Udin took us to the minivan he had booked for us from Bukit Lawang and on the way we picked up three german travellers who made us listen to Ace of Base most of the way!

Lake Toba (Danau Toba) is a lake and supervolcano. The lake is 100k long and 30k wide, it is the largest lake in Indonesia and the largest volcanic lake in the world. There was a supervolcanic eruption here about 70,000 years ago and it is the largest known explosive eruption anywhere on earth in the last 25 million years! They reckon it killed most human beings and created a population bottleneck in Central Eastern Africa and India that affected the genetic inheritance of all humans today. FACT!

We took the boat from Parapat at sundown and were treated to a fabulous sunset whilst making our way over to Tuk Tuk. When we arrived we found Merlyn Guesthouse and were shown to a traditional Batik style house right on the lake that would be our home for the next 6 nights for just $10 a night. The house was on stilts and the "front door" was more like a hatch that we had to crawl through to get in about knee height and the bathroom door was not much bigger. It made for lots of laughs with either of us banging our heads at least twice a day! It was really something waking up on the first morning and seeing the view from our balcony as we had arrived in the dark. The scenery around Lake Toba is very impressive and the Batik people there are so friendly and laid back. It was like going back in time. For the first time on our trip the temperatures didn't rise above the high 20s during the day and we had a fleece blanket at night. Refreshing!

Katy and Ivan who own the guesthouse were very welcoming and we spent a night out drinking with them in "Roy's Pub", the resident dog from Merlyn (who we think is now called Lucky) walked all the way with us and actually sat at the table, made for some funny pictures. The cooking at the guesthouse was amazing and we enjoyed home cooked noodle soup, vegetable curries and sweet and sour chicken.

We rented a motorbike (first time since Thailand) for a day to drive around the island, it was a really fun day stopping off to enjoy the scenery whenever we could and Gem actually rode most of the way back. We stopped off for lunch at a vegan restaurant perched on top of a hill, good food and views too.

Lake Toba was one of the most chilled places we had been to for a while so we enjoyed just walking round, talking to the locals, other guests at Merlyn and reading on our balcony for almost a week. We had a carpenter bee nest in the roof of our balcony which entertained us for half a day - see pics!

Definitely a place we would recommend visiting and if we ever get the chance we will go back.