Here, as I wrote in the last post, we met Irana and her family on our first day in Berastagi. On the second morning, Dan, Janosch and I decided to brave the misty, chilly weather and climb Gunung Sibayak, the smaller of two nearby volcanoes.
The climb up was reasonably easy: at first, our path was up a steep, but wide road, winding up the mountainside from the bemo stop that sits at the base. Most of the way up, the road ends with a wide tarmac (where buses stay, during the high season, maybe?) and there isn't much clue as to where the path picks up. Fortunately, another guest at our hostel had given us the secret: off to the left, behind an empty and rather forlorn concrete pool (why this is here, I just don't know) is a small path that leads up the loose, chalky embankment and into the jungle.
The jungle path was steep and full of slippery tree roots, but was clear and even had occasional concrete stairs. As we climbed through the palms, the smell of rotten eggs, of sulfur, became stronger and stronger - at first, we thought the scent was carried by the clear, rushing streams, but then we emerged onto a treeless, rocky stretch, and we saw the steam.
Just a bit farther up was a set of fumaroles - volcanic vents, gushing out endless clouds of hot steam, stinking of sulfur. After years and years, they've left neon yellow stains and a white film over the rocks.
After the fumaroles, we saw the crater - not, as I was hoping, a smoking hole leading to boiling lava and certain death, but rather a blocked crater. The sharp edges swoop down to a bowl filled with shallow and dirty looking water, where people have rearranged rocks to spell out names. The sides of the crater are maybe a hundred metres or less where we approached, but opposite, the black rock soars right up to Sibayak's summit, several hundred metres above us.
We scrambled up the thin, craggy path to the summit (2212m above sea level) and then after a rest and a chat with some hikers from Medan, we started down.
The route down also featured concrete steps - lots of them - but they've now eroded so that the middle is a deep pool. So basically we hopped from concrete ledge to concrete ledge down the mountainside. When the steps gave up, it was muddy and full of those slippery tree roots. Down is always so much harder than up!
At the bottom, we waded (literally) through a bamboo plantation - interesting to see the men slicing the timber into strips for weaving right on site. We skipped the hot spring at the bottom and grabbed a bemo home.
The next day, we left Berastagi for Lake Toba, to the southwest. We took a series of bemos (one of which was terrifying - I can handle the average speedy Sumatran driver, but this was the scariest ride we've had yet!) and a ferry, and landed in Tuk-tuk, on a little jutting peninsula off the main island in the lake.
Toba is the world's largest volcanic lake: as in, the lake is a volcano crater. It is absolutely massive. One tiny stretch of the lake took us a half hour to cross by ferry.
We spent four nights on the island, called Samosir, in a laid-back hostel. I'm sure that if we hadn't had a flight booked, we'd have been there far longer. It's the kind of time-free, easy-going place that draws you in and lets you linger. We met lots of new friends at the hostel to drink and chat with. We rented a scooter for a day and drove all the way around the island (water buffalo and waving children everywhere! Amazing.) and tried all the local delicacies.
At the end of our time in Tuk-tuk, it was also time to leave Sumatra, and I was a bit heartbroken. It was (and still is, as I write this over a month later) the best place we've had the privilege to visit in our travels. We'll be back!
S.
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