Rumah Berastagi

Time to climb Mount Sibayak! It’s known to be one of Indonesia’s most accessible volcanos - some people go for sunrise but I wasn’t up for that so I decided to just go in the morning. You can take a guide which is recommended for sunrise but I decided to go it alone which lots of people say is easy to do.

Mery had given me comprehensive instructions on how to take the public bus to the base of the climb so I set off about 8am. The public bus are really just converted minibuses which run up and down the road- there are no bus stops you just flag them down and they literally come every minute or so. Got a few interested looks but we reached the end of the route about 8.20 (and cost me 4000 rupiah which is about 11p). I then had a 4km walk up a road to the entry point of the volcano, and then a further 2km to the crater. All in all I think about 500/600m of up and it took me about 2 hours. Some of the path was pretty steep but it wasn’t too hot so it was manageable.

As I approached the crater it got quite noisy - sounded like strong wind but it turned out to be hot air vents with volcanic steam coming out, a bit like a pressure cooker. Walked down to the volcanic lake which was cool but there were some hot springs running into it and then up on the higher point on the rim where the views were pretty nice. Some clouds had gathered by this point but they cleared from time to time waving spectacular views over the valley.

Headed down about 11 and took a different route back so I could visit the hot springs. Sadly these weren’t as nice as the ones in Flores as they were man made pools with the hot water piped in, but was pleasant enough for 30 mins or so! Then hopped on a different bus back, has a slight panic when the bus turned away from the direction I wanted but it turned out it just did a little loop. Got back about 2.30 so had some lunch- delicious bbq chicken.

Got back and just chilled out for the rest of the afternoon, saw a bit of a sunset on the roof terrace (through the clouds) and had a walk around the local market. Another relatively early night called!Read more