so to (finally) end my traveling tales, let's move on to suka bumi.
we came down off our mountain after saying many goodbyes at the farm and made the beautiful drive to bandung. someone was kind enough to give us a free ride (score!). on the drive, we came upon a yard that appeared to have about half a dozen white brahma bulls with chains wrapped around their necks connected to metal stakes driven into the ground beside the road. as we passed by, one of them turned around and looked at me - it was a boer goat. possibly the biggest buck i've ever seen in my life. i ACTUALLY thought they were cows. i was in shock. someone explained to me that they use them to have buck fights (the indonesian version of cock fights - which they also have). apparently, there's big money to be made.
shock for the day over, we boarded a bus in bandung and headed 3 hours west to a town called sukabumi. it was on this bus that someone approached nasreen and, speaking to her in indonesian, asked her if i was 12 and if she was my chaperone. his face was priceless when i replied, also in indonesian, that i am, in fact, 23 and HER chaperone. another shock for the day. TWELVE?! seriously??
sukabumi was actually quite uneventful. we took an angkota up a mountain where we camped in a national park. this was the only part of the trip where we actually paid to sleep somewhere - a whole 50 cents per person! we pitched our tents in a clearing in the woods, ate some rice, and pretty much went to bed. it was already dark and about 50 degrees (it was a tall mountain) by the time we got there. and there were leeches and mosquitoes everywhere. this made it even more exciting when i got diarrhea in the middle of the night and the closest toilet (squat pot with no electricity) was about 1/4 km away, across a river.
the next morning, a group of campers (bank employees) from jakarta shared their breakfast and campfire with us, which was a huge blessing! it meant we didn't half to hike 1/2 a kilometer down the mountain to get food. we also got to watch them do aerobics for their morning exercise... humorous. and they got to hear all about my digestive issues of the night before. (you know you've lived in indonesia too long when you don't care that a whole group of strangers are talking about your diarrhea over breakfast.) after breakfast and chatting and aerobics, we decided to hike the mountain to a waterfall near the top. a trail had been blazed (though mudslides made it less than visible in some places), but it still took us about 2 arduous uphill hours to get there. when we arrived, we found a group of about 100 indonesian students there, admiring the beautiful waterfall. they were quickly distracted by us. and we got our picture taken with every single one of them. have you ever smiled so much that your face actually started to cramp? after they all left (big sigh of relief), we lounged around the waterfall area. some guys started a fire, which we took advantage of. it was still quite cold at this point, because the sun hadn't risen over the neighboring mountains yet. after a couple hours, we hiked back down the mountain. between farm work and hiking for 4 hours, we were especially sore.
we packed our things up at the site and went back down the mountain to get some food at the warung makans located there. we were contemplating how to get back into town, as this campsite was far enough outside of town that public transportation was pretty sparse. we had gotten there by commissioning an angkota in town the day before. however, the driver ripped us off pretty badly. he tried to get us to pay $6, but we got it down to $5. we found out later it should have been $2. just as we were contemplating, an angkota pulled up. who should be the driver, but the very same guy who ripped us off the day before! nasreen went over to talk to him, but he refused to give us a ride for less than $4. while nasreen was bartering with him, i asked some of the warung ladies how much a ride should cost. they didn't want to tell me, in case it was different than what the driver said. indonesians stick together. i told them i understood and that it was ok.
driver guy got mad at nasreen, so i told her we had all day and that we could wait. so we waited. a few minutes later, another angkota pulled up, but before nasreen could go talk to him, other driver ran over and they had a nice little chat about who knows what. by the time nasreen got to him, the guy tried to charge her the exact same price as the other guy (who left with an empty vehicle shorly after). we refused. by now, the local ladies were all sticking their covered heads out of their shop doors and asking me for the play by play. one by one they gathered around me and eavesdropped on the conversation between nas and the driver. it was escalating. it ended with nasreen telling him we'd wait, walking away, and the driver screaming at her that she is a whore and probably already slept with every man on the mountain. that got the ladies on our side. they began yelling at him in sunda (which i didn't understand), and they began reassuring us that they only pay 50 cents each and so that's all we should have to pay too. they also said that if he wouldn't do it, another angkota should be coming soon. horray, team!
so we sat. and we waited. and we waited. and we shot darts with our eyes across the way at the driver sitting in his angkota who would occasionally curse us. after about 15 minutes of this, he finally relented and told us to get in. the women all cheered. and right as we climbed in, the next angkota came over the ridge and into eyesight. i began to feel guilty about "breaking" our driver's spirit. i also became afraid that he might try to kill us by driving the vehicle off the side of one of the mountain roads. maybe i'm just paranoid. that obviously didn't happen. but he was pretty disgruntled. i had nasreen talk to him when we got into town. she told him that it wasn't that we minded paying extra, it was that we didn't want to be ripped off or be treated unfairly. and she thanked him for being honest and giving us an honest price in the end. he glared and drove off. oh, well.
from there, we drove into jakarta, got back to nasreen's mom's house at about midnight, then left the next morning at 7 to catch a train back to central java.
for this leg of the trip, i have to give credit where credit is due - pak jayudin. he was the ranger at the site we stayed at, and he helped us in every little thing. it was him who told us how much to pay for the angkota on the way down. it was him who woke up in the middle of the night to come check on us in our tents. it was him who guarded our things when we went hiking to the waterfall. it was him who called his buddy up the mountain and told him to let us into the waterfall area for rp 2000 instead of rp 3000 (we saved a whole ten cents!!). it was him who came to check on us if he thought we took too long getting food or going to the toilet. it was him who gave us his lighter so we could start a fire (which we then broke and he would not accept any money for). he was great and we appreciated him so very, very much!
all in all..... this was an amazing trip. i now know the indonesian words for tent, sand, corn, shooting star, and waterfall. i even learned some sunda! we planted some seeds. we built some relationships. we picked some corn. we got to know each other. we got sore. we got to be a blessing. and through it all, we were blessed.
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