2016-03-31 -8 121

Location

On the slope of a volcano north-west of Ende, on Flores, Indonesia.

Participants

Felix Dance

Expedition

I'm on this month-long cycle tour of the Indonesian archepelago from Bali to Timor-Leste, as mentioned in earlier hash 2016-03-19 -8 117. I woke up at 5:20 in my hotel in the rather shitty city of Ende in central Flores expecting to ride up Gunung Kelimutu, a local volcano, for a relatively short day of 52 kms, staying in a town on the side.

But then of course I checked the geohahes. 8.8 kms away. And practically on a road. And I'd planned only half a day's ride. I did not even have to think about this.

I quickly packed up, checked out and left three of my four panniers with reception while I rode my bike up the quiet rural road towards the hash.

It took me about an hour and a half to climb the 600m elevation of the hash, avoiding crappy road conditions, admiring the superb views of Ende (which is much nicer from above) and waving to excited school children, who looked like they would much rather spend the day doing what I was doing despite the hard work.

After not too long I was there. I warily plonked my bike on the ground and headed into the thick rainforest down a gully to the hash, 63m away. The dense foliage gave my GPS a lot of trouble, but after stepping on a few large spiders and shoving branches out of the way my hash-droid app showed me to be less than 3m away. I took some photos and climbed back up the gully to my bike.

Flying down the mountain, flinging mud and small stones up into my face, I got back to my panniers at the hotel. Here, with some regret, I discovered that Google Terrain-view showed that I'd been climbing an enormous volcano, and the hash to be only 200m or so from the lip of the caldera. What a shame I missed that view. Particularly in the light of having to wait two hours for road-works during the rest of my ride.

Total distance: 19kms.