Day One of the Trek

On Monday morning on December 24th, my guide walked into the resort lobby at precisely 6am. I was ready to go and got into the bus to embark on our journey through the volcano. The drive to the entrance point took two hours and I slept through most of it, missing out on the scenery but needing to gather energy. Fortuitously, there were no other trekkers registered this week and it would be only me, two porters, and a guide by the name of Suhn. The porters carried all of the equipment in large baskets on the ends of a bamboo pole. The first leg of the trek would involve walking through the dense tropical forest.

We spent the first three hours of the morning walking through the jungle where we were surrounded by exotic trees and lush vegetation. The path was quite narrow at times, but the walk was easy enough. I had wanted to take this trek to give myself the opportunity to clear my mind. I had remembered the euphoria I'd experienced in Thailand when I trekked down the coast and had completely cleared my head of everything except the coast. Living in a noisy and polluted city, I relish the opportunities to get away and experience quiet time with nature.

I should mention at this point that I was taking a chance with this trip in that December is monsoon season in this area. I was hoping the sky would open up for this occasion, but also relishing the challenge of climbing the mountain when it's the most difficult. The morning was relatively calm and the dense canopy of branches and leaves kept the light rain off my head. However, just before lunch it really started coming down and I got completely soaked before I managed to put my pancho on. When we got to the first shelter, the temperature had already begun to drop and the wind was picking up. I put on some dry clothes and had lunch. I will go into more detail on the meals in a later post--the food is worth its own entry.

Luckily it stopped raining after lunch, but this didn't last long. My second dry outfit got completely soaked, which would be a common theme the next couple of days. The path got significantly steeper on the second leg and we walked for about 4 hours until we came to the campsite. There were some other campers here who were doing the abbreviated two day/one night trek. I was pretty worn out by the time we set up camp and was eager to eat dinner. I spent the in-between time chatting with an Indonesian family that were there on holiday. I found it more interesting interacting with them and the other guides than the other tourists, who were a bit loud. The people on the mountain were just as friendly as the locals, even though they were selling nothing. I put on my last dry pair of pants and hung my wet clothes to dry in the shelter. The air was so moist there was little hope they would dry, but it wouldn't matter since they were bound to get wet again anyway. This picture is the view from in front of my tent. After the long day I went to bed early and tried to ignore the foreigners singing Christmas carols loudly. If it weren't for them, I'd have completely forgotten it was Christmas eve. I went to sleep knowing that the next day would be colder, steeper, and windier, but the guide didn't think it would rain.