This is just a quick little entry to mention a quick little trip we took to Berastagi. The town is the jumping off point for climbing a volcano or two. Woo! Despite living on one of the worlds biggest volcanoes for the last two days at Toba, I didn't feel like I'd got my geo-fix. And Si was quite happy to get some exercise.
We stayed at the lovely Wisma Sibayak guesthouse and forked out the full £7 (IDR 100,000) for a room with it's own shower. The guesthouse owner was a fountain of info and she suggested that we head up to see a view of the two volcanoes from the nearby hill. We did this and it was lovely, especially lovely in fact because we bumped into a dude who was practising his English and learnt loads about his culture and way of life. We also accidentally taught him the word "toy-boy", which he loved. We tried to stress how dodgy it could be if used to someone's face. I think he understood!
The next day we followed the accurate and unbelievably helpful instructions of our guesthouse lady and climbed Sibayak volcano. This is the smallest of the two and the most traveller-friendly. The paths are notoriously difficult to find, but we had a map and bags of experience and confidence so we would be fine. We were wrong of course, got a bit stuck and were rescued by a British-German couple (who had two maps).
The top was awesome, steam, good egg smell, sulphur deposits and a crater lake where people and written their names and various other things in stones. Out of the crater and up the top of the ridge there was an amazing view of Betastagi and the surrounding planes. Ah Sumatra, you handsome devil you!
As it hadn't rained for a day we could take the adventurous path down. Si would like me to point out here that the LP had said "challenging" and it really was, the path is a steep and slippery b***** through miles of jungle and bamboo forest. There was a bit of army crawling, a bit of undignified slippage and falling-onto-bum-age and my legs were shaking so much by the end that Elvis would have been intimidated. But it was fun! Volcano and exercise achieved.