Jakarta to Jogjakarta (Part two: Mt Salak)

Arriving back at our new hostel after exploring waterfalls around Bogor, we found there were quite a number of local travellers who had checked in, as well as some other foreign tourists. One of the local travelers suggested to us foreign tourists that her friend would take us up to Mt Salak the next day, a nearby volcano, for just the cost of whatever a grab car would be. This sounded pretty good as we knew there was a shady guard post at the top that would charge foreigners whatever they felt like on the day, so local help would go a long way. The person offering this help wouldn’t be coming with us, as she had already booked the train for the next day for her and two other foreigners to another popular local destination. She offered for us to join her many times and kept telling us how surprising it was that she could book these train tickets for tomorrow, a public holiday. We declined however as we already had our minds set on seeing the volcano.

Making our way up the path to the crater

We woke early the next morning to meet these friends who would drive five of us, myself and Mimi included, to Mt Salak. They were very friendly people and the driver might’ve been the most cautious driver in all of Indonesia – probably because he wasn’t actually Indonesian. Before we got out of town, they were making contact with the local from the night before who had organised the drivers for us. Turns out she wasn’t able to book tickets for the public holiday, she had been booked them for another date. They decided instead that they would make their way to Mt Salak with the rest of us. Feeling glad we didn’t go along with her, we were now surprised that we were going to wait in a carpark for these other people in a carpark despite having a full car. Mimi used a bit of her brash Chinese social skills to convince the drivers there was no point waiting, and off we went again.
We arrived at the start of the walk to the crater without too much other drama. As suspected, the gate to the national park had been ludicrous with the guards making up a number (100,000 rupiah per person) as an entry fee, taking 100,000 rupiah for the seven people in the car, and then giving us tickets with a ticket price of 35,000 rupiah printed on them. Not long after arriving, the three others showed up on the back of motorbikes. They had tried to take a grab car from the train station, but had struggled to find a driver willing to take a long one way fare on a public holiday. They had ended up paying more money to take several trips on the backs of motorbikes. This now justified in her mind that we should pay a lot more than we had previously agreed on, and a little confusion on my behalf as to why she was now asking for much more money quickly created quite a bit of tension. It was only then that this person told us how the two drivers had wanted to go to Jakarta instead of driving us all up here, and even though the grab price had been 200,000 rupiah for one car, it cost her more than that on the bike and so its not fair for 200,000 to just be split between the five people. Confused as to whether we were supposed to be receiving a favour or not, and not wanting to waste any more time, we agreed and paid some new price several times higher than what we had originally been asked.

Close to the crater

Mimi and I had planned to have an easy afternoon in the local village of Mt Salak, and then hike to the crater in the morning. While everyone else we had travelled to the national park area with was only there for one day, and so wanted to do the crater climb straight after arriving. Curious about the crater walk guard house and ticket price, we walked with everyone else to the walk entrance. Of course, there was no listing of what the price should be, and our ever helpful guide from the hostel negotiated prices with the local rangers. A steep but not completely unreasonable price was decided upon, and although it is insisted that foreign tourists need a ranger as a guide, a lie was told that one of the other visitors had been before and so a guide wouldn’t be needed.

Bubbling mud

The other group headed off and Mimi and I tried to talk with the rangers, confirming that tomorrow we would pay the same price and also wouldn’t need a guide (I had visited before ). They were buying none of this, particularly after our ‘friend’ had some words with them (I assume she was still mad we had wanted to stick to our original deal). The rangers told us if we want to go without a guide our only choice was to go now with the big group, as it would be too scary and lonely to walk by ourselves the next day without a guide. Kind of annoyed by this and not wanting to get conned the next day, we headed off on the trek. Since we hadn’t really planned for this we didn’t have much water with us and I was still only wearing sandals. This was mildly uncomfortable coming back down but overall was nothing more than a nuisance. The real annoyance was with how this person had turned on us; but we put this behind us and enjoyed the walk.

Sulphur river seen from many angles

The walk was really straight forward however long, easy track that for the most part was well marked and otherwise followed creeks up to the top. The crater at the top looked very alien, and the evidence of the damage this volcano could do in the form of burnt out vegetation was some what enlightening. The photos don’t really do the blue of the water justice but they give a good indication of the sulfur present and also the strangeness of the landscape. Unfortunately there was no true “crater” to be seen as one typically imagines a volcano to look like, but it was fun rock hopping across the river and climbing around to get a view of what was going on.

Mimi and a fellow traveler from South Africa who was equally unimpressed with getting gipped out of more money and thoroughly unimpressed with the effort/reward payoff of this hike.

After taking just about as long to get back down as we did up, we went in search of accommodation in the nearby village. We first saw a few places which were either too expensive or just too dirty to be worth considering, apparently its common to charge extra for cleanish bedsheets. Finally we found a decent enough place that let us have their cheapest room for 500,000 rupiah for two nights. The room was nice enough but didn’t have a shower, only a large bucket to fill up with water and a scooping bucket to flush yourself with. Although this is certainly old fashioned, we were thankful that steaming hot water came out of one of the taps and we could warm up.

A creek on our way back down.

After a cold nights sleep due to a serious lack of blankets, we got up early and sought out some breakfast. This ended up being many small bananas, as the only place open was a banana stand and you could only buy no less than a bunch of about 10 bananas. Following our snacking we headed off to look around, not sure what to do since we had already completed the crater walk. There were many waterfalls nearby all with large signs showing photos of how great they are. They do this as each waterfall has an entrance price that noone would ever bother to pay if there weren’t pictures of people having a great time. Luckily for us, yesterdays public holiday was over and we were now on an early Wednesday morning. This meant everyone knew there would be no tourists around and noone bothered to sit at the entrance gates to charge people fees. So we happily walked through to the many waterfalls, most of which were fairly similar and not that impressive, in between snacking on various street foods that the locals would sell from the back of their motorbikes. Given the emptiness of these tourist attractions, I realised that the real reason the rangers wanted us to walk the day before was that they wouldn’t be bothered to be at the gate the following day, and so wouldn’t be able to charge us any money. The rest of our day was fairly uneventful and we spent a lot of it chilling out in the grounds of our accommodation, which was actually a very large area with many nice gardens and various bungalows and glamping sites.

Wildlife on one of the waterfall hikes

The view from an accomodation we saw but didn't stay at. The room to rent here was no bigger than the mattress it had on the floor.

Getting back to Bogor was an unsolved problem and so in the morning we simply packed our bags and started walking. It would be a long walk but I was fairly confident someone would pick us up along the way. As luck would have it, an angkot filled with schoolgirls going the other way soon passed us. I flagged it down and tried to ask the driver where he was going. I believed he said he was going to Bogor, but wasn’t very keen on us getting on board. He kept pointing us in the direction we were already walking, and so we let him go and kept going. After walking not too far we passed the park entrance when soon after the angkot and driver we had seen before was now behind us. He now let us on board and took us toward Bogor without asking a price.

This slide into the waterfall pool is a cool idea, but it was cracked at the end and will cause serious damage to anyone who uses it.

When we got back to Bogor, we figured we might as well ask him to drop us off at the immigration center so we could pick up our passports. He was happy to do so and when we gave him 30,000 rupiah each, he was fairly happy with this price – I suppose he had to come back to Bogor anyway. As luck would have it, the immigration center was closed for lunch for another hour, so we figured we would head across the road and get some lunch ourselves. A large food truck was advertising steak and chips. Having only had mountain food the last two days (very small portions of spicy fried rice) the idea of real meat sounded too good to pass up. I ordered a regular steak, I can’t remember what steak Mimi ordered, and I also ordered a side of vegetables and chips. The steak was the worst steak I had ever eaten, it was battered for some reason and then soaked in watery gravy. Mimi’s steak was two meats pressed together, the side of vegetables were raw and cold, and the chips were a literal handful as can be seen in the picture.

After our hilarious lunch, we headed back to the immigration office and picked up our passports. No more details or human identification markers were required to collect our passports and the extended visa stamp was inside as required, along with some mysterious pen markings in Mimi’s passport. We then walked back to the same hostel we’d stayed in three nights prior and got to check into the same room. Always nice to go somewhere familiar. We went down to the center of town for dinner and got back for an early, and our last, night in Bogor.

Monkeys before locals pelted stoned them.

Up next: Mountain passes, mysterious rock formations, more new ‘friends’, more volcanos, good food, and train rides.