Tuesday, August 01, 2006

Climbing Merapi

Last summer I accompanied some French groups to climb Merapi volcano (3000 m). They participated a tour package called Volcan Legendaire. In the beginning, I was bit afraid cos Merapi was also more active than usual. Thanks God nothing happened during my 5 times climbing Merapi.
We left from our hotel at 11 pm to go to Selo, last village on the foot of Merapi. It took us one and half hour to get there. I had contacted my friends (4 local guides) to accompany us to reach the peak. 3 tourists accompanied by 1 local guide cos we were walking in the middle of the night, very dark and very narrow and dangerous paths also the deep ravines.

After walking for about 4-5 hours finally we reached the peak of Garuda (name of the peak). Even though we didn’t reach the peak at the same time cos some of partipants didn’t walk as fast as the others but most of them did it. It an extraordinary view from the peak, sun rise was very beautiful. Considering to the Merapi’s activity we decided not to stay too long cos it was scary in fact.

It took as about 3 hours to get back to Selo village to get our car. Walking down from the peak, the view was also beautiful. Narrow and steep paths we had passed were very beautiful and dangerous in fact.

We got back to our cars at 10 am then continued to Yogyakarta. We were all just sleeping in the cars after walking the whole night. But it was just unforgotten memory in Yogyakarta..
I just hope that next year there’ll be next groups cos this is a very good program actually and I can see the tourists are satisfied for what the got here in Yogyakarta.

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