Puncak-Jakarta

We stayed in our house in Puncak for 2 weeks, but there is little of interest to report here.  Not that we didn't do anything, there was the furniture shopping adventures, the excitment of painting the window frames and gates and the great ant massacre to name a few events.

But perhaps the biggest thing the fortnight will be remembered for was the cough I developed that persisted for the entire time I was there.  It even made me desperate enough to try a comercial cough syrup with a supresent in it.  One thing I learnt from the experience: cough syrups really don't work!

Although we did very little this trip, there is plenty to do in the Puncak region.  The word Puncak literaly translates as 'summit', and is used to refer to the whole area from Bogor to Bandung.  There are several benefits of staying in Puncak, it is cooler than Jakarta, there are less mosquittos and the air is much cleaner.  Our house which we bought just over 2 years ago is in the town of Cipanas.  Near our house is the dormant volcano of Gunung Gede (big mountain) which forms part of a large national park with UNESCO protection.  The main enterance to the park is at Cibodas, and from here you can do a short walk to some amazing waterfalls, or a half day climb up to a natural hot spring.  If you have the time and are fond of camping you could climb all the way to the summit, but as a warning, there are leopards in the park!  Also in Cibodas is part of the Bogor botanical gardens where the high altittude plants are grown.

Just a little further along the road is the Taman Safari, where you can drive around various enclosures and see animals such as zebras, elephants, hippos, tigers and lions.  There is a large zoo attached to the safari where you can play with the baby orang-utans or have a giant hornbill perch on your arm.

We didn't do any of these things this time, but have on previous occasions and they are certainly worth doing.  B's brother came up to pick us up a day earlier than expected to take us back to Jakarta, so once we got back to Jakarta we had to spend one more night at B's sisters house.  This however worked out quite well as B's sister wanted to learn how to bake cakes, and this gave B the time to teach her.  We then had banana muffins, chocolate muffins and a carot cake to eat.  After the cooking lesson we were then able to check into our hotel, the same hotel we always stay in when we are in Jakarta.

Adam