Gunung Lawu

It's 3am and I felt the buzz of Will's alarm, ahhhh it's time to get up! We both maybe got max an hour sleep. Firstly other campers decided to blare music while dancing round a fire till about 1am, then the owner came in and watched football and what seemed like Indonesians got talent till about 2am 😭 But we sucked it up and went straight out. It was pitch black, but nice and cool for walking. I'm oddly liking walking in the dark now as the feeling of satisfaction and mystery when the sun comes up. It is super freaky and scary but when the black curtain reveals what is around you it's just incredible. We got halfway up and got out of the forest just in time for sunrise to reveal the surrounding volcanoes. We had been worried that the weather/ fog would ruin our views but actually it was completely clear with a mystical low lying mist displaying the shadow of Gunung Lawu.

We heard horror stories that the walk will take anything from 6-7 hours up and then 5 hours down. Most people do it in two days and camp at the top. Being the crazy people that we are we obviously wanted to do it in one. And I'm so glad we did as we were at the top, even after a bit of an extra loop round because we took the wrong path, before 8am. It only took us 4.5 hours! I didn't think we were walking particularly fast but we have noticed that the locals generally walk for 5 mins then take a 20 mins rest whereas we take no rest, we only stopped once to eat a banana 😂

When at the top it was beautiful. You could see pretty far into the distant as far as Solo, Yogyakarta, Gunung Merapi, Gunung Merbabu and on the opposite side Gunung Ngliman. As soon as we peeped our heads at the top we were swarmed with Indonesians. I thought it was crazy at the temples yesterday but this was mental! Everyone, and I mean everyone, wanted pictures of us at the top. We asked one person to take a picture of us infront of the Peaks monument and we were there for about 20 mins having individual pictures with everyone. Our moment of fame 😂

Then the struggle, well for me, began. I'm sure I've mentioned it but for some reason I'm struggling going downhill and get pains in my knees. We decided to do the circular route and therefore the downhill was vertically downhill on uneven rocks. It was my worst nightmare. Everystep I took was like a dagger in my knee. It took my 1.5 hours to walk a 3rd of the way. I was shattered, unmotivated, feeling guilty for taking so long and in huge amounts of pain. We had a rest after a third of the way, had some snacks and pressed on after a mini upset. Actually the rest of the way I was surprisingly much quicker and we were down and back at base camp by 1:45pm. Perfect! I was so happy to get to the bottom! So the ascent was 11km in 4.5 hours and the descent was 7km in 4.5 hours haha wups!

We packed up our gear, went for lunch and a hot chocolate at the warung from the previous night and then began the journey back to Solo. The journey back was really scenic again and as Will is now much more confident on the scooter we got back in no time. For dinner we joined our local lady for Nasi Lewit and then booked our train to Yogya for 6am the next morning. Yes, I agree we are absolutely bonkers but hey its our last week!!Read more