JAVA – WEEK 4
15-02-17
We said goodbye to our lovely hosts and a sleepy village
that we felt we could spend more time in. What we thought was going to be a
pretty quiet road tuned out to be anything but. The scenery was grand however,
with all sorts of rural and mountain scenes blending into one another.
We knew we had a climb early on, but didn’t know how bad. It
turned out to be a pretty tough one, but manageable as we just spun it out in
low gear. We crested the top after about thirty minutes of solid climbing in a
lather of sweat, again. The descent was long, much longer than the climb. We
were losing all the altitude we had gained yesterday. We spun on into Purwojo
and looked for a coffee shop. We found a
cool little café in the back streets. Had a snack and a coffee and continued
on. This had been a nice little town too.
Our average speed was pretty good today and we had our
intended 50k’s done well before lunch. It was a sunny day and didn’t look like
rain anytime soon, so we kicked on as it looked like there were more
accommodation options in Kebumen, about 25k’s further on. This didn’t take us
long, although the road surface was deteriorating in a lot of places. Pot holes
were a real problem if you were the trailing bike, so we had to give each other
a bit more room.
Kebumen turned out to be a really neat town with some
reasonable hotels, even hot water. So we picked one and headed in. The hotel we
stayed in, The Grand Putra, was pretty grand. So we chilled out for a couple of
hours and then hit the street looking for food. No resto in the hotel.
Back to Indo food. We came across a small street cart making
ice cream on a very cold plate in his cart. These guys were cool, and it was
quite a show watching, so we told him we would be back after dinner.
We found a little warung and just had something very basic,
and then headed back for our ice cream, which was lots of fun, and very nice.
All in all, a great day.
16-02-17
We couldn’t cope with a fully cooked Indonesian breakfast
this morning so took the option of toast and jam. Not a really good start to
the day but at least it was food in the belly. The ride today was along Highway
3 which once again was busy with traffic of all sorts. The road surface didn’t
improve from yesterday as it was still full of large pot holes and lots of
large areas where the bitumen has been pushed up into mounds. Careful riding
was required all day.
The morning started off pretty warm and by mid morning, it was getting really hot. With the continuous
effort of concentration our brains were starting to feel over heated as well. My
rear, not tubeless tyre, decided today was the day it would cause a slight
problem. It had picked up a small nail and was in deflating mode. Dave pumped
it up on the side of the road hoping it would give me enough air until we found
the next Indo Mart so we could sit in the shade, have a cold drink and fix the
tyre. Our plan worked out well. Just a couple of k’s down the road we spotted
an Indo Mart and pulled in and got straight to work. I grabbed a couple of nice
cold drinks and Dave started on the repair with the help of a couple of guys
and three kids all bending over watching the work in progress. We put the spare tube in with the idea of
repairing the other one later and started pumping it up. Nothing happened. We
took the tube out and discovered that it had perished badly for some reason and
was shot. Ok now we had to go back to repairing the one we just pulled out of
the tyre. All fixed, nothing to worry about, all pumped up and ready to go once
again. Just took quite a bit longer than we first anticipated. We got the grand wave from all of our on-lookers
as we set off once again.
By about 1pm we were shattered. We were both really feeling
the heat and felt exhausted. We were hoping to do another day of 75k’s today
but had to pull the pin at 50. We found ourselves in between two towns, in a
place that wasn’t really much but it did have a couple of hotels. We found a
place to stay, had a shower and went searching for some food. We found a warung
across the road but wasn’t really tempted by their food, so both of us settled
for a fresh mango, apple and orange juice. Surprisingly it was the most amazing
juice we have had. We went back to our room and made a couple of good old
peanut butter sanga’s.
Dinner was interesting. The resto at the hotel wasn’t open,
so we ventured across the road again to the warung and settled for their
smorgasbord option (which actually was the only option). Feeling wary of eating
food that has been out on display for some time Dave thought he would play it
safe and like me only chose the rice and vego dishes. Ok everything was too hot
for me, so plain rice it was for my dinner, plus a juice and a banana.
Early night tonight and hopefully with the rest this
afternoon we will have good fast spinny legs tomorrow.
17-02-17
Pretty ordinary breakfast this morning, I managed to eat
half a fried egg but couldn’t deal with the rest and the rice was too spicy so
I had a coffee and a banana. Those bananas we bought last night sure did come
in handy.
The riding first up was really good, it was a cooler start
to yesterday and the traffic wasn’t as crazy. The road surface however was
still pretty bad with pot holes after pot holes. Along our travels we crossed a
large bridge with a lot of fast moving water flowing underneath. A little way
down stream we could see small boats, original wooden canoes with 2 men in
each. They had large poles with nets on the ends and at a more detailed look we
could see they were scooping up sand from the bottom of the river. We think
that the fast moving water must push sand down into this area. The sand would
be used for bitumen as just up the road from the bridge was a bitumen plant. This
plant must be in high demand with all of the roads needing so much repair. We
did ride through a couple of areas where road works were actually happening and
that experience is quite hilarious. Traffic control is just a couple of guys
with a little flag and lots of hand movements. We approached the end that was
stopped, and as the traffic control guy saw us he just waved us through and we
got to ride on the side of the road that they were working on and passed the
roller at arms length away from us. The driver just waved, smiled and said
‘Allo’. Bikes just seem to have the right of way where ever and whatever the
situation.
We had done about 30k’s before the hills started to appear.
Here the environment changed significantly. We started to leave the hussle and
bussle of the continuous villages and entered more open space, farming land and
jungle. The road surface surprisingly improved to the point it looked like a
brand new road. The climbing was good, nice rolling hills and a nice grade for
most of the 30km’s. Riding through the jungle also made it so much cooler, even
though we were sweating. The shade and slight breeze acted like an air
conditioner. Just towards the end of the climbing section today it got a bit
steeper, the legs were getting tired and we were starting to feel really hot
and hungry. We found a spot on the side of the road to pull over and make
ourselves a peanut butter sandwich, have a drink and a bit of a rest in the
shade of some lovely trees. There was a pile of logs on the ground so we were
able to sit and have a little picnic. Just as we finished our lunch, two guys
appeared from a path leading into the jungle carrying a large log each. They
dropped them on the other pile, looked at our bikes, looked at us sweaty
bikers, smiled and walked back into the jungle. 
A couple more hills were climbed, then we were back on the
flat and here the road went back to its holey self. We really felt like we had
done a hard day’s mountain biking today as on the pot holey roads you have to
concentrate so hard, find a line to ride and be prepared to ride the gravel,
the uneven mounds and the holes at any time. At this stage I also realised that
the motorbikes, the cars and the trucks coming the other way on your side of
the ride as they pass someone else doesn’t actually worry me anymore, as they
always seem to give us just enough room or seem to squeeze back into their line
of traffic. But having said that we will never let our guard down.
We got into the village of Majenang at about 2.30 and had
clocked up just under 75k’s for the day. One pretty good effort considering the
climbing we did. We found a hotel, got cleaned up, found a coffee and relaxed
until dinner. The hotel had a restaurant, but it wasn’t open as we soon discovered,
so we walked over the road to a pretty flash 3 story shopping centre. They had
a big sign in there that they made pizza. Nope no pizza. Ok we will just buy
fruit, so we grabbed the fruit and walked to the checkout. Oh woops, we seemed
to have caused a little bit of chaos in the shop. When we were discussing the
whole pizza thing, Dave just picked up the big pizza sign and pointed out pizza
to the guy who then said, no pizza with his arms crossed and all the girls
working in the shop just shrieked with laughter. Then at the checkout, we must
have done the wrong thing as the checkout girl grabbed our fruit and
disappeared and then the security guy rocked up. He shook Dave’s hand with I’m
your best mate grip and smiled and laughed. Ok what the…. The checkout girl
then reappeared with our bananas in a plastic back grrrr and our red dragon
fruit in a plastic bag grrrr grrr with price labels on both. Oh now we get it,
we were meant to weigh them first. Ooops sorry.
So with no restaurant open, no pizza and came out of the
shop with 2 bananas and 1 dragon fruit and feeling hungry we decided to go for
another walk and see what else we could find to eat. First thing we saw was
d’wendis ice cream. This looked good but maybe for dessert. As we walked the
road we found a warung that cooked your food outside on a charcoal grill. They
had chicken, tofu and tempeh and fresh fruit juice. So we ordered some food to
be grilled and a mango and pineapple juice and sat down, legs crossed at the
short tables. The juice came out and it was really good. The grilled food came
out with rice, water spinach, cucumber, and a bowl to wash our fingers as this
was the real deal here where you eat with your fingers. The food was amazing,
we both loved it all and we walked out of there with full bellies and only
costing us 40,000 IRP ($4.00).
18-02-17
Majenang to Ciamas, whoops, nup, Tasikmalaya.
https://www.strava.com/activities/921789299
https://www.strava.com/activities/921789308
https://www.strava.com/activities/921789299
https://www.strava.com/activities/921789308
David ate Mary’s Dragonfruit. The End. He’s really sorry.
And then we rode our bikes.
We took a secondary road out of Majenang that re-joined highway 3 after
about 10k’s. It was neither shorter or longer, but we took it because it should
be quieter. There was one really big hill, but not too bad. The day was shaping
up as quite hot. And some serious sweating was happening. We feel like our
bodies have acclimatised really well now. As long as we keep up our fluids and
energy up, as well as get good sleep, awesome things are possible.
I have been musing a lot on our gear list going forward. Not
so much for the rest of Indonesia, but KL to Kathmandu. Our tent that hasn’t
been used this trip has been bugging me, as well as our sleeping system. We
need light stuff at the moment, but progressively as we head towards Sikkim and
Nepal, that will change. And our winter gear is too heavy and too warm for
early on. We need to change over for a layered system, there are some good
things available. One of the odd things
is, that cheap hotels and hostels only give you a bed and bottom sheet, so we
need our sleep system to work in a hot hotel, as well as a cold one later on. As
well as in the tent. We have bought two large sarongs while in Indo and they
are working quite well, and are light.
We might just sew them together and continue to use them. We can’t take
our light sleeping bags next time as they won’t be up to it, but our heavy sleeping
bags are really heavy, 2.2kg together, despite being reasonable quality down.
This is where the other problem occurs, mostly, we use our sleeping bags as
quilts, but neither is big enough to cover both of us. There are some awesome
lightweight double hiking quilts available now, but to get a weight saving, it
has to be down, and Mary has a real problem with down, being Vegetarian, fair
enough. Synthetics are available, but they just don’t cut it in the weight
department. A -1deg down quilt would be 560 grammes, vs 2100 grammes for a
synthetic of same thermal rating. Plus, it also has much larger packing volume.
And then there is the tent, do we need it? If we only need it occasionally, we
could have one that weighs 800grammes rather than our current 3800grammes, as
well as the packing space. See all the
things I have to think about while I am riding along. Don’t get me started on
cooking equipment and dare I say Visa applications? Needless to say, we are
about at the limits of our weight loss potential, Larry and Priscilla would
like to lose some weight too.
Meanwhile, the riding continues. While this was going on, in
my head, I nearly had a stack when a motorbike pulled in and stopped right in
front of me. Ummm, I had my phone in my right hand checking the navigationals,
and only had my left hand on the rear brake. Larry was awesome, despite the
ladies at the bus stop across the road screaming, as they could see it coming.
Rear wheel locked up, weight back to get some more weight on it, modulate the
brake to stop the skid, little shimmy to the right, through the frickin big
pothole and out the other side, “pheww”, the bus stop ladies said.
It wasn’t the last incident of the day.
We stopped for a coffee just before Banjar, no problems, but
a couple of k’s down the road there was a police car that went screaming past
in the opposite direction, then an ambulance, then a bunch of big motorbikes,
like Harley Davidson road tourers with blue flashing lights and police sirens,
like the ones in the tour down under. All different sounds. And they were
seriously motoring. WTF. Was there a big incident? A riot perhaps? We were
pretty concerned. Then another bunch of bikes, but then we realised that the
riders were plain clothed, and the bikes weren’t all the same. And as a few of
them went flashing past, they gave a big wave to us and made big fists, to say,
yeah man. We came to realise that this was a tour. With police and ambulance
escort, front and rear. And of course, why can’t you have blue flashing lights
and a siren when you’re not a cop? WTF again.
At Banjar we took another secondary road that followed the
main road, but just to the south a bit. This was nice, a bit hilly, and as it
headed back towards the main road about 10k’s later, we had a nice descent down
through a river valley and then a punishing climb out the other side. We didn’t
make it up a very steep pinch and Mary bailed out to push, just by an old lady
who was walking up the side of the road with a basket. She decided to help Mary
push. But she wanted Mary to get on the bike, and she would push. Mary didn’t
think that was a great idea, but was grateful of the help anyway, it was really
steep. She helped all the way to the top, what a lovely lady.
We just started motoring along again and thunder started
cracking all around us, so we ducked into a bus shelter to wait it out. A few
minutes later an older couple pulled up on their motorbike to do the same. The
lady had a woven shopping basket with a live chicken in it. She spoke very good
English as she told us that she had been to Australia many years ago, in fact
she had been to Newcastle. Meanwhile her husband checked out our bikes. They were on their way to Ciamis to visit
relatives. And it was at that point that we realised that she must have said
something along the lines of, “Yes dear, I’ll bring a chicken for dinner”. We
couldn’t stop laughing for quite a while.
Our accommodation options in Ciamis bombed out, everything
was full. This was a first for us, as nothing had been busy. There must have
been a big event on. Hotel after hotel was full. There was one we found on
Google maps a few k’s out of town in the direction we were headed, so we went
there. Ummm, turns out it was still under construction. Next option
Tasikmalaya, 15k’s further on. That’s ok, we had the time.
It turns out that we found a good place, had a good dinner,
and all was well. What a day.
19-02-17
We decided to take a secondary road to Bandung via Garut in
the hope of exposing ourselves to less traffic. Highway three was getting much
busier now. The price we were going to pay was in climbing however, we just
didn’t know how much. The day started off with a fairly flat ride through the
back streets of Tasik, this was a pretty dirty place here, and had a bad vibe
about it. But as we got out onto the
road to Garut, it became busier, but friendlier. Oh, and did I say steeper?
In reality, the road gently climbed and we were spinning up
it at a good pace. We saw quite a lot of bikes going down the hill, and got the
impression that they had been getting a lift to the top. The most popular style
of bike seems to be a 26” hardtail mountain bike with road slicks on. A pretty
good combination for the terrain, light and fast.
We came into sight of a group of cyclists ahead of us on the
climb, by this time we had probably been going up for about 12k’s. Larry and
Priscilla got a bit excited seeing bikes ahead and the pace picked up just a
little bit.
Friendly waves and chats were had as we passed them, they
stopped for a rest just as we caught them. All in Sunday morning roadie ride
team uniform. This has been very common here.
Not long after that we stopped for a cool drink, by our
reckoning we were about halfway up the climb. The group went past us while we
rested. So we just had to catch them again, which we did. This time we stopped
for a chat, not that the language barrier made that easy, but we tried and as
always, they were really friendly guys. No girls. We haven’t seen any, other
than older farming women on their old farm bikes.
Despite being in a beautiful scenic valley, we were starting
to feel the effects of quite heavy smog, presumably from Bandung and or
Jakarta, given the way the wind was blowing. Despite the way it makes you feel,
it sure ruins the view.
The climb went on and on. A couple of pushes up some steep
sections close to the top saw two young boys jump down off a wall and give Mary
a push up the grade. They wanted to go really fast though and the three of them
were running up the hill with Priscilla.
Then with about 1k to go, Mary’s rear tyre got a flat again.
Anyway, that’s just another interesting thing for various people to come and
have a look at. We really have to get this tyre back up tubeless.
We finally topped out at the 32km mark and at 1005 metres
elevation. That’s continuous climbing for about 25k’s. Luckily, then came the
downhill into Garut, which as you can imagine, happened much quicker than on
the way up. We weren’t descending all that far, as Garut is at about 750metres,
the same as Bandung.
It started raining again, with a few k’s to go to our
accommodation, but it was slight, so we just kicked on. The guesthouse we had
booked was quite strange. Another example of a guesthouse with a café attached
that was not open, and didn’t look like it was going to be any time soon.
A young guy was inside, he showed us in and made us a nice
coffee. And then remembered that he had to show us how to turn the toilet on as
it was broken. First warning sign. Then a shower, no hot water, to be fair,
they only promised warm, but nope, none of that. Anyway, we decided on an early
dinner and went out looking for somewhere to eat. As we headed out down the
side road to the main road we looked behind us and we were being followed by a
group of sweet little girls and the further we went down the road the bigger
the group became. They all just smiled, giggled and just kept following us
until we got to the main road. We had seen some nice places on the way in on
the bikes, and found a cool new café, where they were trying really hard to get
it right. The food didn’t quite live up to the vibe, but was ok. Then as usual,
the rain poured down, just as we were ready to head back. And we still haven’t
learnt to take our rain coats with us when we go out to eat at night. Lol.
20-02-17
We crawled out of bed, loaded the bikes and got the hell out
of there. The promised included breakfast was nowhere to be seen.
The sky was extremely
heavy, smog and low cloud and humidity. We were very thankful to have our front
and rear lights on as visibility was extremely poor. The first ten k’s of today’s
seventy was very fast. Slight downhill? Or was it that we wanted to put the
town of Garut behind us. Then the climbing started again. We’d had no
breakfast, more importantly, no coffee. Mary made the mistake of saying what my
brain had been telling me. “Fuck, I can’t do this today”. We had two slices of
bread in our bag and a jar of peanut butter, so we slapped it on really thick
and ate one each. We would have to climb, to find coffee. Luckily a few k’s
later, we did find a warung that actually had nice coffee, I told the nice girl
that she was a lifesaver, and she laughed. I wonder if she understood me?
The map hinted that we would have two serious climbs today.
And after descending to a large bridge over a very furious river at the
junction with Highway 3, up we went again. The final two k’s of this climb was
like an open topped tunnel, huge, with three lanes in each direction. It was
filled with smog, fog and truck exhaust, totally choked with no breeze. But of
course, it was obviously a cool spot (?) to stop said motorbike, bus, truck,
car in the tunnel and have a cigarette break. WTF.
Finally clearing the tunnel, and the hill, we began a very
long descent onto the plain that Bandung sits on between the mountains, (a city
of eight million people). The run in to Bandung was really very good. A wide
concrete road with a side lane for bikes (sepeda) and motorbikes to travel in,
mostly separated from the larger traffic. Of course all the mini buses just
park in it too, so you are constantly weaving around them all the way.
The closer we got to Bandung, the clearer the air became, it
seems that a light westerly was blowing all the smog of West Java back to where
we had come from in the last few days. It started to rain lightly for the last
ten k’s or so, but we arrived to our little Airbnb, Pavillion 19.
This was a cute little room, in a vibrant street with lots
going on. But contrary to last night’s stay, this was friendly noise, and we
knew we would sleep well here. We ventured out for a walk to find some dinner
and came across a restaurant called ‘Hot Pot’. Here we enjoyed lovely fresh
food that we cooked at our own table.
21-02-17 to 24-02-17
Our stay in Paris Van Java.
Our hosts here at Pavillion 19 are a lovely family, our room
really sweet and comfy, and breakfast awesome. We had a great night’s sleep and
felt really refreshed, it’s amazing what good food and a good night’s sleep
does for you.
Our first job was to search for some bike boxes as we have
decided to fly from here in Bandung to Padang in Sumatra. We are able to get a
direct flight out of Bandung which will make everything a lot easier. The
decision to leave Java now, is so we can make up a bit of ground and allow us
the time to discover more of Sumatra.
We started walking in the direction of a bike shop that our
host family recommended. Google maps once again led us a merry dance, but we
finally found it, but unfortunately they only had some road bike boxes. They
recommended another shop further away, so we decided to get an Uber, which
worked really well. There was a really nice coffee shop next door, so at least
that made the first stop worthwhile.
The next shop was massive, and our hopes were high. We did manage
to get a couple of mountain bike boxes, that were barely bigger than the road
bike ones, so we were going to have to make do with that. Having said that
though, this shop was three floors high and had everything, including a full
size pump track on the roof. Cool. So here we were at the largest bike shop we
have ever dreamt of that had absolutely everything you could possibly imagine
to buy and we walked out with two empty bike boxes. Haha I think we are now
positively hard core minimalists.
We checked out a couple of outdoor stores nearby as we were
looking for some minor things and were sadly unsuccessful. But it was a pretty
funny sight, seeing Dave walking around the streets with two large bike boxes
under his arms. Maybe a little homeless – what a vagabond.
Later in the afternoon, Diana our lovely host took us for a
drive into the city centre and showed us the government buildings. They were
built by the Dutch and were large, white buildings that stood with a look of
elegance. Opposite the Government buildings is an athletic park. The Mayor of
Bandung put a lot of effort into clearing this area of stalls etc, and made it
into an open space surrounded by trees with a running track and large areas for
people to exercise and for families to come and have fun. There are other parks
scattered throughout the city and all have their own theme, like: singles park,
elderly park, athletic park, looking for a date park lol.
Food, is plentiful and of great quality if you look for it.
Good Western and other cuisines are readily available, yes, expensive by
Indonesian terms, but worth it when you need a change. So for the next few
days, we washed and maintained the bikes, packed them up, it was a tight fit,
and explored cafes and restaurants before heading to Padang. We are just going
to ride south for a couple of days to a beach bungalow we have booked for a
week for a chill out. Then we will head back to Padang and on for a further
four weeks until we need to make it to Medan. We are hoping this stage of our
journey can be a bit more chilled out, which looks entirely doable. It’s not
about the destination, it’s about the journey.
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