We Indo Part 4 - last of Rinjani

I ended the last post by saying the fun was about to begin. I lied. The next bit, down into the crater itself, was a pain in the butt. It was the most crowded section of the whole hike, it was straight down giant rocks and boulders, and I had blisters like never before. It took about an hour or so and it truly blew chunks. At the very least, I was very pleased that I was going down and not up. The congestion here took the award for most people on one hiking path at a time. Looking back, I can say with the utmost confidence that this was the Worst Part of Rinjani. 

Let's take a moment and admire the porters for a quick second. They're all local Lombokians, all of whom who had never left the island their entire lives. I'd say they ranged in ages from 25-40 if I had to guess. They do these Rinjani tours in some form or another 3-4 times a month and work on rice paddies when they're not hiking. 

They are all STRONG AS HECK. The gear they carry is distributed into two large baskets that are at either end of a large stick. This stick sits across one shoulder. And that's it. No shoulder padding. And, no shoes. Seriously. They all wear cheap rubber flip flops. While I was struggling at times to keep my balance on loose gravel or while scrambling over roots, they were flying over it all in flip flops. Mind blowing really. The best part is that they were also all goofy as hell. Ours were, anyway. Didn't speak a lick of English but you could tell they were always in good spirits and just radiating positive energy. I admired these dudes. Plus, they were great cooks. Our meals were always perfectly filling and energizing. And, a bunch of them played music and I loved hearing bumping jams every now and then while hiking along. 

 

The porters doing their thing

However I did a Lil sick from one meal. Not sure which, but by dinner on night two, I was no longer hungry at all. I picked at the dinner and breakfast and lunch the next day. I won't go into any detail about the sickness except that let's just say on night 2 I ended up on the side of the mountain, in the pitch black, hunting down a good spot away from any and all campsites to release this sickness. I'm sure someone the next day found it and barfed upon the site of it.  

In case anyone is curious about the bathroom situation on this trek, here's your answer. There are no bathrooms. It's a friggin mountain in Indonesia, what do you expect! The porters carry around 4 sticks and a sheet to make a portable port a potty. I guess a port a potty is by definition a portable potty. Ugh whatever lol. Anyway. They dig a little hole and wham, there's our bathroom. It's surprisingly a lot easier to get used to than you'd think. It's always relatively close to our campsite, but on the night of the mountain incident, it was a little too close to our tents and I didn't want Emily, Ron and Dane to overhear me. Hence me scampering away into the night to find a secluded spot. 

Back to the hike: eventually we got to the bottom of this retched path and ended up lakeside. Here I took my shoes off and discovered my disgusting blisters all over my heels and cuts all over my toes. I've had blisters while hiking before, so I was prepared with moleskin and bandaids (at one point I pulled out all my medical supplies and began applying my bandages, telling Dane, who happened to be there at the time, "prepare to watch the master at work!!"), but these were something else. I ended up taking off my hiking boots and wearing Tevas and socks for the rest of the trip. Hey if the porters could do it, so could I. All this ended up being rather inopportune for me as these gave me a foot infection that i discovered while in Bali, swelling my left foot up to the size of a balloon and making me go to a clinic in Singapore to get medical attention. Silver lining? I got upgraded to an economy plus aisle seat on my flight from Tokyo to Chicago! Yay! Lol!!

 

View from lunch

 

Us eating lunch on our trust Mickey Mouse table cloth pad

I should've taken more care of my feet while on the hike, but I almost didn't have any time. We had lunch at the crater, then waddled over to some natural hot springs nearby. It was here that Dane got changed into his swimming trunks and literally mooned 15 Indonesian children. They were all squealing with laughter and pointing while the rest of us shook our heads with shame. 

 

Not the greatest pic but here's the volcano in the middle of the lake

Loved the hot springs, as I got to soak my feet and sit in essentially a hot tub for 30 min-ish. Kinda weird that they made us do it after lunch but what can ya do? Maybe Indonesians don't bloat. 

From here we walked along the lake, admired the active volcano in the middle of the lake, and then began the ascent to the second campsite. If you're keeping track, we're going on 12 hours of hiking at this point. And we had 2 more to go. 

The second campsite sat along the opposite ridge line from the night before, so we had quite the vertical ascent to conquer. Unlike the vertical ascent of the summit or even from Pos 3 - camp the day before, this one was straight up with rocks and roots to hold on to. Earlier in this blog I said at times I was Alex Honnold-ing, and this was the majority of those times. For whatever reason, despite me being pretty tired, I loved this section. I think my childhood of playing in the creek and climbing up the rocks and roots there unleashed itself here, as I zoomed up this portion like I had wings. (Something for my future self to note: at lunch Dane and I played a game called Odds, where one person bets that the other person will or will not do something. Then they assign a number range and say 1, 2, 3...and then they both say a number within that range. So Dane bet me I wouldn't eat an entire spoonful of sugar and I made the range 1-27. "1, 2, 3....12" we both said. So I ate the sugar and then literally blasted over the mountain. Perhaps that has something to do with it, idk)

By the time we finished this free soloing obstacle course (to make myself sound even more badass, we all were wearing our 60-65L packs!) it was dinner. We ate our final meal along the edge of the crater, watched the sunset in another jaw droppingly cool camping spot, and fell asleep early as can be. Nothing like going to bed before the sun sets!

 

This is a slightly filtered view of our the view from our campsite on night two

 

Golden hour after we arrived at camp

The next morning we cruised down the mountain about 8km through a jungle to get to town and finish the hike. Rinjani truly had every single kind of landscape you could ask for, and this jungle part was the perfect way to end. Also, all the Positions on this back part of the mountain were all pretty clean, albeit full of stray dogs and monkeys. If you're ever doing Rinjani and have the choice of directions, I strongly recommend doing West to East. Finishing with a light jaunt through the cool jungle sure beats the sweltering Indonesian sun in a shadeless grassland. Just sayin. 

 

Journey through the jungle 

The end finally came, and I had my usual pang of sadness about it all being over. Camping and hiking and being waited on hand and foot by porters is such a nice life!! 

Okay so, at times I felt really bad for the porters and guides. They're paid $30ish American dollars total for the 3 days, which admittedly could get you very far in Lombok...but still, they were like our servants. I asked Awan about the flip flops and he said "well they can't afford regular hiking boots, and also they look stronger in flip flops". Dang, so true. 

We piled into a truck bed and sped off toward the town they picked us up in. From there, they got us a car that would drive us 1.5 hours to a ferry going towards Bali. Rinjani was over!! And I couldn't believe what has just happened. Beautiful sights, the most magical sunrise I've ever seen, Indonesians who can't speak English but love the same EDM I do, rock climbing, an active volcano, monkeys, lots of laughs, and even my very own porta potty...I couldn't have asked for more. If you ever have the chance to go to Indonesia and want to test your limits for 3 days, DO IT!!! 

 

 

Srsly you won't regret Rinjani

Next up: Bali.