Berastagi

Well, first of all, sorry for the delay, we had some problems with the internet conections (very slowly here in Indonesia) and it has taken a lot of time to upload the photos.
After Bukit Lawang in Sumatra we continued to Berastagi, a small town in the south of Medan. It is situated on an altitude of about 1300 meters, quite high, and so the temperature was quite cold. We spent there 2 days and unfortunately we had bad luck with the weather, rainy, foggy and cold... and this very close to the equator!! It already should have been dry season, but it was all except this one.
Berastagi is famous for 2 volcanoes which are very close and it is possible to climb up to both of them. Otherwise the town hasn't anything of interest.


We only went up to one volcano, the Gunung Sibayak (2094 meters). It took us 3 hours to get to the top on a good marked trail and we passed fumaroles and finally got to the crater. It was foggy and nearly nothing visible of the surrounding landscape, but the was nothing compared with what happened after. We just got to the top and wanted to go down on another path, as it started raining (heavy rain) and fog came up, so we couldn't see more than 10 meters in the direction we wanted to head to. So, we had to go back the same way, there the sight was better, but it rained so much, that the path was full of water and further down it converted into a river... Walking through water up to the knees and sometimes a quite heavy current was not easy and it continued raining for the whole afternoon. Well, we arrived back in town, but I won't mention here in which state. Just to say, that with the bad weather it took us several days to dry all...

The way up to Gunung Sibayak


The crater, fumaroles and a short break between the fog to enjoy the short view


At the bottom of the volcano are some hot springs, but we just wanted to go back to the hotel as quickly as possible.

On the other day we went to Lake Sinabung, a lake next to Gunung Sinabung (2450), the sister volcano of the other one. It would take about 10 hours to climb up and down, a long time and with bad weather more difficult, so one volcano was enough.