Mount Merapi, Indonesia

Last night we trekked up Mount Merapi. the plan was that we leave to hotel at 11pm taking the one hour drive from Yogyakarta to the village at the bottom of the Volcano then spend four hours climbing before reaching the summit before sunrise. 

Starting the Trek

We arrived at some chaps house at the base of the volcano at around midnight and after being offered coffee we left his home to climb the volcano at around 1am planning to get to the summit at 5am for sunrise. The village was about 1500m above sea level so it was pretty cold. As I'm living in Ho Chi Minh City the only warm clothes I have is a hoodie that never gets used for obvious reasons but this was fine as climbing keeps you warm anyway. Also the only shoes I have are my old running shoes, work shoes and flip flops. I didn't think it was worth buying proper shoes for this one off trip so opted to wear the running shoes

We only had a small group of 5 people including the tour guide and began our climb. Straight way the road was very steep. After about 20 minutes this steep road turned into a steep jungle track after about an hour this turned into a steep sand track an hour after this steep rocks. At no point was there any sort of flat area to take a breather. It was so tiring and I was sweating profusely the whole time. We stopped every 40 minutes to rest when the large volumes of sweat would turn your clothes into freezing blankets which compounded the difficulty of the experience. On top of this the shoes were not helping me as they kept slipping on the sand and didn't give me any grip on the rocks.

Some of the steep rocks

After 2.5 hours the guide could tell I wasn't having much fun and when we stopped he asked if me and my girlfriend wanted to stay at this small area on the side off the volcano since we still had 1.5 hours left to climb and it was going to get harder. At this point I had really had enough and thought that no view was worth this suffering so took him up on his offer and threw in the towl. It was like climbing steep uneven steps in the dark for 2.5 hours. 

More of the steep rocks

So, at 3 am I opted to stay on the side of the Volcano. It was about 5 degree Celsius which was even colder given the soaking wet clothes and hoodie to keep me warm. Fortunately I had a change of t-shirt. We manged to sleep pretty quickly but was freezing cold.

Where we slept

A couple of hours later we woke up when it was getting light. We really were on the side of a volcano. To the side of us was a very big drop but the view was pretty special. As the sun rose it got warmer and a few hours later our guide came back (they made it to the summit which is about 3000m high and took then a further 1.5hrs) and we began our decent. The decent was just as unpleasant as the climb except more slippery and the jungle had come alive. Because of my shoes I lost count of the times I fell over after a while. It just wasn't funny anymore.

As you can see from the photos below, it was an amazing volcano. You can see the dried lava that flowed down a few years ago and the top. Also the rice fields and another dormant volcano in the distance. The cloud at the top is actually steam from the volcano.

View from my bed on the side of the Volcano

The summit I didn't get to

Dried lava

Dried lava

Dried lava

View of the rice fields

After we got to the bottom we had breakfast and then left to go back to the hotel. Having had some time to reflect on this now I actually got no pleasure whatsoever from climbing the volcano or descending from it. I've also never been so relieved to finish anything in my life, this includes training for and running a marathon. The shower and sleep I had after getting back to the hotel were the best I've ever had. However, saying this it was an amazing experience. It was just so different and I felt lucky to see a volcano like this. The people that did make it to the top said they got to look into the crater and smell sulfur but didn't see any lava so I have no regrets about stopping when I did.

Our guide does this three times per week. I've no ideas how. Once was enough for me. Anyway in light of this experience were skipping on our other planned Volcano trip, Mount Bromo, even though by all accounts is much much easier. Flights are booked and were off to Bali!!!!