Crash #2 (and 3 if you're picky): Danau Toba

So it would appear that I left a fairly interesting detail out of yesterday's blog post: Elias and I are now staying in a (sadly, unauthentic) batak house!  Someone checked out of it yesterday right after we checked in, so we never heard it was available until later that day when we bumped into the guy as he was leaving. Man, this hotel is a steal: Rp50,000/night.  So basically, Elias and I will both be paying about $2.50/night to stay in this giant traditional Indonesian house.  HOW AWESOME IS THAT??

It's a bit sparce inside, a queen bed, three shelf sets, two chairs and a coffee table, but it's extremely roomy; I think the ceiling must go up about twenty feet.  The door is hilariously tiny, though, and I think it was built by the Lollipop Guild of Munchkin Land.  I've hit my head on it twice already and can't wait to see how high that number will get over the next few days!  It's all made of very dark wood and there are only two small windows, so while it's fun to look at it kind of encourages you to get out and about because it's also a bit dreary.  And the exterior, while fascinating to look at, doesn't make the mood much more cheery; it's more dark wood with red highlights and there are some seriously creepy faces carved on the outside of this hut. 

But all is forgotten the moment I step out the door this morning because the sunrise is at the perfect point to create a road of light straight from the door of our house to the hills on the other side of the lake. The only interruption is the slow, graceful bobbing of a fishermen’s canoe as the occupant casts his old green net with one hand and gently strokes a paddle with the other. After a while he swaps the net for an old porcelain bowl that he uses alternately as a left oar and to bail water out of his shallow canoe. As I watch him, swaddled in winter clothing against the chill of the water, I wonder if he even notices the sunrise after all the years he’s done this work. I hope that he does.

Beautiful or not, there isn't a lot of time to just sit around today because we've got to go get our motorbikes! The shop that did my laundry and that I bought a nice red and green sarong from is letting us rent two of their nice, new scooters and we're going to leave Tuk Tuk and check out the rest of the island that the peninsula is part of. I'm really excited about this because the road runs along the water for the entire circumference of the island. I think it's going to be an easy, pleasant ride with lots of little stops thrown in to look at hot springs, batak houses, maybe head up a hill...oh, yeah, this is going to be nice.

And the first half of the ride is perfectly lovely; I could have kept going for days. Sunshine, riding along the beach, green fields, colorful monuments, children waving and shouting 'Hello lady!', large batak houses with their ridiculously steep roofs... And we certainly didn't have to worry about becoming lost because there's only bridge across the lake and if you follow the beach around the edge of the island you're bound to come to it. We had hoped to find a beach to swim on at some point, but it seems like the only access points down to the water are lanes that run past houses. It would definitely be a bit awkward to ride up to someone's backyard, strip down to my bikini with a guy who is not my husband or even my boyfriend (this area may not have many Muslims but Christians are a bit touchy about nudity, too), then splash around in front of some strange family, so Elias and I stick to the road.

Only a dozen kilometers or so after we leave the peninsula and hit the main part of the island, we come across a village built hundreds of years ago that they've restored and preserved as an outdoor museum. Some of the batak houses are decorated with the furnishings their original owners would have used, such as dishes, pots and pans, a loom, a low bed, and, on the upper level, some musical instruments like drums and a gamelan (a small hybrid between a marimba and a vibraphone and played with a hammer). It's not overly cool in the house, but it's still cooler than being outside in the sun and I suppose when there's a breeze it feels better, but I hope they do their cooking outside because that fire would raise the temperature in here several degrees. Outside there are stone chairs in the shade of a large tree, still set in the circle that the village elders met in to make decisions. And of course there are the freaky, nearly life-size puppet men outside one of the houses, stone faces making funny expressions lining a narrow, walled-in path to another part of the village, and a large memorial decorated with ornaments that bare a very strong resemblance to boobs. I wonder how that slipped past the Catholics.

Apparently there was supposed to be a traditional dance featuring the local girls, but I guess it's not a huge surprise that it's been unexpectedly canceled for today; that seems to happen a lot in these little villages. So instead, we ride our bikes down to a concrete dock where two women are happily washing their laundry in the lake, chatting away like the gossip queens they no doubt are, and clearly unphased by our presence they don't even cast a second look as we set up our cameras and take a few shots of them and ourselves. And yes, Elias got the pink scooter because it just made me hate that color more when the shopowner said he got a pink one 'just for you girls'. Screw you and your stereotypes, old man. Damn I really hate pink.

It was another hour or so before we got to Pangururan, the small city that sits on one side of the bridge. We stopped and, after a bit of gesturing and pointing, ordered a lunch of fried rice with pork that came out in huge, delicious, steaming portions that could have fed four people. Mmmmm. If this is how good it tastes when we don't speak Bahasa, I can only imagine what kind of stuff we could get if we knew more than 'terima kasi' (thank you)! At our table, we made a plan of attack for the rest of the day. I would have been more than happy to stick to the road along the beach, but Elias wanted to go up into the mountains in the middle of the island for the view and to see what all was up there. Anticipating driving conditions similar to what we'd seen the first half of the day, I said that was fine with me and off we went.

Clearly, I never learn.

Let me summarize by saying that I got really, really, really, really pissed off the longer we rode. I was getting so flustered that I fell over when I got stuck in a rut and then again when I came up behind Elias too quickly. Now there were some beautiful views, I'll give him that, and you could compare the landscape to something from the foothills of the Alps (he said it looked like his home in Germany). But the road...so bad...me...so angry...this is going to have to wait until tomorrow or I'm going to reach over and hit Elias right now. I'm surprised I didn't hit him then!

So once we were finally out of the mountains and headed back towards home I took out a little bit of aggression on the roads and, admittedly, drove poorly enough that I probably would have been arrested back in the states! But Elias was showing off and I was pissed off and wanted to both show I could keep up with him and work out some aggression. So we got going as fast as we could, and considering there were turns to take and people to pass and helmets to try not to lose, I'm impressed we made it up to about 100km/h. And it did go a long way towards helping me cool down after the ridiculously terrible conditions we had just spent 3 hours riding through, so by the time we returned the bikes (thankfully they didn't notice that one of the mirrors would spin around at the slightest touch) I at least wasn't totally ignoring Elias.

At the end of it all we take care of some “chores” online and have another meal at Romlan. The smell of flowers goes a long way towards mellowing me out and brings me back to reality, which is that I’m on vacation on a beautiful tropical island, eating dinner with a cute boy, and recovering from having spent the day riding a motorcycle. I have really got to work on keeping my perspective so that I don’t let my tendency towards impatience get in the way of enjoying my travels.

Just a quick note: I want to say Happy 50th Birthday to my dad! I’ve been thinking about you all day long, dad, and hoping you’re enjoying celebrating this milestone. I wish I could be there! I love you very much and can’t wait until I can tell you about my trip in person!