Sea to Sky

The morning after anchoring Teluk Nara I found myself at the Internet researching what turned out to be Mount Rinjani and before you could say Jack Rabbit we were leaving the next morning at 5am for a 2-day hike up the mountain. Once arriving at our departure point, Senaru things went even more down hill when the 2-day hike turned into 3 days and the summit, all 3726meters of it appeared on our itinerary.






Anyway being a good sport I saddled up. Amanda, myself, our porter, Lim and our guide, Full hit the trail, with poor old Lim carrying all our food, cooking gear, tents, sleeping bags, bed rolls, axes, water etc, etc, on a bamboo pole.




The day started off pleasant enough walking through the jungle lunching in the shade and taking in the wild life.




However things did not remain this way for long as we had to get from 600m to camp 1 at 2,641m by dark – 9kms uphill. Our porter, Lim disappeared into the clouds ahead as Full told us stories of a large ape that was rumoured to live in the forest eating humans after dark. Giddy up.

Lim who had set up our tents and had water on the boil for coffee or tea greeted us at camp 1. After spending 3 years of temps above 25 degrees the 15 was a shock to the system.

The shock however was lessened with our first view into the crater.

After watching other people’s tents blow away over dinner we were given the plan for tomorrow that basically was go down 641m, lunch by the lake and then climb up 700m. Not good.