Gone Solo
This trip to Solo was tiring, having to wake up at unearthly hours, i.e 6/7 am, to travel 2 - 3 hours to sightsee.The road trip to Tamangwangu was hot and stifling for the 1st hour or so, but halfway up the mountain roads, it got noticeably cooler. Om Hery hurtled round the numerous bends the way I shouldn't if I want to pass my upcoming Class 3 test. It was actually scary at times when the van seemed to go head on with an approaching bicycle or bike. The scenery up the mountain was placid: endless green paddy fields with dots of workers caring for the plants, village school children crossing the roads, buffaloes and goats grazing.
The second scary thing was the presence of monkeys! They streamed down the road towards us (in the photo below) when they spotted something of interest. At the entrance, a few pesky monkeys tried to snatch things from our bags and scared Jessica. Luckily when we proceeded further, they did not follow us.
We walked up and down uncountable steps leading to the waterfall, where the cold water was a welcome treat to our sore feet and calves. However, another group of monkeys made its unwelcome appearance; one of them even stole Jessica's shoe and only dropped it after a kind soul chased after it.
After about 30 mins of soaking our feet, we proceeded on a different route to the exit, with Jessica insisting on holding my hand while going up the steps. Tante Unike held her for part of the way, but was panting after a short while.
"Capet (tired)?" she asked me smilingly. "Uun," I retreated into the Japanese way of signifying "no", shaking my head for emphasis. She gave up on going at Jessica's speed and let me have the honour.
Out of the enclosure, we stopped over at a roadside stall for some sate. Sitting on the wooden benches along the road, with flies hovering around, I was tricked into eating rabbit meat. Gah! It tasted rather tough, and I was unable to finish the sticks with images of past pet rabbits on my mind.
On another balmy afternoon, we headed to the UNESCO World Heritage site, Borobodur. I studied about the history of this place back in university days when doing a Southeast Asian module. My lecturer had this thick accent which made it difficult for us to decipher what he was saying, much less when he pronounced "Borobodur", which always came out as "Burubudu".
Anyway.
There were steps aplenty, and narrow ones at that. We picked our way up slowly, which was also for the benefit of Om and Tante. They had probably visited before, so they did not follow the suggested directions of going round the reliefs to view the story. Thus, we haphazardly made our way to the top, with Jess being carried safely most of the way,, snapped a few obligatory photos for me, then clambered back down again.
posted by Addy @ 10:43 AM
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