Thursday, October 15, 2015

Overnight camping in Pesisir Selatan, Sumatra Barat

Upon my arrival in Padang, and meeting some locals, I have been shown of this place where there was a cliff dive. Heights have always been in my bucket list, and this coming Wednesday holiday, we thought of camping overnight from our dismissal from class on tuesday.

It was already around 3pm when we left campus. It was a little bit of a buzzer beater plan and so the friend who was in charge of the transport had a bit of a challenge finding a good deal. Nevertheless, as we are travelling in a big group of 11 people, he managed to get us a van from campus to the jump off place for the same price of the bus travel from city center to the nearest highway. 

It was almost 6pm already when we reached the jump off as we had to stop once in a while to buy food and stocks. The boat readied was also relatively small so it had to be done in 2 groups. As with our previous travels in this region of sumatra barat, we were again dealt with unnecessary interrogation from officials. Nevertheless, we all got to the island at a little past 7pm.

There were no cottages especially for guests in the island, although there were some warungs that sold food in the morning. Thankfully, we had some place to prepare our food that night.




....sleep! other than the bonfire, nothing much in the story that night though as alcohol was so expensive.  Nevertheless, there were plenty of planktons at a corner of the island.

The morning came and after breakfast, we tried some of the rides. It was only $2 for a ride, which would have been about $7 in my country, so I thought about trying it. Yet, imagining how much fuel was burnt to shake my nerves for a few minutes (when there are in fact some others who can’t eat)... probably no more next time for me.











A little past lunch, we went to the most exciting part... the cliff dive.

There is no docking area in the rock island so the boat had to be tied onto the rocks. From there, using some rope, we needed to climb up. There were 5 of us who climbed the cliff, but only 4 jumped. For me though, i’d rather jump than do down again on that rope. It was such a bad fall though; I had to buy menthol plasters and balm rub for the night.




From that island, we docked on the nearby island to have some snacks. There were plenty of garbage too around, and rather than just sitting the whole time, we thought about collecting garbage too. There were several monkeys in that island too who shared a papaya with me. J






Expenses:

Van from Campus to Jump Off: 30,000.00 ppx
Boat to Island, hops, and Back: 700,000.00/11=~64,000 ppx
Entrance Fee to Island: 0.00
Flying Fish Ride in the island: 30,000.00 (package of 3 rides including donut and banana boat available for 75,000)
Van from Jump off to Campus: 30,000.00
Food Share: 21,000 (including some extra we paid to the boat owner for lending us utensils, stove, etc).


Total: 175,000.00

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