Another Ordeal
After about 30 mins of celebration on the mountain peak amidst the strong wind howling at us and the strong sun smiling at us, we gathered to start our descent. Tony offered us tips on the best way to go down the steep and loose stone trail. Slowly skid down and either position your feet sideway or using your heels to stop further sliding whenever required.

Steep loose rocks trail — this was the tough climb up 
Yin skiing 

Another shot of the baby volcano

Calm…

It sounded easy to just skid, like skiing! But whenever you are hit with bigger stones along the way, you may just lost your footing and fall forward. If you slide down too fast and lost control, you may end up in the wrong place and be gone…..

Anyway, I still had a great time skiing down (so much easier than climbing up). Thou after sometime, it actually got a bit tiring and especially straining on my knee, because there’s much jerking on the poor knees when trying to stop sliding.

Take a break, have a shot

Thou we were walking the same trail as we came up earlier, but it was dark then, now is daylight, halfway down the trail we did not really know where to go. Some trails split into 2 way, when we walked to one we found ourselves stuck and got to turn back. Funnily, all the while I thought Samon was ahead of us and already back to camp and I was still cursing why he was so not reliable… but after some wasted time getting lost, we saw Samon behind us!!! All the while he was with Tony and Wz.. oops… so sorry, Samon…

Some Big Businesses
Oh, another thing worth a mention now that I read Jelyn’s Rinjani blog. Well, in one of our wrong turn moment, Zhix, Mike and myself went down this little edge trying to find our way back. When we realized it’s the wrong turn, we will need to climb back up. While searching for the best position and footing to climb up, I saw soiled toilet paper near the bushes.. urgh… luckily I did not see anything else.. well.. from Jelyn’s blog, I come to know that wp had, with the help from Tony found a secluded place to do his business this early morning at the start of our summit climb.. hmm.. so was that his???

Anyway, when we were almost reaching our camp area, we did a wrong turn again and ended up at a “public” toilet area littered with toilet paper.. luckily, see no evil, smell no evil…

It felt great to be back at the campsite.  I was soooo dirty, covered with dust.. water was offered to wash our hands and face. Breakfast was also served and we rewarded ourselves with a can of coke.. Yes, there’s a mini “store” near our campsite selling tibits, biscuits and can drinks… well the coke cost IDR 20,000, while later at the foot of the mountain, it only cost IDR6,000…

Day 2 Sembalun Crater Rim -> Segara Anak Lake
It was about 11am when our guide (can’t remember who) came and asked if we want to set off now to the crater lake (our day 2 campsite) and have lunch there, it will take 2hrs.  We were tempted to go since we just had breakfast, but then, we remembered their rubber timing and the slowness in preparing food, we decided to have lunch first than set off.  Well, we did the right decision, as it was a challenging trail from Sembalun crater rim to the Segara Anak Lake, steep and narrow rocky trail.  I recalled Mr Wayang’s briefing to us on the 1st day that it was a dangerous trail… We went slowly, any trail that was slippery or dangerous, those in front will shout to the back to look out. I was lucky that my knee did not protest (or not yet?) thus I was able to control my footing quite well during this trail. From here we can actually see tents pitched over at the crater lake, seemed so near, yet it took us 3 hours to reach there.

Segara Anak Lake

The toilet tent

My 1st impression of Segara Anak Lake — a big dumping ground. Really, litter everywhere, crowded with tents as well.  I must say our porters were great to get us a quieter place for our campsite.  This time, we had a supervisor for the toilet tent.  Wz took the initiative to tell them to dig a deeper hole and have more soil near the hole so that we can use to cover our “business” after use.  Thanks Wz!  The hole at our 1st day camp toilet was quite shallow and no soil to cover, so… you know what you will see..

Ok, it was getting dark soon, I must go to the hotspring! This was the hi-light for the trip.  I yearned for the nice warm water to sooth my tired legs and also to wash myself off the sweat and dirt from the 2 days of hard trekking.  Apparently, not many people were interested.  In the end it’s me, yin, rachel and Chris  intending to dip in the hotspring while wp wanted to just dip in his legs, mike and Tony to take photo.  Saras told us there’s no changing room there (actually what he meant was to hide behind a big rock and change) so we did not bring clothes to change just towel.  Chris decided to just bring his whole dry bag there.  Rachel was more prepared with clothes to change and keep warm.

The main pool was crowded so Saras brought us to another pool, more secluded.  The water was so soothing and so inviting that in the end wp, Mike & Tony all joined us in the pool.  Swimming, floating and Tony even demostrated a mini rock climb there.  Haa, way to go, Tony!

The secluded hotspring

Enjoying the warmth

Night fall, time to get out of the pool and run back to camp in dripping wet clothes! (it’s a 20 mins walk thru the woods).

Dinner for the night was Nasi goreng.  All (except zhix – who despise carbo-loading but loves pasta !!??!? and me) finished all or most of the rice.  I don’t know why I don’t have much appetite that night, the food was tasteless to me.  Sigh.  We also open up the Johnny Walker Whisky.. a big bottle (750ml) yup it was being carried up by the porter/guide for us.  We started to get crazy and kept toasting Tony (using belated birthday as reason) so he drown down 3 shot glasses of Whisky and funnily stayed quite awake for the night.

As we were by the lake, it started to get quite chilly, so it’s off to bed early today especially when we’ve been up since 1+am and been walking for like 10 hours…. Zzzz….

p/s: some of us was being awaken by some commotion during the night at about 2am.  Nobody went out to see what happen, only heard from the tent.  Just heard people running past our tent shouting.. … Were they trekkers starting an early trek? or… ??

~ to be continued ~