Yogyakarta, May 23 - 26

Man, I'm a little behind on May. Because I DID SO MUCH in May. I was traveling every weekend!

The last weekend in May, I traveled to Yogyakarta (pronounced like "Jogjakarta") for the second and sadly last time, to hang out with Holly and co-present with her at her school there, UII (Universitas Islam Indonesia).

I got in on Thursday afternoon, after a 5-hour train ride from Surabaya during which I pretty much slept the entire time. I love trains! You get more personal space than you would in an airplane, you get to see the local scenery (if you're not sleeping), and you're not afraid of falling out of the sky.

Back to the story. Holly and I just hung out at her house most of Thursday, until we went out to what was supposed to be an early dinner at this awesome Italian restaurant nearby. But Holly couldn't find her keys. We'd last seen them out on the front porch, where we'd been petting the local stray cats, and they weren't there any more. Some neighborhood children had waved at us from the porch earlier that day, but we didn't think they'd TAKE her keys...would they?

Well, we couldn't find the keys anywhere, so eventually Holly went out to try and find someone who could ask the kids if they'd taken the keys. This older ibu, who is very kind but doesn't speak a lick of English, offered to help look for the keys, and while she did that, Holly called her counterpart to ask him what to do.

After about 10 minutes, the ibu came back with Holly's keys. Hooray! Holly took them and asked the ibu to talk to her counterpart on the phone to explain what happened. Meanwhile, we slowly noticed that the keys were wet...and kind of sticky...and smelled bad. Eventually we found out that the children HAD taken her keys, and then dropped them in the dirty water that runs along the side of the road! And when the ibu asked them to get the keys, they wouldn't tell her, so she looked around and find them herself! Man. The kindness of strangers. Or sort-of strangers. Anyway, Holly and I were very grateful, and Holly ended up buying the lady a nice scarf the next day when we were out shopping to say thank you.

And then we got delicious Italian food (Greek salad with real feta cheese! Margharita pizza!).

Friday morning we went to Holly's campus, which is freaking amazingly modern and clean and GREEN (there are trees everywhere!) and presented for about an hour and a half about alternative assessment. Yay.

I am actually totally posing here.

After the presentation, we took a taxi up to Mirota, which is the place to buy cheap souvenirs in Indonesia, and "got lost in the Mirota vortex" (as Holly put it) for a couple hours before grabbing a drink at the pretty cafe next door.

Then we went back to Holly's house to pet the stray cats again. Specifically, there are two stray cats, which consist of a mama cat and her one teenage offspring. They are soooo sweet. And I am sooooo animal starved. I think these two cats were the highlight of my trip to Yogya.

Mommy and baby. 

Mama cat has HUGE, gorgeous eyes! 

Before I came to Yogyakarta, Holly had asked me if I was interested in climbing Mt. Merapi, which is the local mountain there. I said SURE! Especially since I haven't really hiked any real volcanoes yet, and Indonesia is crawling with volcanoes. I felt like I needed to hike a good one before leaving. I didn't know anything about Merapi, really, except that it wasn't that tall. And I hadn't heard that it was so challenging to hike. 

It's probably best that I didn't know much about it beforehand, because let's just say it turned out to be much more challenging than I (or Holly, I think) expected. First of all, the guides we hired (two young guys named Dion and Badu, who had just hiked the mountain the night before with another group of tourists! Wow.) picked us up at 10pm on Friday night. Then we drove 2 hours to "base camp," where the guides loaded up their gear. We started hiking the mountain at a little after midnight. 

It takes about 5 hours to hike up Merapi, so the hike was timed to see the sunrise at the top. Most of the trail was a little on the steep side, involving fairly big steps and grabbing lots of random branches to help pull ourselves up. But it wasn't too tough until we got to the last hour or hour and a half, which was the final peak--that part of the trail consisted of lots of volcanic rock and pebbles. Part of that hike felt like quicksand; for every step you took, you would slide down a few inches. That part was pretty frustrating, but thankfully it only lasted a short time (maybe 15 or 20 minutes?). 

The very last part of the peak involved very steep hiking, grabbing on to any rocks you could, and trying to make sure that every step you took was onto something that wouldn't roll downhill. I was glad it was mostly too dark to see how steep the drop off was behind me. 

And finally, at about 5:30am, we reached the top! 

The lights of Yogyakarta behind us! 

Orange, glowing lava behind me! Apparently Merapi has a sizable eruption approximately every three years. This was an off-year, thankfully. 

The edge of the volcano opening. On the left, you can see the steam coming out of the volcano. 

Rays of light from the sunrise. 

The neighboring mountain; I think it might be Merbabu? 

One of our guides, Dion. 

Our other guide, Badu, making a silly face and looking like an old Muslim grandmother. 

See the person with a death wish standing on the highest peak there? So scary. 

The four of us! Dion, me, Holly, and Badu. 

 It was cold and windy at the top! Hence the bundled-up look.

We stayed at the top for about 30 minutes, and then began the hike down. The first part of the hike down wasn't too bad. Even though it was scarily steep, we could now SEE everything clearly! And the sky was a beautiful blue.

Climbing down from the peak. 

After the quicksand part.

Looking back and realizing how steep all of that was. See the tiny people in orange and red? 

Cool view to the side; you can see where the vegetation just stops. 

View to the other side. Beautiful! 

We stopped after climbing down the initial, really steep part, to have some breakfast. Dion and Badu cooked us fried rice and gave us bananas, and it was nice to just relax for about an hour before continuing down the mountain.

Group photo where we stopped to eat breakfast. 

Unfortunately, that was pretty much the end of our high spirits. Holly and I had no idea how exhaustingly tedious the rest of the hike down would be. Though it only took about 2.5 hours to hike down, it felt like FOREVER. The ground was pretty rocky, and it was still quite steep, so you were constantly trying to prevent yourself from slipping. And of course, the more your legs get tired as you keep walking downhill, the more you're likely to slip, which gets really frustrating after a while. Holly and I played this game, where she would ask, "Would you turn around now and hike to the top again, if you could get [insert reward here]?" For example, "Would you turn around now and hike to the top again, if you could get $100,000?" "A great teaching job when you get back to the States?" "One million dollars?" Eventually, we got so exhausted the answer to every option was NO WAY! By the last half hour or so, we gave up our conversation completely, and pretty much just gritted our teeth and tried not to complain too much about the fact that we just. wanted. to. be. finished.

The only picture I took of the rest of the descent. I was trying to appreciate the scenery, despite wishing the hike was DONE. 

Of course, we did finally reach the end, despite our fears to the contrary, and everyone passed out on the drive back to Holly's house. Holly and I slept most of the rest of Saturday (and woke up to pet the cats, of course), only leaving the house to get dinner that night. 

On Sunday, I had to catch a flight back at 3pm, so we had enough time to take a taxi to the Hyatt and spend the big bucks ($15!) to use their pool and eat the buffet brunch they were serving. Worth every penny. I believe the highlight was ordering multiple plates of waffles with chocolate syrup. And then I flew back to Surabaya, very sore but proud of our accomplishment. But no more volcanoes for another couple years.