FROM THE TRUCK STOP TO SIDIKALANG
As I anticipated, the first part of this day involved pushing my bike up a few hundred more meters of altitude. The truck stop was about two thirds of the way up the volcano, and I had to go up the final third until I reached where this smaller road met up with a larger one. I had no idea what the terrain would be like once I got there and emerged from the caldera.
The morning passed very pleasantly as I took my time and slowly marched my bike up the steep inclines 50 steps at a time. There was quite a bit to look at and listen to as I trudged along. I passed a fair amount of roadkill, including a beautiful banded snake. The most notable moment on this ascent was being stung by a wasp. I guess it was attracted by my bright orange shirt and mistook it for a flower.I wasn’t aware it was a wasp, but I felt something crawling along my back underneath my shirt. I reached back and tried to dislodge whatever it was, and I felt the sharp pain of a sting. I was startled by this, and I instinctively tried to dig out whatever was biting me, and I managed to get hold of something between my finger and thumb, and I tossed it away from me and onto the road. I looked down, and I saw that it was a wasp, and just as I was about to take a closer look, a big truck came and smushed it underneath its rear double wheels. When the truck passed, there was nothing left of the wasp but a wet smudge a few inches long on the pavement.
I reflected on the last few seconds of that wasp’s life. What a shock it must have been. One second he was just a wasp living a wasp’s life. Then he had his first encounter with humanity and within seconds his life was over. He thought he was investigating a bright orange flower. Then he was smacked by something huge. He defended himself by lashing out with his stinger. Then he was pinched between two gigantic and powerful objects, crushed and flung to the ground where he was run over by something that weighed a few tons. Within seconds, he went from a happy wasp to a liquid stain. His meeting with human civilization was not a happy encounter for this poor guy.
I finally reached the top of the climb, and I found myself at the usual cluster of businesses that crop up at road intersections. I chose one restaurant at random, and I popped in for a cup of coffee, a rest, and a chance to get my bearings and figure out where I was supposed to go from there and what lay ahead of me.
It was surprisingly cold up there with a strong wind blowing a drizzle of rain. I tried to ride on in my shorts and T-shirt, but it was too cold even for me. With no choice, I stopped and pulled out my one jacket, which is technically a rain jacket. I opened up all the flaps it had hoping to give it enough ventilation that I wouldn’t sweat to death inside it.
The road I was on was a fairly typical Indonesian road and it passed a landscape and a series of buildings, farms, businesses, and small towns that I was quite familiar with. The somewhat bland and aggressively ugly nature of these towns made me realize how special the area right around Lake Toba was. It was a much more beautiful region with a lot of characteristics that make it special.
To my surprise, the road went largely down. And it continued to descend with just short, sharp ascents, for the rest of the day. I essentially coasted all the way to the city of Sidikalang. I worried about that because you never get downhills for free. If you go downhill for one kilometer, it means that eventually you will have to go uphill for one kilometer. It’s a fact of life and a fact of physical space. I knew I had gone uphill from Lake Toba, but I didn’t think I had gone that far up. And I figured that all this coasting downhill would mean a huge climb back up the next morning. But it didn’t turn out that away at all, as I’ll explain.
Sidikalang was a bustling small city. I did not have any inside information on a good, cheap place to stay, and I spent a fair amount of time and energy cycling around and checking out different places that I came across. I did manage to find one losmen, which is the cheapest form of accommodation here. Unfortunately, it was full. Indonesians themselves tend to live in these places long-term when they can’t afford a house or apartment, and they fill them up. Beyond that, my only choices consisted of basic entry-level hotels, which are the most common here. And as Indonesians earn more money and travel more for business and pleasure, these places are pushed to provide more and more amenities. Unlike backpackers, the typical Indonesian traveler is looking for as much luxury as they can afford, and they want air conditioning, hot water, and cable television. They can afford these places, I guess, because they often pack in as many people as possible and split the cost. This doesn’t work out well for me, and I ended up paying a bit more than I wanted and getting a tiny bit less.
I really can’t complain, though. I was just spoiled by my time at a couple of backpacker towns where I could get a comfortable private room for 50,000 rupiah a night. Indonesians don’t generally even believe that such places exist or are possible. So, for them, the starting point for a hotel room is 150,000 rupiah. That is the bargain basement lowest price they expect for a room with no bathroom and no facilities. Then the prices go up from there.
The place I settled on was called Cendrawasih. I got a private room with shared bath for 150,000 rupiah. I balked at the price and a local man reacted with some astonishment. He pointed out, logically, that this was just a bit over $10 US. He asked me what the problem was paying $10 for a hotel room. He had a point, but he was thinking in terms of staying there just a couple of nights for a holiday or something. I was looking for accommodation every night, and $10 per night adds up to a lot in this part of the world.
Considering that I forked over what was a princely sum to me, I was disappointed in the room. In Pangururan at least, my room was quite large and had its own bathroom. This room was tiny with shared access to a bathroom around the corner. And the small space in the room was dominated by two beds. The space between the two beds was so narrow that I couldn’t even turn my feet sideways. I had to shuffle in and out of that gap like a truck driver moving a semi through a narrow alleyway. The fact that it had two beds contributed to the relatively high price. It was meant for two people. Single rooms simply do not exist outside of the backpacker towns. Only foreigners have the capacity or interest to be by themselves. The other contributing factor to the high price was the presence of a bulbous television – which, of course, I would never bother to even turn on. The insulting fact is that this useless TV actually took up much of the space above and around the only piece of furniture in the room – a small desk. The TV made the desk – something which I could use – of no use at all.
It wasn’t all bad news, though. The hotel did provide a good WiFi signal, and I remembered to get the password. Plus, the hotel was designed along the style of a courtyard motel. Therefore, my room had direct access from the central parking area. I could wheel my bike and trailer right up to and into my room. Though, I should point out that there was no way my bike would fit. I had to leave it locked up outside by the check-in desk area. And the trailer also would not fit. I had to empty it entirely of its contents and lay that out on the one bed. Then I could pick up the trailer and move it in sideways and lean it against the desk at the foot of one of the beds. I felt like a giant lumbering around inside a child’s tree fort. It felt that small to me.