4-10 February
The town of Berstagi is situated in a relatively perilous position, between two active volcanos – Sibayak and Sinabung. If volcanoes were like young bachelors, Sibayak would be the steamy and quiet one while Sinabung would be the dashing and talkative one. Because of its overly excitable nature, erupting most recently in August 2010, we chose to climb Sibayak during our stay here.
The path to the rim of Sibayak’s crater was mostly paved, in part because of a defunct geothermal plant half way up the mountain and in part because having tourists scramble around on an active volcano requires a small amount of caution (even in Indonesia, where “car surfing” is an accepted mode of transportation). We walked along the path admiring the lush vegetation, encountering giant blooming begonias, rhododendrons, orchids, and other tropical beauties. As we approached the crater, we walked on surprisingly hot rock surfaces (don’t touch!) and gave the active sulfur vents a wide berth.
The crater’s bottom was filled with a few feet of water, and dozens, if not hundreds, of people’s names spelled out in large rocks. Writing your name on something beautiful is a great way to make it ugly--thanks guys.
After writing our names in stones (just kidding), we walked around the base of the crater, sidestepping boiling water and geysers before scrambling up the other side to get a view of neighboring Sinabung. The mist and highly changeable weather of this region made any view impossible (including seeing anything beyond a few meters from where we stood). Without a picturesque view to write home about, we headed downhill into the dense jungle and bamboo forests where a hot spring waited for us at the bottom.
We are now on an island on a lake on an island. Rather, we are on the island of Samosir on Lake Toba on the island of Sumatra. Lake Toba is the largest lake in SE Asia and certainly looks more like the ocean than a lake. We have spent four days here, soaking up the extraordinary quiet of this place. Yesterday I mentioned to Nick that if I ever have a midlife crisis and disappear; Lake Toba would be a good place to start looking for me. Nick, the perennial ranker, said “Lake Toba is at least one of the top 20 lakes I have ever seen”. As usual, this type of comment solicited a serious eye rolling from myself. And so the day goes on…
The highlight of our stay here on Lake Toba was the cooking class we took one afternoon. We learned to make Indonesian peanut sauce (for those satay lovers out there), a spicy coconut vegetable dish, and sauce called rendang, as in “(ren)DANG this sauce is good, what do you think is in it?”. When we get home we will cook for any who are interested to try something new!
Tomorrow we make our way back to Medan, buy some Sumatran coffee, and after a quick stopover in Kuala Lumpur, we will spend a week in Chiang Mai taking cooking classes, and hopefully discovering what exactly people find so charming about Thailand. Until then, “Indonesia rules, Thailand drools”.
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