post from october 8th

Hey friends!

It's been awhile since our post. Lots has happened. Some of you may have heard about the earthquake here in Indonesia a week or so ago - we didn't get wind of it til a few days later but we've just heard it was pretty intense. It was in Sumatra though which is quite a ways away as we were on the island of Lombok finishing our scuba diving course. We've since finished and have now done about 10 dives total! Some pretty cool sights - Craig'll probably write more about that in his blog.



We just got back to civilization so to speak. We spent the last 3 days and 2 nights trekking the 2nd largest volcano in Indonesia called Mount Rinjani! Wow! I thought I've done some pretty intense hikes, but this was crazy! There's no such thing as traversing a mountain, its straight up and straight down! We hiked about 9 hours the 1st day to make it to our 1st base camp. There were 3 other girls with us, a guide and 3 porters to carry in food and supplies. The porters were so strong. I wish the pictures would upload but these men walked the entire trek in just flip flops & carrying 65 pounds or more of food etc on bamboo sticks over their shoulders!! We woke up at 3 am to start our ascent to the top of Mt. Ranangi. 3 hours later of straight uphill I was totally exhausted. Craig had made it to the top for the sunrise, I was about 15 minutes later but still found spectacular views. We hiked back down and took down camp and moved in the crater of the volcano next to a lake. By the time we set up that camp it was noon and we'd already hiked 8 hours!! We hiked out the next day - back to the top of one of the rims and then down to Senaru where we'd begun! Unbelievable views, the volcano is still spewing some lava - it erupted only 3 months ago and all through the night you could hear it rumbling. Our guide and porters were amazing cooks too and we spent time trying to learn some indonesian words and they english.

A few observations of our time in Indonesia: There are lots of rice paddies, monkeys, singing from temples, and dogs everywhere. Squat toilets are maneagable, sharks usually keep to themselves (we've seen 3 diving so far!), the people are super hard workers and carry crazy amounts of weight on their head - we watched men and women unload a boat of bricks carrying them to shore 2 at a time on their heads! People litter everywhere, roads are narrow, mopeds can seat three - not unusal to see a man and woman with a small child tucked between them swirving though traffic, i'm tired of banana pancakes - we've eaten them for about 8 days straight...washing clothes in salt water is not ideal... roosters crow at anytime of the night and craig and i should not sit in the back of their mini-vans! i got sick twice already!

thanks again for all your prayers. lots of love...