BobRat

Day 31: Onward

By Eric

We left camp fairly early in the morning for day two of our climb. We started off by descending a couple of thousand feet to the big crater lake. There we cooled our heels on the shore while our porters prepared a mid-day meal from some fish they were savvy enough to catch. The long break was nice, but it was quickly becoming apparent that things don't move very fast when one cooks every meal from scratch. It was also becoming apparent that Indonesians and Westerners don't necessarily observe the same standards of hygiene for bodily waste. After lunch, we headed up again, quite steeply to our final camp on the shoulder of the mountain beneath the route to the summit. The area was teeming with leaf monkeys, whose antics kept us well-entertained into the evening. After another dinner of chicken and rice we hit the sack early, preparing to rise hours before dawn.