Sunday, May 07, 2006
Google Earth: New Selo, DIY, Indonesia
i spent all of today on a spur-of-the-moment adventure of sorts.
the moment, though, was last night. i realized that i've been hypng this damn volcano so much because i'm really excited about it and i want to see lava and partially-consumed animal remains an the whole 9 yards... i've also been developing an unhealthy personal mantra that goes something like: "what the fuck, why not? i am supposed to be adventuring" (it's sort of an unspoken mantra, but that's the gist of it)
up to this point i've been using the mantra for silly things like eating nasty-looking 'probably not' chicken, taking a crap while watching a roach crawl around the bathroom, or having four drinks too many when partying in the middle of a city of 10 million people whose language i don't speak and forgetting how to get home.
dumb mantra + erupting volcano + awe-struck indonesian university students (poor kids think americans are cool) = 12 hour trip to Mount Merapi.
for those who don't know, Mount Merapi is erupting right now, and has been for the last two days.
[ok, i'm going to take a step back because i just remembered i vital piece of the narrative but i don't like editing: what really started this Merapi travel bug was dinner friday night with my friend nat (frisbee, studying indonesian with the actual purpose of studying bird communities in rural kalimantan) where he described what's going on right now with the volcano. Apparently volcanoes are divided into 4 categories. Merapi was just upgraded from a 2 to a 3. Along with revealing this upgrade, Nat also told me about a damage map that supposedly exists. This map breaks down the region surrounding Merapi into four sectors, delineated by expected damage resulting from an eruption. sector 1 is what i like to call 'the kill zone' - it lies in the direct path of both debris and lava flow. levels of danger decrease in some logical pattern from there. anyhow, Nat said there's a village that's close to the mountain in a kind of scary way that is in a little bubble of zone 2. it's in this bubble because it's actually surrounded by areas designated 'kill zone' (personal nomenclature). the village is behind some little hill that means no direct hits from explosions and lava would flow around it on both sides.]
last night i excitedly related that story to the indonesian college dudes i've been hanging out with. to my surprise, they new exactly what i was talking about. further, when i got even more excited and said "i want to go there, who's going with me" (meaning who will take me, please somebody take me), one of them actually said yes. over the course of the night, this evolved into me getting up there far enough to take a lava bath. i completely expected this to scare the committment out of the kid (agung), but he stuck to his guns. on a side note, i did make it through the two big trees blindfolded. in jogjakarta tradition this means that i get a wish - any wish - to come true (and it's cooler than i make it sound). they asked, i told them...
... agung met me at my kost at 930 to go volcano climbing. after a trip to the other side of jogja to get a digital camera and some brunch (soto pigeon) we were off. he took the long route, which made me think he was trying to divert me to lesser adventures, but he stuck to his guns - at least on the driving part.
riding for hours on the back of a motorbike is not fun at all, by the way. i've got so much more respect for che now that i've tried doing it myself. i spent about 7 hours today scared shitless of falling off the back of that bike.
it didn't help that agung lost control on a muddy patch of road early on and we both hit the pavement. nothing bad, just bumps and bruises, but - like i just said - "scared shitless of falling off the back of that bike."
we stopped for a break about halfway up. I thought it was just a break, it turned out there were some awesome waterfalls that only the locals (agung is a local) know about. took some cool pictures, had fun walking around, got back on the bike and headed up the saddle.
I say saddle because Selo is actually located between two volcanoes, it's right in between Merbabu and Merapi. no crashes or falling off bikes on this section of the drive, but it did take us through the kill zone (i admit that sounds a lot cooler than it actually was). ok, blah blah blah... we got to the trailhead, it was two pm, we began our ascent.
here comes the anticlimax.
agung is a chain smoker and he can't handle cold climate and he apparently wasn't as ready to die as i was. there was thick cloud cover - which was lame. we hiked for about 40 minutes, which was about as long as i could push it before agung's lungs started to hurt enough for his will to fail. the really unfortunate thing about indonesians (biased stereotyping to follow) is that they're really too polite to actually say "no i want to stop now." us stopping involved agung talking more and more about his lungs and asking about possibly turning around at the saddle and then asking if the weather instruments we'd just passed could signify the saddle and then agreeing to hike for fifteen more minutes and then wanting to stop for ten minutes to take some pictures.
anyhow, i don't actually have hiking boots with me and i had a guide who i figured was going to follow me until i either turned around or rudely told him that i was going to push on.
ok we turned around in the middle of a cloud bank nowhere near the lava and i was mad at agung and i was mad at myself, but it was probably the smart move. we got back to the parking lot before 330. torrential rain and agung getting incorrect directions from a villager led to lots of unhappy tropical thunderstorm motorcycle adventuring. i kept envisioning death by motorcycle. there was about an hour or so of the ride where i couldn't even open my eyes because i couldn't find a way to keep the rain from landing directly in them.
ate some dinner when the rain stopped... chilled with agung's folks for a while... got back to jogja late evening.
day begins: 945am
day ends: 1030pm
my butt hurts and i'm disappointed about not coming closer to death-by-lava, but i overall had an excellent time and an excellent adventure. major props to agung for needlessly volunteering to be my full-day chauffer.
i'll post the pictures when i get them. ¶ 10:35 AM
the moment, though, was last night. i realized that i've been hypng this damn volcano so much because i'm really excited about it and i want to see lava and partially-consumed animal remains an the whole 9 yards... i've also been developing an unhealthy personal mantra that goes something like: "what the fuck, why not? i am supposed to be adventuring" (it's sort of an unspoken mantra, but that's the gist of it)
up to this point i've been using the mantra for silly things like eating nasty-looking 'probably not' chicken, taking a crap while watching a roach crawl around the bathroom, or having four drinks too many when partying in the middle of a city of 10 million people whose language i don't speak and forgetting how to get home.
dumb mantra + erupting volcano + awe-struck indonesian university students (poor kids think americans are cool) = 12 hour trip to Mount Merapi.
for those who don't know, Mount Merapi is erupting right now, and has been for the last two days.
[ok, i'm going to take a step back because i just remembered i vital piece of the narrative but i don't like editing: what really started this Merapi travel bug was dinner friday night with my friend nat (frisbee, studying indonesian with the actual purpose of studying bird communities in rural kalimantan) where he described what's going on right now with the volcano. Apparently volcanoes are divided into 4 categories. Merapi was just upgraded from a 2 to a 3. Along with revealing this upgrade, Nat also told me about a damage map that supposedly exists. This map breaks down the region surrounding Merapi into four sectors, delineated by expected damage resulting from an eruption. sector 1 is what i like to call 'the kill zone' - it lies in the direct path of both debris and lava flow. levels of danger decrease in some logical pattern from there. anyhow, Nat said there's a village that's close to the mountain in a kind of scary way that is in a little bubble of zone 2. it's in this bubble because it's actually surrounded by areas designated 'kill zone' (personal nomenclature). the village is behind some little hill that means no direct hits from explosions and lava would flow around it on both sides.]
last night i excitedly related that story to the indonesian college dudes i've been hanging out with. to my surprise, they new exactly what i was talking about. further, when i got even more excited and said "i want to go there, who's going with me" (meaning who will take me, please somebody take me), one of them actually said yes. over the course of the night, this evolved into me getting up there far enough to take a lava bath. i completely expected this to scare the committment out of the kid (agung), but he stuck to his guns. on a side note, i did make it through the two big trees blindfolded. in jogjakarta tradition this means that i get a wish - any wish - to come true (and it's cooler than i make it sound). they asked, i told them...
... agung met me at my kost at 930 to go volcano climbing. after a trip to the other side of jogja to get a digital camera and some brunch (soto pigeon) we were off. he took the long route, which made me think he was trying to divert me to lesser adventures, but he stuck to his guns - at least on the driving part.
riding for hours on the back of a motorbike is not fun at all, by the way. i've got so much more respect for che now that i've tried doing it myself. i spent about 7 hours today scared shitless of falling off the back of that bike.
it didn't help that agung lost control on a muddy patch of road early on and we both hit the pavement. nothing bad, just bumps and bruises, but - like i just said - "scared shitless of falling off the back of that bike."
we stopped for a break about halfway up. I thought it was just a break, it turned out there were some awesome waterfalls that only the locals (agung is a local) know about. took some cool pictures, had fun walking around, got back on the bike and headed up the saddle.
I say saddle because Selo is actually located between two volcanoes, it's right in between Merbabu and Merapi. no crashes or falling off bikes on this section of the drive, but it did take us through the kill zone (i admit that sounds a lot cooler than it actually was). ok, blah blah blah... we got to the trailhead, it was two pm, we began our ascent.
here comes the anticlimax.
agung is a chain smoker and he can't handle cold climate and he apparently wasn't as ready to die as i was. there was thick cloud cover - which was lame. we hiked for about 40 minutes, which was about as long as i could push it before agung's lungs started to hurt enough for his will to fail. the really unfortunate thing about indonesians (biased stereotyping to follow) is that they're really too polite to actually say "no i want to stop now." us stopping involved agung talking more and more about his lungs and asking about possibly turning around at the saddle and then asking if the weather instruments we'd just passed could signify the saddle and then agreeing to hike for fifteen more minutes and then wanting to stop for ten minutes to take some pictures.
anyhow, i don't actually have hiking boots with me and i had a guide who i figured was going to follow me until i either turned around or rudely told him that i was going to push on.
ok we turned around in the middle of a cloud bank nowhere near the lava and i was mad at agung and i was mad at myself, but it was probably the smart move. we got back to the parking lot before 330. torrential rain and agung getting incorrect directions from a villager led to lots of unhappy tropical thunderstorm motorcycle adventuring. i kept envisioning death by motorcycle. there was about an hour or so of the ride where i couldn't even open my eyes because i couldn't find a way to keep the rain from landing directly in them.
ate some dinner when the rain stopped... chilled with agung's folks for a while... got back to jogja late evening.
day begins: 945am
day ends: 1030pm
my butt hurts and i'm disappointed about not coming closer to death-by-lava, but i overall had an excellent time and an excellent adventure. major props to agung for needlessly volunteering to be my full-day chauffer.
i'll post the pictures when i get them. ¶ 10:35 AM