We rode about 100 km a day for the next 3 days to reach Solo.

Leaving Malang, we went downhill gradually for 30km. The homes and small towns we passed through continued to be more affluent than those on the flat lands in the northeast of Java. The road out of Malang was not as wide as the road in but traffic was also lighter. We only got driven off the road by speeding buses a couple of times.

We passed a lot of school children in uniforms. The elementary school kids sometimes just freaked out - screaming and waving like crazy. Sometimes they chased us on foot. Sometimes they silently followed us on their bikes. Older kids usually just stared, often poking their friends to turn around and look at us.

Many times we would hear a voice in the distance say, "Hallo!" then we would look around and see nobody. We usually just yelled "Hello" back.

Despite being up in the mountains, it was still very very hot. As long as the road is flat or downhill, we got a constant breeze that felt good. The last half of our ride descended then ascended several river valleys. Climbing slowly out of the valley we felt no breeze and sweated like fountains.

All day we circled volcano Gunung Butak, 9400 feet high but we never saw it. It was in the clouds the whole time. Every hotel in east Java seems to offer a volcano tour, mostly of Mt. Bromo. Almost all of the tours start at some ridiculous hour like 3 or 4 a.m. so that you can be on top of the mountain at sunrise. Almost everyday, even in the dry season, clouds come in and cover the mountains. In the rainy season you can get up at 3 a.m. and still find a cloudy mountain. So we didn't hike Bromo.

We rode the 87km from Malang to Blitar quickly, due to a loss of about 1,000 feet in altitude. The man sometimes called the father of Indonesia, Soekarno, was born in Blitar. Suharto replaced Soekarno in 1965 and has only gradually recognized Soekarno's historical importance to Indonesia. Soekarno is buried in Blitar, according to the Lonely Planet, despite wishes of his widow that he be buried in Jakarta. Anyway, I was interested to see how the one-time hero was honored.

On the ride for at least 50km on either side of Blitar, every driveway, or house, or entrance of any kind is marked by two-, three- or four-foot high rectangular monument to Indonesian independence. On one side of the driveway it will say "17-8" and on the other side "1945". (The date of independence was August 18, 1945).

We took a bemo from the hotel to the grave - an adventure in itself. A bemo is a van that works like a public bus; but apparently, they're only called bemos on Bali. We forget what they're called on Java.

We asked a policeman which bemo to catch and where. He actually stood at the corner and waited with us until the bemo came by, then he stopped it for us. Also, he told us how much to pay. The minivan-sized vehicle was packed full - there were already 17 people in there. We figured we would have to catch the next one but they insisted we get in. First, the three guys sitting in the doorway (there was no door) got out and took the little wooden bench they sat on with them. We climbed in. The minibus has a normal bench front seat and the back is just an open space except a small wooden bench around the perimeter. The driver, an old man, and two kids sat in front. In the back, people sat pressed against each other all the way around, some holding children. Joan and I sat in the middle on little stools about four inches high. The knees of the other passengers were up against me on three sides. Also, even at 134 pounds, I was a giant.

(Joan: the bemo was so full I figured we'd have to wait for the next one until everyone unloaded to make room for us).

No one spoke for a minute or so. Finally we asked someone in our rough Indonesian, if this bus went by Soekarno's grave. That seemed to loosen everyone up. We talked a little. Then a middle-aged, rotund Chinese man, who looked a lot like the guy that owned the house in San Jose, spoke to me in English. He had studied violin at a university in Sumatra under an America teacher. It's amazing how often we meet people who speak some English.

I must say, the grave is tastefully done. Three graves (Soekarno, his mother and father) are in a Mosque-like building with an enormous polished stone. Several people prayed around the grave, just as at a Mosque.

Outside, we passed a large array of souvenir sellers. You can buy powerful posters of Soekarno wearing sunglasses and thrusting his fist in the air, a little reminiscent of Malcolm X. Not that many western tourists visit here and the hawkers are therefore somewhat subdued towards us.

Luckily the correct minibus showed up just as we were ready to leave. It was the same color, on the same street, and going the opposite direction of the one we took to get there. We got in without asking where the bus was going. Soon we realized that the bus was not going to the center of Blitar where we thought. We started asking and everyone assured us that the bus went to Blitar, but we saw the road that we bicycled in on and we were going the wrong way. Despite the communication problems, I decided to trust the other passengers. After all, when does a public bus take a direct route?

We ended up at the bus terminal, probably about as far from our hotel as the grave but on the opposite side. Everyone else got out then a bunch of people got in. About five minutes later, we left, at last heading toward the city. We communicated to the driver and the woman next to him where we wanted to go. As soon as we got there, they stopped and told us. The locals had taken good care of us on both trips.

For both trips we each paid 500rp just as the policeman had said. It appeared to me that the locals paid the same. In Bali, it's impossible to pay the same as the locals for Bemo rides.

Blitar doesn't have a lot of choices for hotels. We stayed at one that considers itself one-star. This means it has lots of people ready to carry your bags, etc. This makes us uncomfortable more than anything else. Despite the satellite dish, the TV had too much static to watch. In the morning, Joan called the office on the intercom phone and asked several times of breakfast was included with the room. The answer was yes. Most hotels offer breakfast with the room. But after the porter brought the fried rice, he asked for payment. Lots of confusion and frustration followed, until we convinced the hotel that we would not eat the breakfast or pay for it.

The hotel probably made an honest mistake, misunderstanding Joan's question. We have learned that people almost always answer "Yes" when they don't understand.

We rode about 100km each of the next two days. It was hot and hilly and occasionally very pretty. Again we passed tall volcanos on our right but rarely saw them due to clouds. Where we rode it would be sunny in the morning until about twp or three o'clock in the afternoon when the clouds came in. Sometimes it rained but often the skies went grey and that was all. The pattern is not bad. The cloud cover provides welcome relief from the sun and riding in the rain is not that bad.

The prettiest views were of long valleys with terraced rice padis, snaking rivers, and lush forests. The number of trees surprised me. Trees generally cover the steeper hill sides and small patches of trees spot the valleys as well. The roads in flat areas are often lined with trees, each tree painted with a three-foot wide white stripe at chest level.

As we climbed hills, the number of people generally declined. Once while we climbed a long hill, we passed an elementary school. As always, the kids went crazy, screaming and jumping and spinning around, sometimes we would hear, "I love you!" or "Hallo Meestir!" but mostly we just heard exuberant screaming. At this school, however, one kid decided to run after us. This was not hard since the we were climbing a fairly steep hill. The rest of the school followed him and pretty soon we had a hundred screaming kids chasing us down the highway. I yelled to Joan, "Can you go any faster? I've got the whole damn school behind me." I worried that a truck might come roaring down the hill or that the kids would grab my bike and knock me over. We lost them pretty quickly, though.

We stopped at a warung for lunch in Tullungagung. We had a nice conversation with the women who ran it. She worked with us trying to get through the language barrier. Before we left, we tried to leave a tip but she would not accept it.

Other times, we were not so successful. In one small town, we stopped at a warung and wanted only Sprite and ice. Joan said as we sat down, "Dua Sprite dan Es Batu." The woman quickly disappeared, apparently understanding. Several minutes later she emerged with hot tea cooling off in ice. Joan was angry and tried to send the tea back. I figured iced tea was okay and insisted we drink it and get two Sprites when we finished. This worked fine until the women showed up again, this time with Chicken Satay! I don't know how she got the idea we wanted satay. I'm guessing they just figured we wanted lunch and that is what they make at that warung. Joan sent the satay back. We can communicate OK when people are patient and try to understand, but at this place, they didn't even try. Most places we stopped, however, did try and we almost always got what we wanted.

At one lunch stop, we met a New Zealander named Alex. He had studied Indonesian in school in NZ ( Joan: It's one of the main foreign-language choices in NZ, the way French, Spanish and German were, when I was growing up in San Francisco). Alex worked for a power company and was surveying the "Medium Voltage Lines" in they area. They planned for the project to take six months but he expected it to take a couple of years. Just like our experience over "breakfast included?" he makes plans with people and though everyone seems to understand, when the time comes, they don't know what he's talking about. He just doesn't let it bother him.

He drives a large 4WD around, which sounds more dangerous than biking. He too, has been chased off the road by buses. He said the system, wherein bus drivers are paid only by the number of complete runs, should be illegal.

Alex said that that morning on a mountain road, a motor bike coming the opposite way rounded a corner too fast and collided with him. There were two passengers on the motorbike. He said he had heard of cases where in Indonesian was killed in an accident involving a westerner, and the westerner was stoned to death, regardless of fault. He was nervous but both riders got up and seemed fine. (Joan: which is amazing, since although most Indos wear helmets, the helmets are cheap, unpadded plastic, like something you'd expect to buy as part of a GI Joe Halloween costume at Woolworth's).

We really liked Alex and would have like to talk to him all day, but we had to continue.

The night before we arrived in Solo, we stayed at an awful hotel in Ponorogo. While it was better than most places we stayed in Costa Rica, it smelled kind of bad and the staff kept bothering us. They barged into our room while Joan was in the shower and insisted that we both sign forms. She refused to leave the shower early. They wouldn't wait outside. So they waited inside, until she was all done. Then they wanted to photocopies our passports! And since the didn't have their own machine, they walked off with them to have them done somewhere else. No one else in Indonesia wanted that.

(Joan: we were really nervous, because that was the ONLY time, outside of when we later had to apply for visas, that someone took our passports away. The guy at the front desk said they'd be ready in a few minutes, and they weren't. So I started hounding them, telling them the time was up. I stood up in the lobby the whole time, in their faces. I refused to sit or leave. Finally the did bring the passports, just a few minutes late).

The one good thing about awful hotels is we usually leave earlier the next morning and that's what we did.

Next: Solo Part 1

Java Main Page   Indonesia Main Page   World Trip