The Big North Sumatera Adventure Part VI - Volcanoes and The End

continued from The Big North Sumatera Adventure Part V

Although I had not mentioned anything about geothermal activity throughout any of the past posts from the Big North Sumatera Adventure series, Lake Toba and the areas surrounding it was actually once a very active area, so active indeed that whatever it was that formed Lake Toba was a supervolcano that erupted over 73000 years ago. 

Mount Sibayak and Mount Sinabung are both located near Berastagi. While Sibayak spews out sulphuric vapour every single day, having last erupted in 1881, Mount Sinabung had erupted just slightly less than 2 months before our visit. There also happens to be place where they had pools of hot water from the geothermal activity in that area. It looked like it was an extremely popular thing to do (so many people!), but we didn't take a dip there. 

We went back to the now cleaned up hotel, and stayed in for the rest of the night after dinner. We found a creepy looking 'mini house' with glasses in them behind the block where our room was, suspecting that it is used as a place where they keep a 'guardian' of some sort. We can't verify that, though, but it still creep-ed the hell out of the sister and I. 

 

Mt Sinabung

Mt Sibayak

The next day, we headed back to the Medan for our flight back. Before that, though we stopped at the market to look at stuff- like I said, we weren't there to buy fruits and lug them back all on a plane! We reached Medan by lunch time, had some lunch and had plenty of time to spend before having to get back to the airport. Now, while some cities may be interesting, I cannot say the same for Medan, especially not after seeing what the countryside had to offer. It was one shopping mall after the next. One thing though, they seem to place utmost care on their environment. There was this one mall which was built around a huge tree instead of them chopping it down, which I thought was wonderful. We did buy some stuff at the mall, though - just to finish up our converted currency, and sat and ate some lovely waffles with blue mint ice cream and lots of chocolate sauce.

We had some dinner, and then it was time to go. Surprisingly, at the airport, we were reunited with our little lost luggage, the pink duffel bag.

Both my sister and I agree that this is one of the best trips we've ever had in terms of relaxation. I also have to add here that we had the most awesome guide ever. He asked us to call him Do (and channeled a bit of Fraulein Maria by doing the Do Re Mi Fa So to emphasise the point, ha ha). He actually told us that he's not really keen on his job as a tour guide, but despite that he took real good care of us, had the same definition for punctuality as the both of us which made everyone happy.

The End.