to Berastagi: Off the island by ferry and up an escarpment

October 30, 2006

Rachel woke to a crowing rooster. We are up at 5am, and cycling by 6, it only takes us 45 minutes to cycle on the now familiar road to the ferry landing. While waiting we eat another muffin and drink a can of "sweat". There is another ferry that leaves, a woman and child are washing by the dock, we wait. Our ferry to Haranggaol arrives at 7:30. We load our bikes over a narrow gangplank. Patrick makes sure they are secure. Then a pickup truck arrives with bags of onions, the bags are slid onto the ferry by the gangplank. Patrick helps with the unloading.

We wait.

We are on the ferry with only a few others, then a big truck arrives and there are more bags of onions, roosters and chickens in bags and more people.

Then we wait some more.

There are two groups of women, they start to eat, some rice, some fish, some have red mouths Patrick says, "whatever it is that they're eating makes them look like vampires." Some spread out their onions and start to sort the bad ones out and separate the peelings. About 9, the ferry finally takes off, so we guess everyone we asked about the time the "ferry leaves" was right---it arrived at 7:30, started loading at 8 and finally took off at 9:00.

A group of kids talk with Patrick, he shows them the map of Sumatra. We are relaxing listening to laid-back island music sailing across Lake Tabo. Then we land and the flurry of disembarking commences.

The dock is about 8 feet higher than the boat. Rachel climbs up the gangplank at the front of the boat, Patrick gets to the bikes, unloads the bags and hands them up to Rachel, then the bikes, we get everything back into place and we are off...we have glimpses of the road up the escarpment....

We buy some water, eat a few cookies and set off. Right away the road starts to climb, at first, we do okay riding the hill in our smallest gears, but eventually have to walk the steepest sections. It takes us about an hour to get to the church that we saw from the lake, it seemed about halfway up the escarpment. The views back towards Samosir Island are great, with the rain and wind, the air is clean. A guy on a moped with a wooden contraption on the back stops to say "hi". He is selling fresh fruit and we buy a baggie of fresh cut pineapple. Patrick has no idea how much it should be, gives him 5000, he gestures for 2000 more but then returns the 5000 to Patrick. We figure he didn't have change and was honest enough not to take advantage of a tourist. The sweet fruit helps, and we drink the Pocaria sweat at intervals.

When we are almost to the rim of the caldera a dozen or more mopeds with wide wagons pass us. All of them loaded up with happy people that want to shake Patrick's hand while Rachel takes pictures. At the rim there's a viewpoint, but the climbing doesn't stop just yet. We gradually climb higher amongst fertile field, full of vegetables. We reach about 1400meters altitude (up from 850 at Lake Tabo) and get to the main road that skirts the lake. Time for some snacks and another Pocari, with about 50km to go.

Where the road follows the lake, we have quite a few climbs and descents but then from Merek, we go mostly down to Kabanjahe. A tremendous down pour starts, and we take shelter for just long enough to dig out our rain jackets and push on. Water and mud flows in sheets across the road, at one point we ride through about 4" of water. There is some other traffic, but people are courteous today.

From Kabanjahe we climb back up to Berastagi at just over 1300meters. The wiener schnitzels must have done good for Rachel, we ride up strong. Right at the edge of town, we find the hotel recommended in the LP guidebook, and for 50,000Rp we have a room, a bathroom with cold water only, but no sink. Good deal though, it's very clean. We wash up and head into town, both of us are starving! What a change to have an appetite. Disappointing though, two of the Chinese restaurants are either closed or gone, the third one doesn't look too hot. We ask and do get a decent Chinese meal. It is getting dark now around 6:30 when we are back to the hotel.

A thunderstorm is moving in, we string up the mosquito net and read for a while. Finally, a good day of cycling.