After arriving in Jakarta on my way home to the US, I had a couple of days to kill. Feeling oppressed by the Jakarta heat and smog, I high-tailed my way to Cibodas, a small village on Puncak Pass, in the Sunda region of Java. The main attraction here? Cold! On the side of a mountain (Gunung Gede, a volcano and national park) the temperature is chill enough to require long sleeves and blankets at night. I had forgotten what cold feels like.
After convincing a couple of Indonesians to give me a lift from Bogor to Cibodas, I found myself a hostel (I was the only guest - mid-week is slow in this tourist town) and walked the 2 km down the hill to a small town, where I wandered and finally found a nice restaurant to sip on some mango juice.
On the way back up the mountain (after an unfortunate incident with some monkeys who very aptly stole my sweet dessert as I was drinking juice) I started talking to a young Indonesian man on his way home after praying at a mosque. He kindly invited me to his home, where I got to meet his wife and younger brothers. After some small talk, he decided that since I had no religion this was a good opportunity to try and convert me to Islam. Suddenly, my shaky language skills became shakier - I haven't learned important religious words like "hell" and "salvation". I finally managed to politely excuse myself from the house, and crashed into bed.
The next morning I got up and started hiking up the mountain. The national park actually contains two peaks - Mount Gede and Mount Pangrango. I decided to hike Mount Gede (2,958 m asl). I walked past gorgeous waterfalls, ran into a random birder from France, enjoyed the steaming hot springs, and finally scaled a terribly eroded mountaintop to sit above the crater and enjoy myself, before practically jogging down in order to get home before dark (which didn't happen, but thankfully I ran into the birder on the way down and we walked back by the light of his headlamp.
Photos!
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