Top of the World! Trekking Mount Rinjani

I just returned... sore, dirty, tired...but triumphantly, from a three day, two night trek on Mount Rinjani, on the island of Lombok, Indonesia.  There were 5 of us from Blue Marlin Dive that did the treck together; Tommy, Johanna, Bas, Jacquie and I.

Mount Rinjani (Gunung Rinjani) is the second highest volcano in Indonesia with the summit at 3,726 metres (12,224 ft).  At 2000 m (6,600 feet) there is a crater lake called Segara Anak (Child of the Sea) which sits inside the caldera of the volcano, about 600m below the caldera rim.  The caldera is massive (6km x 8.5km).  A post-caldera cone called Gunung Barujari rises up from the crater lake.  This volcanic cone was active as recently as May 2010 and while hiking we could see white smoke rising from the cone.

Summit of Rinjani at the left, Gunung Barujari cone in the center, and Segara Anak Lake.  This was the view from our camping site the first night of the treck.

We began the treck at Senaru, hiked 2000m elevation gain the first day to camp on the crater rim overlooking the lake and the crater lake and the ocean to the west.  On day 2 we hiked down 600m to take a swim in the Lake and then in some amazing hot springs below a waterfall which were a soothing 40 degrees C.  After lunch and a short nap we hiked back up 600m to the crater rim nearer the summit where we camped overnight.  We were woken at 2:30 am, in the pitch black to climb the remaining 1000m (3 hrs) up to the summit to watch the sunrise.  After sunrise, we hiked back down to camp (2 hrs) had breakfast, then hiked 5 hours down to the village of Sembalun where we were picked up and taken back to Gili Trawangan.  The overall distance was only around 25km but with the elevation gains this was the hardest hike I've ever done!

The trip started off with a flat tire and tire change (left to right; Thomas, Tommy, Johanna, Jacquie, Bas)

On the road to Rinjani

Need any last minute trecking supplies? "Store" on the trail

Tammy (a fellow Calgarian) and Jacob were also trecking with us.  Entrance to the park.

Beautiful shady jungle walk at first

Lunch stop.  Note the porter is carrying supplies (up to 40kg) on two ends of a bamboo pole over one shoulder.  Nearly all rhe porters wear flip flops or go barefoot and get paid $10/day.  Two of our porters hiked 5 hours down with our group, then got new supplies and hiked back up with a different group immediately!

SWEATY!

Hiking up into the clouds

Savannah

First view of camp on the crater rim

Our camp...it was cold up there... Close to 0C

View to the west of Gunung Alung on Bali (big volcano on the horizon), the three Gili islands in the mid right of the photo (Gili Air closest to the coast of Lombok, then Gili Meno, then Gili Trawangan).  You can also see the shadow that Mount Rinjani casts.

Treacherous!

Down at the lake with our guide, Hahn.

Hot springs

Tommy enjoying lunch by the lake

Enterprising guy selling beer for $10 on the crater rim

Jacquie, Bas, and Tommy having dinner on night 2.  A really nice chicken curry soup.

Sweaty again dip uring the ore-dawn hike to the Summit, Tammy is in the dark behind me.

Sunrise from near the summit... I didn't quite beat the sun

Summit!!!  It was cold and windy up there!

Tiny hikers working their way to the summit

On the way back, we could see the trail we hiked in the dark...eep!

View of camp from summit trail

View back to the summit from camp (left to right; Johanna, Tommy, Bas, Jacquie, Thomas, me, Tammy, Jacob, Hahn in front)

Filthy trecker Tommy

Hahn

Home stretch

Victory coke... Look how dirty I am!

The ride home

Another Day at the Office

I have been guiding 2-3 dives nearly every day and if no guests are signed up to dive I go on a fun dive with the other DM's and DMT's.  Not a bad life. When I arrived on Gili Trawangan I had only ~80 dives under my belt and that number has increased to 190 so between Gili Trawangan and Komodo I have done about 110 dives here to date.  This is a very small number compared to most divers!  I am loving guiding and have had amazing guests to guide and amazing dives the past week since I finished my Technical Diving course.  

First, here's a photo that my instructor, Ari, took during our last Decompression dive to 45m.  You can see the twinset (two tanks connected by a manifold on my back) as well as my small stage bottle  (83% oxygen) on my right side to breath during decompression stops to accelerate decompression.

This photo shows the line that currently extends down to 176m which Will Goodman will use for his ascent in Jan or Feb for a record attempt for the deepest dive 330m.  I am at 45m deep in this photo.

In shallower waters the diving has been excellent.  Last week I saw the following awesomeness:

1) three cuttlefish which were not shy and allowed us to observe them for about 10 minutes from only about 1m away.

2) two adult Whitetip reef sharks on one dive, another adult Whitetip on another dive, an adult Blacktip reef shark on a third dive on which we also saw two baby sharks snuggled up under a small coral, and we saw a Manta ray near the surface while we did a 3 minute safety stop at 5m.

Babies!

3) on one dive we saw a school of 23 Bumphead Parrotfish and then later in the dive we saw anothe r school of around 30!  Bumpheads are huge, growing up to 1.3m (4'3") long, they are prehistoric looking fish with big bony heads used for breaking coral (for food).  

Bumphead Parrotfish.  Not sure who to credit this photo to but it came from Blue Marln's website - thanks!

Not a great photo but one I took with a turtle in the foreground and some Bumphead silhouettes in the background.

4) on a very surreal dive, myself and two divers saw an adult Blacktip reef shark so we got close to the bottom to stay still and watch him swim around.  Then three large Tuna swam overhead and it got really dark.  I thought a boat or a cloud had passed over us.  When I looked up to see what had blocked out the light I saw a huge school of tiny fish, each fish was only a few inches long but there were 100's of thousands of them.  The school formed a long tube, probably 100m long and 10m wide and took ages to pass over us.  It was one of those strange experiences that burns itself into your mind and memory.

Two moreDMT's finished their training and are now Divemasters.  Kelly and Lay are ridiciculous and hilarious.  They decided to do their naked dive, traditionally the 100th dive, on their last day and borrowed my camera to capture the moment.  So silly and well worth the pictures!  Congrats girls!

This is what mermaids really look like LOL

Sadly, my time in Indonesia is coming to a close but it is time to move on.  I have only 10 more days here before taking a boat to Bali, then flying to Singapore for 3 days of shopping and sightseeing before I fly to Cebu, in the Philippines for the next chapter in my adventure.

My Toque Climbed Rinjani

My toque, mittens, fleece jacket, down jacket, running tights, and thermal under layer shirt climbed Mount Rinjani on Lombok but I haven't made it there yet.  Yesterday, Martin and Alina, two divers who were diving with Blue Marlin returned from a three day, two night trek up the dormant volcano, Rinjani. I met Martin on the dive boat one afternoon and offered to lend him my warm clothing so that he and Alina could do the trek.  They had brought only shorts and summer clothing on vacation but the top of Rinjani is very windy and at 3000m elevation gets quite cold (0 C).  They are a very sweet couple, and when they returned they showed me their photos and brought back my clothing they gave me more than enough money to have everything laundered and to buy myself a massage (their suggestion) in return for lending them the gear.  I still hope to make the trek myself so I am glad to hear about their experience and to have experienced clothing with me ;)

More Gili Trawangan scenery

Hard to imagine hiking up from sea level to 3000m and from +30C to 0C!

Monkeys on E and Technical Diving

I went to Lombok a few days ago with Matias, one of the Blue Marlin DMT's to do some errands including; filing a police report about my stolen Visa, Bank card, and Iphone (for insurance purposes), to get photos and fingerprints done to extend my tourist Visa, to see the "city" of Mataram, to get Matias and his infected foot wounds to a proper doctor, and to get my passport back which I had been without since late July when I sent it to Mataram to apply for a visa extension.  We took the local boat ($1.30) for the 15min ride to Lombok and then hired a car and driver at a vastly inflated priceof $25 to drive us to immigration, wait for us, then take us to a clinic, then to pick us up at the mall and drive us to a police station then back to catch a local boat back to Gili Trawangan.  Matias counted 57 people on the tiny local boat and it seemed very rickety.  I'm glad the seas were calm because Matias told me that he was warned that "sometimes thelocal boats don't make it" eep!

Our driver was ridiculous.  He was pumping dance music so loud that I couldn't get into his car until Matias turned it down.  He then let Matias choose some music...he went with Bob Marley... At which point our cabbie lit up a joint and offered it around.  We drove through the monkey forest which was beautiful and loaded with monkeys who hung out on the side of the road.  Adi pulled over to let us take some photos.  He told us that someone had given E (ecstasy) to one of the monkeys and that it was "probably dead now because that's for people, not monkeys".

Crazy Adi, our driver, smoking some weed on the way to Mataram

This monkey wishes he had some E

I was pretty worried this monkey was going to jump off this sign and onto me...

Check out all these motorcycles lined up for fuel

The trip to immigration, the clinic, and the mall went relatively smoothly.  Then we went to the police station, via Adi's house so he could drop off fireworks for his son ;). The English was very limited at the police station and it took the police a looking time to fill out my police report.  At one point the asked me to type in some of the information in English onto the report.  I got behind the computer and typed up a list of what was stolen.  I should have looked closer at the form and corrected the rest of the errors and omissions that it was riddled with but I was slightly uncomfortable at this point and we had a boat to catch.  I hope that insurance understands the challenges I faced and the extraordinary lengths I went to in order to get this police report written up and they excuse the errors!

Playing Polici

The day after we returned from Lombok, Matiasand I started our Advanced Nitros and Decompression Theory course.  This is my first introduction to what they call "technical diving" as opposed to the "recreational diving" I have done up to this point.  The main advantages to taking the course as I see it are that I will be certified to dive to 45m, to dive with enriched air blends up to 100% oxygen, to learn to plan dives that require a decompression stop, and I get to try out new equipment configurations.  The equipment includes; two tanks ("twin" tanks) on my back, an inflatable wing and harness with an aluminum backplate rather than a jacket-style BCD (buoyancy compensation device) as well as a stage bottle attached by clips to my side.  It feels like driving a schoolbus underwater compared with diving with only 1 tank but I can go deeper and stay longer because I can carry more gas to breath.  There are a few calculations to do to determine how much gas we breath in a minute at different depths and how much gas we will need in total for the dive but, despite the math, I am really enjoying he challenge and the opportunity to learn all about the theory and physiology of diving.... I am hooked!

School in summertime... But nerd-tastically fun!

Twin tanks connected by a manifold.  2 sets of regulators in case of failure, harness and wing.  Intimidating at first for sure... Getting used to it is the point of the course.

Sadly, I'm in dry dock again due to an ear and throat infection.  The doctor gave me an arsenal of ear drops, decongestants, antibiotics, and anti inflamitories, and as soon as I feel better I hope to do some more diving on the twin tanks so I can complete my course.