Today I’m on my way to my yearly surf-trip. This year it’s gonna be Indonesia. My third trip to the country.
I might share some impressions later. But right now, I want to revisit my first trip to Indonesia. That was more than 20 years ago, back in 2003. It was my first big journey without my parents. We were a group of 6 friends, all students with loads of spare time and energy, but little money.
We spent most of our time on the island of Lombok. At the beaches in the south, on the Gilis, and on Mount Rinjani.
South Lombok
Here’s some pics from the area around Kuta Lombok:
Notably, the last few pics are from Gerupuk (back then a quiet fishing village) and the nearby surf spots. I think it might be Don Don and Kiddies (a.k.a. Children’s Point?).
Gunung Rinjani
“Gunung” stands for “mountain” in Bahasa Indonesia. And Rinjani is quite an impressive one. We spent 3 days on our Rinjani trek:
- Up to the northern crater rim.
- Down into the crater, to lake Segare Anak and the hot springs, then up to the eastern crater rim.
- Night ascent reaching Rinjani’s summit around sunrise, then all the way down towards civilization.
Those 3 days offered impressive views, so I took more pics than on the rest of the trip combined. Here are some of them, in roughly chronological order:
And the rest?
After Rinjani, we headed to “The Gilies”. Unfortunately, that’s when my camera stopped working. So no material from that part of our trip.
Looking back at all of my photos (not just the selection above) I realize how few pictures I was taking. Where today I’d try 5 or 10 variations of a shot, I only had taken one or two back then. And I remember the reason, too: I had to contend with a 512 MB(!) compact flash memory card. For the whole trip. No other devices to shuffle around data, either. Needless to say, that memory card didn’t go into a smart-phone, but into a good old-fashioned digital compact camera. Those were the days;)