Wednesday October 24

Wednesday October 24: We left the island this morning, for a fairly Long drive to Berastagi. We've been in a volcanic area, in fact Lake Toga is a caldera. We are also in "the ring of fire" and had our earthquake advice two days ago. We've been told we won't have one as they had one two days before we arrived (only a 1 or 2 on the Richter scale). The road was narrow and lots of bends. Our first stop was for a walk through a village and have a close look at the different crops growing. Peanuts grow on plants under the soil, lots of coffee growing and drying in the sun, cloves, tapioca, fruits. As our local guide is Indonesian he just goes into people's gardens and asks them questions, they are very welcoming, lots of smiles and "horas" (hello). Back on the bus and then we stopped for an early lunch. Next stop was an old village where a king lived in a longhouse with his 24 wives. We went inside his "home", kings lived this way from 1624 until 1947. Next was the Si Piso-Piso waterfall (394 ft), were the water comes out of a cave in the rock face before falling. Next was another village (Dokan), where we visited a longhouse were people were actually living. It was for 8 families, about 30 people, each family has a very small area to live, sleep and cook. If they want any hanky lanky they go in the rice paddy for some privacy! We talked with a young 19 year old girl who had finished high school and was taking a tourism course but needed to improve her English before a hotel would hire her. I'm not sure how long that would take, they don't seem to get a lot of tourists here (in this rural area), all the kids run to see us and say hi whenever we show up or drive by. We got to our hotel about 6 and had dinner, we leave at 6 tomorrow for our drive back to Medan for our flight (via Jakarta) to Yogyakarta, on the island of Java.