Day 13 - Equator

Early in the morning we tried to rent motorbikes, as we did on Lombok, or a jeep. Both attempts failed, and as we found out later in the day - failed for good. Drivers on the road are crazy, roads are bad and swingy, plus the rests of rainy season add a bit of a head ache.

We took a bus to Bonjol for Rp.10K to see the equator. Distance to Bonjol was about 40km, but it took us 2.5 hours to get there. First, the driver was collecting stuff all over the town, then he was driving slowly not to catch the cops. Yet, we caught the cops and he spent some time bribing them for the illegal load. Finally, 3km before the equator we have got a flat tyre :) Zoli happened to be an excellent predictor of flat tyres :)

We reached ecuator around 2pm, took couple of pictures with local latitude marksn and then discovered an interesting phenomenon. Real equator is about 130 meters south of the latitude mark with 20m accuracy. How good that we have GPS - let"s take a picture on the real ecuator as well :)

In general, the trip to the equator was boring, but couple of thing have made it at least a bit more interesting. As Dima noticed, many girls we strangely looking at me, smiling, waving and discussing something between themselves. Still can't undertand what's going on and why they like me so much, but Dima concluded that I may well be the local sex symbol :)

Another funny thing was that we were the only white people around, and noone actually spoke any English. Yey! We finally escaped from the tourist track and went for some authentic stuff :)

The bus itself was one of the authentic experiences. It was so packed that I traveled for 15 minutes on the stairs with open door - really afraid to fall asleep :) After that I have got a quarter-seat, in which I traveled for another 2 hours. Heavy rain has added even more to this, but who cares? - Now we know, where the real equator is :)

Day 12 - Sumatra

This day started with 12 hour sleep in the hotel without any light, Zoli fighting mosquitoes and covering his face with a pillow case, and finally pastry breakfast in the airport that I desperately wanted for such a long time!

After 2 hour flight we arrived to Padang on Sumatra. No wonder that first thing to do was to negotiate something - this time the car. As usual, prices were too high and arguments were too weak, plus the guy was very strange.

In Padang city we tried amazing taxi mini buses called opeletes. These cars are painted in bright colors and tuned to the likes of the driver with nothing but stereo on board :) We enjoyed a good techno selection in ours :)

Bus to bukittinggi took us two hours with last hour in heavy rain. The driver happened to be a tricky one and tried to get more money from us for dropping directly to the hotel.