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 :)

Day 8 - Lombok

Early in the morning we took a taxi to padang bai, from where we took a ferry to Lombok island. For a change we took a taxi with meter, and at the end the price for 50km was 240,000 rupia versus initial ask of 400,000 from a private driver.

The ferry terminal was full of locals - only one American girl except us four. The way to Lombok takes 5 hours and waters were generally calm.

In just an hour from departure skinny man in swiss hat sit next to me on the side of the ferry. We started talking about traveling, and he told me couple of interesting stories about himself.

Angrid was 35 years old from Batam island near Singapore, heading to Lombok for a 5-day climb at Rinjani. For last 20 years he was climbing one major indonesian mountain per year and two or three secondary ones. Also recently he has crossed Kalimantan island on military jeep on the 45-day trip.

Angrid eagerly shared his knowledge on Rinjani routes, and explained that to see volcano lake we need minimum 2 days / 1 night, and for the top - 3/2. That's something we didn't research properly before, so our climbing ambitions disappeared.

Also Angrid adviced us on crossing the ecuator on Sumatra and gave a lift on his mini van to Mataram, listening to U2 all the way ;)

In Mataram we had a quick dinner - suffered from spices again :) and then took a taxi to Senggigi, where stayed for night in a nice cottage.