Lost in the Mountains and the Adventure Begins For Real...

I trekked out on what was an extremely ill-fated venture into the mountains yesterday, thinking that despite a late start I would make it cleanly to the tea plantation - Gedeh - outside of Cianjur without too much to concern myself with turning around and coming home.

Catching a bus is an elaborate procedure that really just involves flagging down a bus you think you want, shouting your destination, and the rest is a question of foisting yourself on to the moving vehicle. Thanks to a guardian angel of a cab driver I was shown the way to a larger bus - that he told me would be fine without AC - because the mountains are much cooler... this was the one thing he was wrong about. Ten minutes later a small fifteen year old with a giant pink backpack scooted as close to me as possible despite twenty some odd empty seats and she slept on me much of the trip, practicing her English and employing the words "Justin" and "Beiber" as oft as humanly possible. (WE are now facebook friends look forward to a cell phone picture of my extremely bad haircut + three hours of bus heat next to sweaty 15 year old...it aint purty).

The Pancuk pass is a gigantic winding traffic jam - people dart in and out of busses selling you food/ trinkets - all the way along. My seat buddy forced a strange sour candy on me and I gave as much gratitude as the strange flavor taking over my tastebuds would allow. Let it be noted, Justin Beiber's biggest fan included, I have come to rely on and basque in the kindness of the people here. I keep having thoughts that their tolerance and endless patience will let up if I dont stop being so ridiculously clueless - but it persists and I am endlessly thankful.

The fifteen year old says she has a boyfriend but wont tell me a word about him or show me a picture and when she asks me if I have a boyfriend I'm left trying to find the words, "Its complicated?" In Bahasa Indonesia. We hop off at the same stop.. what is essentially a random bend in a road and she runs off without a goodbye onto the back of motorcycle...of what looks to be her mysterious boyfriend. I on the other hand, faint from hunger, hide in the shelter of two fairly aloof women who feed me soup and laugh at me with their eyes... (who could blame them). I run off to find Gedeh breathing in the mountain air and enjoying the coolness. I happen upon a bunch of men and decide to stumble into a mini bus... opening the door... and hoping in. This was not a minibus.. it was someone's car... and the men laugh at me uproariously ... I tell them using a phrase book I want to find Gedeh... and stumble out lost and hopeless at this random roadside.

Eventually I opt to take a leap of faith... and do something my whole entire family will cringe at... and hop on the back of a motorcycle. I tell the driver Gedeh and my new group of friends at the - not mini bus- try to tell him where to take me. The driver (who later tells me his name is Wahjee) shows me how to put my feet on a certain place and off we go. I realize I am in probably the greenest most beautiful place I've ever been, the houses are in winding backways with built in shallow ponds where people spend the evenings minding fishing poles. There are verdant rolling rice patties and hills and hills of brightly colored green foliage...you never realize how varying the color green truly is...

We start up a back path uphill riding like the couples I see speeding up the mountain giggling and holding on to each other. Wahjeed is frustrated because he can I tell I have no idea where I'm going and keeps speaking to me in Bahasa Indonesia ... I am lost in the images that are unfolding all around us taking great pleasure in a truck full of flowers in front of us trailing the most beautiful scents and colors. It starts to rain and I'm forced to face the reality that I dont know where I am or where I'm going. Wahjeed is annoyed but extremely loyal and we communicate using the phrase book finally collapsing into laughter.

I tell him if he can take me to a hotel I would be grateful.. and I produce from my back pack a large poncho - bequeathed to me by my father - that plays more like a gigantic tarp. I cover Wahjee in it and he wraps my arms around his middle to force me to hold tighter.

Speeding back down the mountain side I find myself in heaven - sinking into Wahjees chubby stomach and smelling the freshest greenery in the world. It starts to come down hard and Wahjee slips me under the back of the tarp - I take it upon myself to hold down the sides so we look like a speeding blueberry in the driving downpour.

He drops me at a hotel that is clearly a convention/ resort and is at the moment empty BUT for a students choir who have holed up in the auditorium / cafeteria and are singing the BEST drippingly emotional songs ever. They sound like born-agains rapturing but i"m sure its not that sinister... I fall asleep to the rain and am intermittently woken up by the excitement of the students soaring through warm chords from and electric piano.

I wake at 5 AM ... they're at it again - speaking movingly into a microphone and practicing their series of very very touching songs... I find a lizard in my pants, eat a breakfast of rice and hardboilded egg with cucumber (hot water on the side - obvi), see the BIGGEST spider I've ever see in the wild (showing off his magnificence in the bright morning sun), and confidently hop a bus back to Jakarta.

I leave the city tomorrow trying to make my way to a remote outpost in South Java before I'm planting myself in Yogayokarta for the last of my journeying on this island - before its off to Bali... where there will be much mischief in the making.

Love love

**Note I retract that the photoing of white people is all about white people - it is to an extent because random white people are exciting - but people REALLY just like to take pictures here... Its not good for my nerves.