Mountains, monkeys, and super human porters

Today's main event was ascending to Mount Rinjani's crater rim. The mountain is an active volcano that is the 2nd highest mountain in Indonesia at 12,224'. It was the site of one of the largest eruptions in the world in the last millennium in 1257. Most recently, it erupted in 2016 without warning and many hikers had to be evacuated. 

With our fingers crossed that no eruption would happen while we were hiking, our plan was a 2 day trek: hike up about 5000'+ to the crater rim on day 1, camp, summit Rinjani on day 2 (another 3000'+) and then hike back down. We hired a guide because you are not allowed to hike Mt Rinjani without one. This plan was definitely doable for us, but it did push us.

We woke up early in order to meet our guide at 6:30am. We packed everything the night before, so we were ready to eat and go. It was a treat to see a sweet view of Rinjani from our hotel room. The summit looked far away, but we felt good about making it (only about 50% of those who try to summit make it).

Mt Rinjani before sunrise 

A hearty breakfast of banana pancakes for me and fried rice for Dan

Mt Rinjani as the sun was coming up

We're ready to hike the mountain behind us

1st we had about a 1 hr ride in the back of a pickup truck 

Adittia (our guide's younger brother) checking out Rinjani

Before we were allowed to hike, we had to get a health check up (O2 sat, blood pressure, and answer a bunch of questions). When we purchased our 2 day tour, there was even an age cut-off of 54, so we were cutting it close.

At the trailhead, we unloaded from the pickup truck and got ready to start the hike. This is good time to mention the porters. They are all men, but of different ages, shapes and sizes. There is about 1 porter for every hiker (customer). We had 2 porters for 2 hikers and 1 guide (and the guide's little brother, Adittia) in our group. They make about $15/day. Their job is to carry all of the food and gear up to the crater rim with a bamboo pole and baskets in super hot conditions and most of them do it in flipflops. In addition to carrying everything, they also prepare and serve all meals and set-up/take down the gear. Their job is so tough. Watching them crank up the mountain is wicked impressive - they are super human!

The trailhead for Mt Rinjani 

Cows along the way - their clanging bells are fun to hear

Porters walking by the cows

That is a big bell!

A porter hiking by cows

A porter hiking up Rinjani

The lunch we were served at Pos 2 partway up the mountain (there are a total of 4 Pos) 

Lunch at POS 2 - it was organized chaos here with so many hikers, porters and guides

Adittia and me hiking up

Porters cranking out the elevation 

We quickly found out that we were in much better shape than our guide. Dan would like me to mention in this blog that I almost killed out guide because of the pace I was going (he thinks it will make anyone who has ever hiked or traveled with me laugh). It probably didn't help that he asked us several times if we could stop so he could smoke a cigarette. Early on in the hike, he realized that he forgot a small bag of papers and his phone back at the trailhead. He ended up having to run back to figure out where it was. In the meantime, I carried his backpack a ways until he met up with us again. He couldn't stop apologizing and seemed genuinely amazed that I could carry his backpack. He told us that he had never had customers go as fast as we did. We told him that, where we live if you stop for very long, you will get eaten by bugs. We ended up carrying some of the stuff in his pack to lighten his load.

A few other things about our guide, Yantoo. He lives in the traditional Sasak village that we visited. The village did not have any electricity until 1997. He lives with his family of 9 all in one home which doesn't have any rooms except for one main room. This is where everything happens (cooking, cleaning, sleeping, eating, etc). He said that they mostly all get along with each other. Yantoo told us that many of the men in his village are porters or guides for Rinjani. He used to be a porter, but he said it was too hard which is why he learned English so that he could be a guide. He brought his younger brother so that he could summit Rinjani for the first time (and start thinking about becoming a porter and/guide).

Our guide, Yantoo, struggled to keep up with us 

Dan trying his hand at carrying a porter's load

Getting close to the creator rim - we could finally see the summit above the clouds

Another action shot of us killing our guide

Getting close to the crater rim - our destination for the day

At the crater rim

A porter cresting the hill

The tent site along the crater rim

A close-up of the summit and our destination for the next day

We went for a short hike with Adittia while our guide rested

Tents are set up along the crater rim with undercast clouds below

Some fried bananas - yum!

We didn't realize it at first, but there were monkeys all around us on the crater rim. I may have taken a few too many photos of the monkeys. In my defense, it was so awesome to be in that setting of a crater rim, lake, and undercast clouds, and to see monkeys.

The tent for our porters and guides (and little brother). They also prepared all of the food here.

Our guide and his little brother resting 

Dan took a little pre-dinner nap

Fancy dinner in the mountains 

Dinner with a sweet view 

After the sunset show was over, we went to bed asap as we had an alpine start happening in the morning (alarm set for 1:30am). Summit day tomorrow!