Site Report: Gunung Gede

Visits

• 2024-07-19: I arrived late at the Jakarta airport where I promptly bought the wrong sim card. If you are buying a sim card, Telcomcell is the only service that works outside the beaten path. I learned that later after getting another company. Anyway, I was picked up at 4AM in order to beat the traffic to the Cibodas area. After a light breakfast, we set up to hike high up the Gunung Gede mountain. The hike was a steady climb walking on rocks.. not exactly easy but also not extreme. There was a healthy amount of plastic trash on the trail, and there was some burning of plastic trash at a couple of places. I guess that's an improvement of the trash moving on to the beach. That was one of the things I noticed a lot of Indonesia, they are living in the 1970s when it comes to the environment. People are throwing their trash everywhere. They could really use the crying Indian commercial over there. After a few hours, we crossed a hotspring river and arrived at the campsite, around 2500 meters high. There was a communication mixup, and my gear was left behind in the car, so much for porters. Between jet lag and uncomfortable ground, it was going to be an uncomfortable night. I was told that the hot spring river (where people were swimming the next morning) was the toilet. Luckily, I didn't need to use it.
• 2024-07-20: I was able to wake up at sunrise despite any lingering jet lag. We walked back down the mountain which basically took the entire day.

Species Seen

Lifelists

• Asia
• World

Trips

• Indonesia