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.