RYUZA HOSHI: Cipanas, Cibodas and the Puncak pass

Saturday 4 September 2010

Cipanas, Cibodas and the Puncak pass

From Jakarta we took the train to Bogor and after going to the wrong bus terminal and experiencing much traffic we continued to Cipanas after 2h^^
Cipanas is a cool little hill town next to the Puncak pass. It houses the botanical gardens of Cibodas which are an extension of the botanical gardens in Bogor.
After arriving at our guesthouse we met the mountain guides Robi and Paul. They offered us and Tobi (German, a guest too) to climb the volcano Gede the next night. We arranged a day trip through Cipanas and Puncak pass the next day, before going to Gunung Gede in the night. After learning the Indonesian card game Remi, we enjoyed some good sleep in the mountain environment.
The next day (30.08.) we started to walk through the neighbourhood of Cipanas, some nice weekend houses of rich locals or expatriates. A short drive brought us to the monkey lake at the Puncak pass, surrounded by tea plantations. The aggressive grey monkeys stole the food of Paul^^ We crossed the lake with a bamboo raft - pretty slow though :P
A walk up a little hill brought us up to the tea plantations and presented us an awesome view over the region.
Next we visited the Chinese Buddhist temple in Cipanas. They prepared a wood-paper ship to burn it at an upcoming celebration to send supplies to the deceased.
After lunch Benni and I made our way to the botanical gardens of Cibodas. The gardens were quite an huge area with small waterfalls, some fine plants and a way into the rainforest. But we didn't have enough time to explore all of it. On the way back to our hostel we saw a big crowd of young people on a market place. It turned out to be a local racing and stunt meeting. No big bikes but still much fun^^
Afterwards we took a rest before climbing Gunung Gede at 11pm :)