Earth is beautiful and so are the people on it. Every corner we turn we are amazed to find breathtaking beauty in everything we see. We’re in Indonesia! Holy cow!!! We don’t even feel like we’re in Asia anymore. This country is so unique compared to any where we’ve been. Right now I’m actually listening to a prayer call from this very computer. *shhhh don’t tell but we actually really hate hearing it at 5am- it’s ok the rest of the day.
Our journey here, as I mentioned last week, began in Jakarta with the wonderful Key’s family who so kindly rejuvinated our dusty bodies. Anyway, Jakarta is a big crazy city and we got to see it from way up top the national monument in the center of town. Pretty dang cool. Not much else to do or see for a visitor so we left on a train and then bus to get to a beach town called Pangandaran. The island of Java is SO BEAUTIFUL!!! The train ride literally blew our brains out of our heads. Gorgeous island mountains and hills. FYI, midnight arrivals in new towns is never fun. I’ve known that for a long time so why to I keep doing it??? We arrived in town at 12am with misty eyes and sleepy brains, oh well.
Pangandaran is a beautiful beautiful beach town and we spent 2 days there surfing, eating barbequed fish with some local kids and this HILARIOUS british guy. He’s married to a Indonesian girl and had to become Muslim to do it. He’s traveled all over and fell in love with a Spanish girl who he never married but still loves. He is, as he calls himself, a “terribly rude and intrusive man”. In short, he’s obsessed with his story and loves to share it; definitely makes for fascinating conversation :-). Surfing was great, really fun little waves and we had long soft boards so it was easy to feel pro. We definitely feel out of shape these days though as our arms were sooo tired. There are tons of monkeys everywhere here and they’re so fun to watch. We went on a jungle hike and went in 3 caves. We saw bats, scorpions, porqupines, deer, monkeys, and lizards. Soooo cool. Nature is soooo coool.
We left Pangandaran on Thursday for Yogyakarta, the artistic metropolitan of Java. If there ever was a crazy, twisty, smokey, rickety, mountain bus ride, we took it! That’ll grab you by the horn. What horn? Oh, and it was funny cuz we were in the front and could see through the rear veiw mirror that everyone was looking at us. We’re much more of an anomaly here than we’ve been for a while. We tried to find ourselves food at the bus station. Epic Fail! Baso sucks just to let you know; ramen noodles with balls (we’re not sure what’s in them but figure its every part of an animal you don’t want mashed up and made into a ball).
Yogyakarta is awesome! We’re dying for good food so we decided to splurge and eat at a nicer place instead of off the street. We spent a whole $10 for a meal with everything we’ve ever wanted! A drink, 2 appetizers, 2 entrees, and 2 desserts! Can’t beat that. Oh my gosh, we encountered the fattiest treat ever! It’s like a double grilled cheese sandwhich in the sense that there are four pieces of bread with butter on every surface (including the skinny side part). One of the 2 halves has melted cheese and the other half has melted chocolate sprinkles. Everything is then doused in sweetened condensed milk. Salty sweet, so good. Heart attack pending. I’m embarrased to admitt that I partook of this street side ambrosia… but cum’ on, you know you want it!
There is tons of live music and art here, it’s awesome! The music here is actually good too!!! No offense to China but our American ears have yet to learn to love you. Cambodia, we liked your music too. No offense to Thailand but the same songs about love betrayed get old. Anyway, it’s good, Jack Johnson type islander tunes. We took a silver making class and both made rings that are totally awesome. We also went to a pet market that had every kind of animal for sale imaginable! Monkeys, lizards, owls, birds, tree squirrels. It was sad. We made friends with a local environmentalist who showed us a documentary he made, very cool. Also, there are these really cool ruins here called Borabudur, apparently they’re one of the 7 world wonders- not sure if its true but awesome all the same.
Finally, this morning we went probably one of the top adventures of our lives. We took a van out to a Merapi volcano last night at 10am. FYI, Merapi is the most active volcano on planet earth. So we arrived and waited until 1am to begin our ascent up to the summit. The hike was insanely hard and in the pitch black of night. It was really pretty cold (stupid us, didn’t bring closed toed shoes or good jakets) and sooooo steep. We were with a group of other climbers and some of the couldn’t make it up the hike was so challenging. Fortunately we had a really awesome Canadian couple with us and a quite French couple so we made friends and talked the whole way up. We hiked for 4 hours and only stopped to rest 3 times. One of the stops was a some steam vents and it was so nice to warm up close to them. When we finally summitted at 5am we were so whoozy and uncoordinated BUT the view slapped it out of us. Talk about breathtaking!!! I mean, holy cow, we were at the top of a steaming volcano looking straight down into the caldera, looking out at the rising sun over the world and the blanket of clouds that looked like an ocean with other surrounding volcano peaks popping out the top. It was like being in another world, like we’d just arrived on Mars. Fortunantly there were more steam vents on top so we didn’t completely freeze to death. It was seriously and indescribably experience. I wish our pictures were better so we could remember the amazingness of it better. Really though, living isn’t in a picture anyway, it’s the moments in the moments of the experience that breath real life into you.
We feel so blessed and so lucky to be here doing this. We miss you all so much and can’t wait to see you soon!!!
Xoxoxo, Morgan and Alex
WOW. awesome.
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