4 days. A beautiful volcano trek. A beautiful place.
Trainings.
Way before I ever considered going for this trek, I was hearing things about seniors organising this trek by themselves as it was considered a beauty. After waiting for a semester, we finally got the chance to explore this volcano which lies on one of the islands of indonesia. As this trek was near the end of the semester, my heart was throbbing with excitement yet at the same time I am busy thinking about its training plans – constantly reminded about how I suffered muscle aches due to lack of training for mount kinabalu.
We did steps training with load, load training on the new faber trail and also a nightwalk which was not completed due to bad weather. Regardless of the insufficient training, we completed the Trek. We never underestimate the mountain, but some of us did overestimated ourselves. Let’s remember the past and look into the future. There will be more beautiful memories and less painful ones if we train harder but nonetheless they are wonderful memories! Keep them with you and keep on trekking.
Day 1.
Upon reaching bali, we were greeted at the international airport with a slightly slow customs. Perhaps it was in the morning and all, but the number of tourists seems to way exceed the locals at that place, where there are countless walking around as if that place itself was the beach. We followed our arranged transport on 3 vans. We tried conversing with the driver to ask how long the journey will take since most of us are hungry, – You travel faster in Singapore, due to the small size – but we got no answer since the driver could not really communicate with us in English. Travelling in the minivan was an adventure by itself. The roadlines are drawn for naught and the traffic lights are like endangered animals.
Finally, we managed to reach the ferry terminal and all of us had a good meal in preparation for the 4 hours long ferry ride ahead of us. We slept, fool around, took photos and seen stars we will never see in Singapore all on the 4 hours ferry ride. However, it was air-conditioned and it was a good place to sleep. Upon reaching Lombok, all of us were sleepy and were hoping to quickly reach the so-called hotel on Mount Rinjani. Travelling in the day on the van seems dangerous, night bus is even more scary than I thought. Upon finally waking up on Mount Rinjani, I stepped on the soil and felt a super cold shiver down my spine from the late night windchill… but the hunger pangs were worse as I start thinking about food. After getting the well-deserved soup and rice, we quickly go ahead to our rooms for a quick shower and early night. In a hotel you might have hoped for hot water, especially that late in the night but to our dismay there is none. There is however, the screams and shrills coming from all the rooms as the walls are simply too thin to block any sound. =P With that, we finally lie on our beds, dreaming of the ascent tomorrow.
To be continued…
