Posts made in March, 2014

This is the third part of my Indonesia trip (read part 1 and part 2). The program was to climb Semeru (an even harder hike than Merapi). Unfortunately a combination of a tired knee (really painful) and failing hiking shoes made me skip the hike. Instead I spent two days resting while Stephane and Christophe climbed Semeru. The view from Semeru was fantastic but the climb was grueling. Both Stephane and Christophe skipped dinner that evening and slept for 12 hours straight. Durring those two days, I explored the town, taking pictures of the local market and local taxi. The goal of the trip, the main reason I went anyway, was to photograph the volcano called Kawah-Ijen. It’s not a lava flowing volcano, but still a very spectacular one. On the way to...

This is the second part of my travel to Indonesia (read part 1). We left Yogyajarta for the North face of the Merapi. It was time to get serious about hiking. The second volcano on the menu was the Merapi (2,930 meters), our base camp was at 1000m. The plan was to get to the summit one hour before sunrise (5am local time). It’s a very popular hike among locals, who take two days to climb it. Unfortunately, we choose to do it in one long day. We left our camp at 10:30pm and we hiked the entire path in the dark. We had a local guide, who was over 60 years old, chainsmoked at each break and was wearing rubber boots all the way to the top. I, however, had light high-tech hiking boots, was reasonably fit but carrying a 25 pounds (12 kg) camera bag and tripod....