Day 15 - Lake Maninjau

The day was a bit boring after all the volcano impressions. But probably we needed some time to do nothing, to plan nothing and to run for nothing. After some negotiations with local taxi we caught a public mini van and asked to give us a list to the lake. The guy couldn’t go himself, but happily dropped us to bus station, where he sold us to another mini van driver. At 60% of the taxi price we went to the Maninjau lake…

The lake itself looks a lot better from the top of the mountanous road with 44 crazy turns, which not every driver will be able to surf. Couple of turns were inhabited by monkeys – happy days for Zoli. At the actual lake we didn’t find anything impressive, so in two hours after a fresh juice in the local café we took a mini van back. The driver was actually very nice and attentive – he waited for us all these two hours, and on the way back he bought some peanuts for monkeys – Zoli was especially happy to feed monkeys and take pictures of their peanut jumps.

In Bukattinggi we had our last pineapple juice before leaving to Padang, and then to Singapore. This juice was actually the last positive note of the day, as Padang itself happened to be an ugly and dirty city with only one decoration – local public transport mini vans called opeletes.

Once again we could conclude that big cities should be avoided in Asia, while nature and small authentic villages are the best places to be.

Day 10 - Rinjani

The day as usual started from negotiations. We kept in mind Angrid's words that this is our trip and selected to go to Rinjani National Park by bikes.

The road to the mountains took us longer than we expected - approximately 2.5 hours - partially because of bikes power and partially because of roads. Yetn we enjoyed one of the best sceneries in our trip - rice fields, coconut factory, authentic villages, etc.

Lombok is 90% muslim in contrast to hinduist Bali island. People in the villages are not used to tourists and many kids run towards the road to wave and say "hello!". They are so happy, when you wave them back! As our local advisor Jonny said, we are so strange and interesting with white skin and blue eyes...

Actually, some of the locals were even afraid of us - especially those, who didn't speak English. That was a bit weird, but we tried to be nice and make them smile.

Rinjani National Park is a beautiful range of mountains with volcano and the lake in the epicenter. The highest point of Rinjani is 3726m and requires three day hike. We stopped at 601m point is the village of Senaru and limited ourselves to the waterfall hike.

The first waterfall was not interesting at all, expect the locals, who were actually taking pictures of us :) We stayed there for ten minutes and went for the real hike to the second waterfall. We had to cross the river in the fast water flow, climb couple of stones and small hills, and go through the narrow jungle path.

The waterfall was amazing! We took our clothes offn jumped into the water and moved as close as possible to the falling waters. Drops were cooling the body, and humid wind with mystic sound was bringing the peace of mind and body. Swimming in the waterfall was definitely one of the best and most energizing moments of the trip.

On the way back we were just ten minutes late for the sunset :( But we saw a small village parade and celebration of something. The day ended in the souvenir shop full of emotions from the waterful and wooden masks with geko ornament in our shopping cards :)