Sumatra – Lake Toba

I didn’t know what to expect, I hadn’t researched Sumatra and this was such a spur of the moment thing. At the Airport I took out just over 1000000 Indonesian Rupees and thought this will be the only time in my life I will be a millionaire! It’s worth about £50 Hahahaha!

Tatjana had lived in Bali another part of Indonesia for a year and met Efrieda then. Efreda now lives in Samosir on Lake Toba where she is from originally.

Samosir is a large island in Lake Toba which was formed 75,000 years ago by a massive eruption, one of earth’s largest and it is thought to have wiped out about half the human and other life across the world. The ash layer from the explosion is found all over the world and gives effective dating to archeologists. Lake Toba is dormant but could explode again at some point! Not today!

So setting off from Medan by taxi (again very cheap by our standards) we had a three hour trip through flat agricultural lands, ubiquitous Palm oil trees and rice plantations.  Then as we got nearer Lake Toba the land became hilly and surprisingly there are lots of native pine here. It’s still warm but not as warm or humid as Malaysia.

We arrived at the ferry port of Parapat, where we were to meet Efrieda.

It’s was lovely to see Tatjana meet her friend after almost 10 years. We then took the ferry to Tuk Tuck on Samosir.

We took the public transport to Efriedas parents home where we were to stay. Then the adventures began!