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In Australia the pub-crawl is an integral part of student life, going (and finally crawling) from pub to pub in an evening of drinking at a multitude of venues. In Java, a volcano crawl is the act of scaling (or crawling) volcano after volcano in a tour of join the dots. Today was volcano pair number two.

Merapi

Today’s volcano pair – Merapi and Merbabu – were much more pleasant than the last pair. The road was a small road with quite a bit of roadworks, which meant there was little traffic. Cycling up the steep road, I was fascinated by the cloudscape above. Bright sun turned to dark clouds within minutes, and then back to bright sun. The volcanoes disappeared behind a cloak of cloud, only to reemerge an hour later. I passed small villages of ‘Hello misters,’ and rice fields. This is the way volcano crawls are meant to be.

On the way down

The view below

I spent the evening with the lovely people from Kota Kita – an NGO in Solo with a focus on improving life in the city through policy change and community empowerment and participation. I also said hi to the cycling community who have lots of plans in the pipeline for this month.

The Solo cycling community

Merapi