2009-11-10 -7 110

The Place

In a paddy field about 20 kms south west of Yogyakarta, near a town called Watan.

Who Went

Felix Dance - by motor scooter
Jasper - going with Felix
Ahn - on the back of Jasper's motor scooter

Expedition

Felix Dance, Jasper and Anh

Well, Anh and I got up from our hotel in Yogyakarta, Java, Indonesia, where we've both been independently traveling in different directions for the past few days but, with a Dutch guy called Jasper, have found ourselves somehow thrown together. I was describing Geohashing in my home city of Melbourne, Australia and they were interested enough to humour me in checking where today's point was online.

We found that it was quite accessible. In fact, only about 30kms from here - within easy riding distance by motor scooter. So after Anh and I checked out the 'Bird Market' in town, and with Jasper organised to do a midnight hike up Mount Merapi (Java's most active volcano) later today, we headed off.

We had hired two scooters with Jasper and Anh on one and I on the other. We passed some amazing scenery along the way, battled with Java's crazy traffic, lost each other for a while and found each other again without the luxury of mobile phones, and slowly zeroed in on the location.

Within 500m we had to turn off an already side road onto an unsealed motorbike track by the side of a large irrigation channel. Soon it was time to abandon our bikes and head the last 50m on foot, which we found to be surprisingly easy despite occasionally slipping into the mud of the paddy field.

We quickly got to the point, which was amazing in how beautiful the surroundings were and perfect the level of accessibility. We stopped to take numerous photos, being unregarded by a local farmer on whose land we seemed to be. Finally we left the way we came, stopping nearby for some not-very-inspirational-yet-vastly-cheap food and then a bit further on for some delicious fruit at a fruit market.

The ride home displayed an amazing sunset, losing each other again, and some brief night riding in crazy yet awesome Yogya.

Time of hash: 4 o'clockish. Awesome hash, and the first in Indonesia (come on Indonesians!). Here's a map of our route.

Now for that volcano trek...