had been cooking. After about a 30 minute rest there, and many oreos, we continued on. At this point we started to have a great view of of the surrounding area, despite it being dark, with outlines of mountains and other volcanoes in the distance. When we got to the base of the conical top of the volcano, we came across a couple graves from people who died when Merapi erupted in 2006 (not an encouraging sign). The last few hundred meters were pretty difficult since it was a volcanic ash ground which was slippery and other big boulders. We passed a few sulfur vents which served as natural heaters which kept us warm though.

We finally got to the top around 5:00am, just before sunrise. In the distance you could see the light beginning to show on the horizon. Winds were intense up there so every few minutes you'd have to hide behind rocks for shelter -- it felt like you'd be blown away -- plus the sulfuric smell was very strong since it's quite active. The sun came up a little after 5:15 for what was probably the most amazing views I've ever seen. The colors of the sky were incredible, from pink and orange to a dark blue and with the surrounding volcanoes made for postcard type photographs. I wound up taking 150 photos at the top so as you can imagine I was pretty excited to be there!

At 6:30 we began the hike down, which was actually very enjoyable because now we could see what our surroundings were like. I was glad I couldn't see some parts on the way up because of the steepness and the narrow path. Looking up the volcano, I was pretty amazed that we were able to walk up some of the slopes. On the way down, after multiple slips and slides, we came across a few villagers who were farming corn and tobacco on the hill side. Finally we made it to the bottom around 8am for a nice breakfast and the drive back to Yogyakarta (most of which I slept since we had gone 24hrs without sleeping). Once back I slept the day away!