Ticket for the Long Way Round

Today is the first day in almost three weeks I haven’t been royally ripped off on transport. I catch a taxi to the airport, fly to Denpasar, take an ojek (motorbike taxi; aka random dude on a motorbike) to a local bus station, and sit myself on a bus bound via road and ferry to Banyuwangi, a port town on the near end of East Java. A promised four-hour transfer ends up taking close to seven and a half, and by the time the driver drops me off far past my accommodation, I’ve been in transit for over 13 hours.

I shoulder my backpack and start walking. Not too long thereafter, a car pulls over and several hands wave out the window: it’s a family I bonded with as we watched ferries dancing in currents and swell (and the brothers teased their seasick little sister) on the crossing from Bali to Java. (Seriously, its no wonder the boats here have a reputation for sinking.) The family reorganizes their entire car, gives me the front seat, turns around and delivers me straight to my home stay’s courtyard. 

They are absolute saviours at the end of the day. We never learn each other's names.

We leave for Mt. Ijen just after midnight, in a big, bright blue jeep. (apparently once upon a time, the tourist authority required everyone to have jeeps to access Ijen. Then roads got better, but since everyone had spent so much money on pretty jeeps, you're still required to pay to make the ride in one.) We arrive to a chaotic hoard teeming around the trailhead to a volcano shrouded in cloud. We collect gas masks and our (required) guide conveniently disappears about five meters past the entry gate: not exactly a huge issue, considering literally thousands of people are making the hike next to us. Some of the bigger, fatter people actually pay three guys with a cart to wheel them up the mountain rather than walking their asses to the crater.

We hike upward through the clouds, and the mist clears as we reach the crater rim. Under the night sky we descend steep, crumbling rock into the crater to the edge of an acid lake, where pipes redirect molten sulfur ore out of the mountain. Sulfur gas swells forth and blazes in dancing deep blue flame when it meets the atmosphere. Miners enter blinding clouds to collect the mineral as it cools, splitting and piling blocks high into woven baskets suspended from bamboo poles to be carried up the crater and carted down the mountain. No less than 60 kilograms; sometimes more than 100, my host, Yofie, later tells me. They sell it for IDR 1,000 ($.08) a kilogram, to Chinese companies who make cosmetics.

We return to the crater rim and wander around its edge amongst dead trees, which give way to lush ferns as the mountain’s peak rises a short way above us.  The sun rises over an opaque, turquoise-green caldera lake cradled in a sheer gray bowl. (Occasionally, word has it, the lake bubbles as poison gas rises from the center of the volcano.) Deep, jagged striations pattern a smaller bowl, stained gray-yellow, breaking the crater’s contour above the sulfur cloud where it escapes the volcano. As the sun breaks, morning light hits the mountains to our west, illuminating a cloudbank beneath us as it butts up against the mountains from the south. To our north the clouds clear, revealing deep, green jungled valleys.

At some point in the early afternoon between fried noodles and naps at the guesthouse, a camera crew makes an appearance. Apparently Banyuwangi has a program that helps people in hospitality to learn English, and Yofie's aunt is one of the people for whom the program has been life-changing. And so I find myself describing volcanos covered in snow to my hosts, and apparently I then end up on national TV.

... all in a good day's work.
__________

The next day’s journey west is only slightly easier than that from Lombok to Java.

Yofie’s uncle drops me at the train station, and I pass the next four hours watching towns and rice paddies fly by from my six-dollar, executive class, reclining seat outfitted with electric outlets. I leave the train at Probolinggo, a busy, unattractive port town on Java’s northeast coast, where the driver of a miniature, yellow open-air truck charges me twice the regular price to bash through afternoon traffic and take me to the “bus station.” On the way he stops in front of a tourist office, where a dude pokes his head into the bema. “You go to Cemoro Lawang?” he asks us. “You go to Bromo? You get out here! You go to bus station, you wait long time!” And if I get out here, you get a commission. And I get put on the exact same bus anyway, for twice the price.

He takes us to the bus station.

An hour and a half later, we cram 15 people into a minibus and begin driving. We climb and climb and climb a one-lane road that tilts and teeters on the mountain’s edge alongside vegetable farms that plunge down slopes on angles greater than 50 degrees. We stall no fewer than four times before we break through the cloud and arrive in Cemoro Lawang. The little town perches at 7,500 ft on the edge of the Tengger massif’s broad caldera, overlooking a barren sea of sand and volcano piled on top of volcano within the moonlike crater’s 10-kilometer span. The mountain on which I stand is so massive I don’t even realize where I am until I pull up a zoomed-out image on Google Map’s satellite view.

In any case, I wake up at 2:30 am the next day and leave behind my guesthouse (with my sunken bed, universally unlocking padlock, and lacking a single functioning sink in the building) for the freezing-ass cold alpine night. I hike and scramble through jungle to one of the highest overlooks onto Tengger’s crater, waiting for the sun from a slightly precarious hillside perch in front of a crowded tourist railing.

Low mist wraps villages and farms nestled amongst deep green hills, spreading downward to veil the sandy expanse surrounding Bromo in the pre-dawn. Mt. Semeru, Java’s highest volcano, burps steam from behind Bromo as the sun rises, clearing mist and washing deep pink light onto the broken contours of Bromo’s frozen ash flows.

A nap and a half later, in the company of a pair of fellow travelers from Seattle, I locate and follow the badly guarded secret of a small, steep track downward from Cemoro Lawang to the Sea of Sand, stepping onto the bare expanse and bypassing the park’s exorbitant entry fee. Wind lifts veils of dust and devils swirl as we cross toward Bromo, passing a small, lonely temple built in honor of the volcano. We bypass stalls selling flowers to chuck into the crater (for good luck!) and climb the volcano’s steep gray slope, accompanied by a growing low rumble. Wind picks up and the rumble crescendos to a jet’s deafening roar as we crest the crater’s rim, a constant tremble under our feet.

It’s like I’ve stepped onto a living moon, peering into its slow-burning core from a razor’s edge. Steep, dark slopes plunge into the broad maw in front of me. Sulfer-tainted steam coils to rise from a round, vertical shaft, hissing forth from a pool the color of green poison control warnings and leaving a vibrant mustard-yellow smudge behind to color the cavern’s far side. A faint acrid tinge permeates the atmosphere. Small bunches of bright flowers left upon a miniature shrine, wilting under the day’s heat, break the mountain’s utter desolation within its cluster of similarly colored peaks, bereft of life. And yet, despite its desolation, I find myself in one of the most beautiful, mindbending places I’ve ever experienced.

I sit a while, munching on a pear as the mountain roils beneath me. Then our motley crew descend Bromo's slope, I introduce the boys to the art of properly bartering for a motorbike taxi, we return to Tengger Crater’s green edge, and then we continue down the mountain to the world of bemas and trains once more.

Elevation on the Equator

Lombok's green and turquoise world rises rugged and mountainous. Ridges and cliffs dip and curve and coil to broad coves filled with coconut palms and sweeping, sparkling white beaches. Known as a bit of a surfer’s paradise, the island also hosts one of the nation's highest volcanos.

People are gentle here. I pass a small girl on her way to school, pausing to gather the scent of wildflowers lining the road. Some days later a bent, weathered old man claps to get my attention, holds up two fingers, and makes a jabbing, arcing motion behind him. The second waterfall is that way. No words needed.

However, driving the roads of Lombok (and all of Indonesia, really) is akin driving the Black Spur on crack, for hours on end: narrow, steep and winding, full of potholes and blind corners, with chickens and goats running amok and cars and motorbikes passing each other in a frenzy.

I spend three days in Kuta Lombok, a village in the south existing in a funny juxtaposition of village life and surf central: no one ever has small money, atms only work half the time, a full meal costs $3 or $15, and the temperature never seems to change. Restaurants display broad tables of the day's indiscriminate catch, fruit stalls sell bunches of bananas for $.30, and old ladies sell petrol by the liter from glass bottles and archaic pump machines. I rent a motorbike and ride winding cliffside roads lined with bright purple and red flowers, overlooking coves filled with small palm plantations. I pass small rice paddies nestled between hills and drop down to explore broad, arcing beaches where surf schools butt up against fishing villages.

Hundreds of people tumbling off boards dot the water. “Never try, never know!” the guys from the surf schools shout. On the sand, warungs sell overpriced coconuts and locals grill corn on the cob over ramshackle coal stoves. (Even if you buy stuff, you still have to pay to sit on a chair.) A couple minutes' walk beyond the schools reveals hundreds of slender wooden fishing boats and wooden bracers hauled high onto the beach, vibrant paint contrasting turquoise water. At some point a herd of buffalo wanders down the water line… because when the path of least resistance lies on the beach, cows are gonna take the same path as humans. Ten minutes’ wander in the other direction leaves the crazy behind, bringing me instead to a clear, sandy expanse dotted with cow tracks. A lone bamboo house sits near the end of the beach, where the sand gives way to cliffs as jungle claims the water’s edge, trading in a dance of spurs and beaches as the island curls around the bay into the distance.

The following day I find another long, curving white beach, broken by a single flat lookout rock half way through the arcing sandy expanse. What the beach lacks for in people it makes up for in monkeys, as a hoard appears out of nowhere to steal an entire bunch of bananas from between my legs, proceeding to fight over them in a screaming, stalking primate version of a feral cat fight.

I hide my apples and peace the hell right outta there.

I head north in the second half of the week, following a road around the island past quaint beaches lined with fishing boats to where relative lowlands give way to Mt. Rinjani, Indonesia’s second-highest volcano. The mountain is deceptively tall: because it rises straight from the ocean, the summit appears so much closer than 12,224 ft from sea level.

I leave with a small group, a guide, and porters from a high village called Sembalun. Our climb leads steadily through jungle, then grassland, through temperate forest before leaving behind the timber line. Shadows lengthen in the afternoon as we ascend to the crater rim, casting into sharp relief a vast maze of deep trenches eroded and carved into the mountain’s light green side beneath a summit devoid of vegetation.

The porters do the entire thing in flip flops. Some of them are barefoot.

The rim, when we arrive, overlooks a broad crater and deep blue lake, a smaller cone within hidden by the summit peak beside our campsite on the narrow ridge. Low cloud rises from a broad gash in the volcano’s side to creep over the crater’s sunken edge, encroaching on the lake from the north. Smoke from the far side of the mountain betrays a wildfire burning on the rim’s opposite side.

As night falls, I begin to experience the utter non-glory of altitude sickness for the first time in my life. At the infuriating altitude of 8,500 ft. I spend a legendary night throwing up as wind rises to howl around the mountain, collapsing half the tents on the ridge. Stars overhead are clear, though, and flames glow from the jagged edge across from me as the wildfire dances in the night.

And so in the morning I let go of the summit bid and following days of crater exploration, instead heading back down the mountain. You’d think having made a career of mentoring high schoolers and teaching kids about decision making would make it easier to make responsible choices for myself, but somehow it’s just as hard as ever to let go of dreams.

I spend the next two days relaxing in the mountainside village of Senaru, making friends with little orange cats in a cliffside bamboo bungalow overlooking Rinjani, surrounded by a cheery garden.

I take a morning walk down into the deep ravine above which Senaru perches, descending hundreds of steps into the jungle. Eventually I arrive to a place where water streams from the green cloak of the mountain’s wall, plunging hundreds of feet before crashing into the small river at the bottom of the sheer chasm in which I stand, solo, before the local hoards arrive.

I wander a half hour upstream along a small aquifer through the jungle: I pass an impossibly tall tree upon which a bamboo lattice has been fastened (for honey collection, a friend informs me) and a small dam with hand-cranked spillways where a lady sells bananas and cup-a-noodles. I pick my way through some mild rapids to an arcing wall where an elegant stream spouts over a lower broad, shimmering curtain, landing with a misty roar in a clear, whipping, waving pool before continuing downstream over boulders and downed logs.

I climb back to the village, skirting a hoard of monkeys on the trail. I say a last goodbye to the mountain, and then I head west.

I'm On A Boat

Komodo National Park lies at the confluence of the Indian and Pacific oceans, where tides rule the seas and currents carry nutrients thousands of miles between major waterways, feeding reef ecosystems that blanket thousands of sea mounts, where pelagic species otherwise found far out at sea come to feed. Water shimmers deep turquoise here, clear and warm, surrounded by islands I’m told comprise the driest portion of Indonesia. Light yellow-green grass rises above deep green mangroves and bright white beaches.

Given the clash of currents and resulting nutrient-rich water and ecosystems, Komodo is a world of its own. In the space of two days while I’m on the boat, two spectacular events occur in the same famous channel known as “the Cauldron:” first, footage surfaces of a school of 300 or 400 cow-nosed rays schooling together so closely as they pass overhead, they blot out the sun. The next day, a diver catches a megamouth shark on camera: the colossal fish is so rare, only 60 sightings have been recorded since it was discovered around 40 years ago. Sergio, one of my dive masters, tells me a bit wryly that obviously the people in the water at the time are “the chosen ones.”

On my end: I spend seven epic days on a liveaboard with a handful of other guests, with an unreal crew, awesome dive masters, and a cook who’s out of this world, placing fresh-baked bread and drink infusions in front of us containing mixes like pineapple, watermelon, lime, mint, orange and cantaloupe. Over the space of 20 dives, I get a crash course in diving currents in one of the most beautiful, diverse areas in the world.

Five minutes into my first dive we come across a sea snake banded toxic black and white. Three or four times as large as I ever imagined them to be, it rummages in a small coral-caked bommie before winding skyward to breathe. The water around me brims with life: reef sharks rest on the sandy sea floor. Feathery coral rises in delicate striped black and white fronds. Spotted box fish, black with deep red spots, shuffle amongst the reef. Miniature fire gobis, crimson head and delicate fluttering fins giving way to white butts and tails, dart between sheltered nooks. Primitive white and orange tunicates, some of the animal kingdom’s first members to develop spinal cords, root to massive fans and rise like neon anatomical hearts veined in deep purple.

We descend into the water for a night dive at a place called the China Shop, so named because you just never know what you’re going to find. A giant moray eel winds into a coral tree. Lion fish hunt amongst bommies and coral pockets fill to brimming with cleaner shrimp. Fans of feathery, ethereal coral rise from purple-coated rock, pale pinky-white feelers extended into the night as they feed. And, we find ourselves in the midst of plankton clouds so thick they darken our flashlights’ beams, swarming and bouncing off our bodies by the thousands as some insane multitude of species flutter and twist through the water.

We moor for the evenings in a gentle, rounded bay surrounded by glassy water, rimmed by a multitude of miniature layered peaks referred to as “the Tellitubies.” A group of native deer greets us as they run along the island’s beaches in front of a broad, round tree bursting with yellow blossoms, dipping heads to drink seawater.

We return to our mooring one afternoon after finding a pygmy seahorse clinging to the underside of a sea fan, and we hike a deceptively steep slope to a point overlooking our sleepy bay, arriving in time to overlook a neighboring heart-shaped inlet as the sun sets behind one of the archipelago’s steaming volcanos. The water edging the shore turns to a shimmering pink and silver wash as we descend light green slopes, speedboat waiting to take us home to the boat for the night.

Day three proves one of the most spectacular days I’ve ever experienced underwater.

We dive early in the morning around Batu Bolong, a small rock adorned with freestanding arches where terns nest in its grassy crown. The underwater world teems with early morning drama: black-tipped sharks patrol the mount, pinning a monster school of fusilier between them and a giant barracuda. A ribbon of pelagic fish wraps the entire rock, appearing out of the blue in a shimmering mass before disappearing again into the deep haze. Pinky-orange fish hover over the entire reef in a shimmering halo, extending from the water’s surface out of sight below 30 meters’ depth. A hawksbill turtle rises out of the blue, skimming our heads on its way to the surface to breathe. The reef itself yields smaller treasures: deadly grumpy scorpionfish, perfectly camouflaged, tuck into coral nooks. Blue dragon nudibranchs stretch elegant, elongated white bodies shining with bright indigo-blue frills as they traverse deep red coral to feed. A sea snake winds its way through the reef below us. Mantis shrimp and boxer shrimp hide in holes, and moray eels extend massive heads, mouths yawning in periodic menace.

Midday brings us to a sandy channel known as Manta Alley, where manta rays appear out of the haze to visit cleaning stations. The rays swoop in lazy circles as little orange cleaner fish follow them, broad, dark wings casting shadows on the golden dappled sand. We float just above the sand as we watch them, losing track of time, and they don’t even seem to notice our presence. Just before we return to the surface, a stubby-faced cow-nose ray descends to pass us by.

In the afternoon we drop down to a white sandy expanse under bright turquoise water. Red flecks enter the sand, then green weed begins to appear as we move forward. This is a land of little things; a place so totally barren at first glance, yet yielding a mindbending array of miniature, delicate life.

Silhouetted clearly against the sand from ten meters away, a small brown seahorse curls its tail around a maroon hunk of coral. A painted frogfish, perfectly camouflaged against the weedy floor in mottled green and gold, stares straight back at us from a squashed, square, grumpy face. It bounces as it walks on its fins as if its moonwalking, face planting and tipping onto its side more often than it lands upright. A miniscule black frogfish hides amongst the stalks of a waving pink and maroon soft coral. Spiny devilfish, otherwise referred to as Indian Walkers, blend perfectly into the sand as they lie motionless on the floor. Their lumpy gnarled fins and globular bodies rest on the tiniest of clawlike fingers extending forward from side fins. A pair of deep brown long-nosed pipefish– longer, more slender cousins of seahorses– flutter along an open sandy patch. A miniature winged pipefish, dozens of gold and tan fins extending from its body in an intricate, leafy work of art, hovers near a devilfish. Compact balls of catfish rove as a single unit, and flounder hide everywhere– camouflaged to the grain of sand, except eyes protruding absurdly skyward.

We return to the same place the next evening for another night dive, accompanied by an absolute monster of a lionfish who uses our lights to hunt, fins fanning up and to the side in a deadly halo, leaving us all a little nervous as it stalks prey from its happy place just below our knees. Miniature neon green shrimp appear from burrows, and an elegant white snowflake eel winds its way along the sand.

Midway through the week we step on to Rinca Island for a short time, following mangrove-lined shores into dragon territory. It’s mating season, and two of the world’s largest lizards have apparently decided the time and place is now, on the pipes running water through rangers’ quarters. By the time we arrive they’ve been going at it for a solid hour. To the side, a pair of baby dragons make their way down through the shade, meter-long bodies dwarfed by the individuals creating all the action.

Our guide takes, who carries a body-length, double-pronged stick for protection, takes us on a short walk to a lookout over the sea and Komodo Island, pointing out dragon dens along the way: deep, cavernous pits dug into the sand where females will go to lay and bury eggs after successful mating.

That afternoon we explore the muck again, at a gentle slope where boulbous, yellow, boxy cowfish scuttle backward across the coral, baring twin horns in our direction. Three-meter dappled gray and white tapeworms rummage through the muck, feathery protrusions extending dozens of feelers as they wind bodies through anything in their path.

Toward the end of the week, as the moon rises near full, Komodo’s famed currents finally raise their heads. As we drift past feeding turtles and schools of parrotfish in a deep depression within a narrow channel, the current sweeps up to spit us out over the rim in a slingshot of velocity commonly known as "the shotgun," pushing us toward open sea as we navigate around the corner back toward the China Shop.

On our return to Batu Bolong the currents shift within minutes as they wrap the sea mount where we’ve been watching sharks glide past and a giant moray twining along the wall. Water shimmers in front of us as we turn a corner and currents collide, intensity suddenly grown so strong all we can do is cling to the reef and hold fast as the water pushes us down. We literally rock climb horizontally underwater, and getting absolutely nowhere as we attempt to inch ourselves upwards. After a few fruitless minutes our divemaster gives the signal to abort and we release, letting the water carry us into the blue as we rise to the surface.

On our last day Komodo National Park says goodbye to us in spectacular fashion. When we drop into Manta Point for our last dive a ray appears within minutes, winging past us against the gentle current. A marbled ray appears from the haze for a few seconds before disappearing again into the blue. A black-tipped shark patrols the water around us for fifteen minutes or so as we drift over scattered black urchins. As we begin to rise for our final safety stop, an eagle ray rummages in the sea floor. Then a family of three monster rays appears beneath us, wings outstretched, gliding in a perfect line as they traverse the rubble-strewn reef. When they disappear another one appears, and another… and then my head breaks the surface of the cerulean water.