"You will 'Die'hydrate"

So "eating's cheating" logic doesn't have the same appeal when climbing a mountain, and like 'drinking' it is stupid, and makes you through up...a lot. Unfortunately I didn't make this choice for myself, it was forced upon me. I woke up on the day of our climb after having a good sleep (we didn't wake up at 4 for the Germany v Algeria game, Sandra didn't want to, that was her choice not mine), but I woke up feeling not-too-great, but overall feeling okay. Sitting on the ferry on route from Gili Trawangan to Lombok and honestly on such calm seas, I started to feel worse, couldn't stop farting, great. Not strange, my sea-legs aren't all that great, but that was a bit strange from me. Bring on the car journey from Bangsal to Sembalun....dam that was hard, I'm used to getting car sick, but my stomach was switching from code red to code green and constantly back again, until it finally reached code black....."sorry mate, can you please stop for two seconds" I got out the car in time, and I hope that you're not eating as you read this, but 'orange juice with vegetables' is all that I will say on that. And I can confirm that corn doesn't digest very quickly, maybe not at all!?!? Cool, I'm feeling better now, let's climb this mountain. So after some confusion upon arrival with money (no need to go into that) we started our climb with our guide Lethi and our two porters Eddie and Sanja, man they're Hardcore! First hour or two feeling fine, not great but fine. Until about 3 hours in, honestly all the coke that I had drunken on route, erupted out of me as the heavy rain started, it was like someone had slipped a Mentos into something that I had previously eating, and it hurt. I think Sandra was close to catching me nearly cry.

Finally fine again, we carried on walking up, but it was hard now, no longer fun. I ate a banana at the previous stop, but an hour or so later that along with all the water I had been drinking came out. I wanted to carry on, cos I hate to fail, but both Sandra and Lethi said with my green face and blue lips I had to stop. We were meant to carry on another 3 hours up to the crater (Crater Rim 2, in the picture below), but we have stopped here at Post 3 so we will carry on tomorrow. Both porters set up our tent straight away, and I came in here to sleep. But failed, so I wanted to write this all up now (at Post 3) whilst it's in my head. I have no idea when I will write the rest of this post, I just had the time now. As I'm not sleeping, I will now go join everyone outside....but not eat.

Just before we left Gili T, with Mt Rinjani on the left.

Mt Rinjani from Lombok, on route to the start point.

The route that we were meant to take (starting at Sembalun)

And the start of the journey

It's taken me so so long to get photos up that I am not planning to rotate any now...sorry.

Lethi, our guide, fuelling up

Our Guide Lethi (on the left), and our two porters Sanja (in the middle) and Eddie.

My 3rd vomit of Day 1....just Banana and water this time. It was still there on our decent on Day 3.

Our view from our tent at Post 3 on Day 1

OK, so the rest of this is being written from back on Gili Trawangan, one day after we arrived back on the island.

So I did end up eating on the eve of Day one, but not too much (well, I am English and it is rude to turn down food!). Whilst the 5 of us all chilled, talked and played with fire

I pretty much slept for about 10 hours after that, I just wanted to rest my stomach. We woke up, had breakfast, and finished the next stage of the walk up to the Crater Rim, to check out the view. It was only a 3 hour walk, but it was steep. Luckily for me, I was feeling a lot better on Day 2, unlucky for Sandra as it was hard work for her getting up there. When we did arrive "the lake was closed" due to so much cloud being up there. It did eventually give way a little bit for some views of the lake below. We went to check out the river source that was near, but that had sadly been ruined by humans....so much rubbish, it's a big big shame really. People can't just take their rubbish with them! We couldn't really do much for the rest of the day, we lost a day, due to me, which meant that we would miss a lot of the walk (as we wouldn't have time to complete it all, so we wouldn't actually go to the lake), which meant that we didn't have too much to do on Day 2. We did randomly meet up with Christina and Jose at the top, to enjoy the epic sunset with them. I did also eat again on this day.

Breakfast time

Waiting for us to leave so that they can have breakfast

Mt Rinjani summit

First view of the lake from the creter

Hairy German...and this is where the stereotype comes from!!!!

The river source

Really sad to see, at the river source.

Crazy fruit...

...tastes sweet...yummy!

A slightly clearer view of the lake

Jose and Christina

We later woke up on Day 3 at 2:30, after getting about 4 hours of sleep (and after I really gased out our tent (from both ends of my body, all night) poor Sandra, I've never seen anyone exit a tent so quickly...and it was cold outside). We had a quick breakfast (I only ate one cracker in fear of throwing up again). Before starting the climb up to the summit. It took about 2 and a half hours, and it was hard. My stomach felt like it was going to actually explode. Waling was OK, painful but OK. Stopping was good, not great, but good. Stop-Starting was making me feel sick and driving me insane. As we got higher it was becoming more apparent that there was a lot of cloud, which was really eating into my enthusiasm and drive, and I needed them two things to get me up this bloody mountain. We did eventually get up to the top, and before the sun rise, and above the cloud. That was yesterday morning.

This is a prime example of why we don't have many photos together

Sandra, Lethi and I at the summit

On route down a few minutes after the sun rise...it was cold up there!

A view of the camp site from above

A view of the lake from our camp site

My Rammstein dedication...."Bang Bang....Bang Bang....Feuer Feuer!"

And the lake "closing" again as we were leaving to start our decent

The decent down from there was OK, quick and easy, and I felt OK coming down. I got down, and forced some food in me, and packed up our tent. Sadly we would have to go back down the same way that we had come up over the prior two days.....that's when it got bad. Again, I wasn't feeling great, but I knew that I was good enough to get down, if I was quick. So I rushed on ahead, my plan was to go wait at post 3. I got a far way down, when another guide told me news that "You have your girlfriend, yeah!?"..."Yeah she back up there, she hurt her leg"...so I thought, "well hopefully it aint too bad, but I'll have to head back up." On route back up, and found the biggest worm that I ever ever seen. But I kept climbing and climbing until I saw Lethi, and a few seconds later I saw Sandra on her ass, with her legs in front of her, dragging herself down the hill "I've never felt like this before, my legs, my legs, I just can't feel my legs" This is gonna make the walk down more fun. Not feeling too great myself, and even though Sandra was determined to drag herself all the way down, I did carry her a far bit of the way down, or let her lean on me as we walked down. The decent down the whole mountain was slow after that, very slow, and very raining. Although, Lethi, Eddie, and Sanja were all great help, and very patient. And Sandra could walk a lot of the way down after we got past POst 3 (where we slept on Day 1).

See, it's a huge worm!

We arrived back at Sembalun at about 4 in the afternoon, so we asked them to rush us back to Bangsal so that we could aim to get the last ferry back to Gili Trawangan...that's just not gonna happen. We ended up getting back to Bangsal at about 6, a good hour after the last ferry. But there was a boatman there more then happy to take us back for RP900,000 (about 45squidssss)..I couldn't even be bothered to barter with that. "But it's Ramadam, and I get you there in 5 minutes."..."I understand your prices but I'm not paying that, I don't have the money"..."OK, how much you pay?"...."pffff, no more than (RP)500(k)"..."My friend, it's Ramadam, you start on 750 and we can barter from there"..."haha, no way mate, I don't have that money"....and even though I didn't know what to do, and it wasn't a bartering tactic, I just walked away, in hope that we would find a taxi.....but it did actually work, and we did mange to get a boat ride home for RP500,000 in the end. And we were so happy. Wet shoes, wet clothes, we were happy to be going home. And after the moped lifts to the boat, then a fast boat ride back to Gili T, it really did feel like we were home again. Walking down the main strip here, and everyone had noticed that we had been gone, a lot of 'Hellos' to do on our walk back to base/home.

I think he got a good deal! Well I wasn't gonna give him the only other shirt that I had with me, a certain Read and White shirt!

WESTERN FOOD!!!!!!

I think overall, due to me being sick the whole way up, I didn't really enjoy any of the walking. We also lost a day and a trip to the lake, again due to me being sick. Sandra really struggled on the way down. The views were amazing, and we're both glad that we did it, but we did get ripped off massively, and it was a struggle. But the views were amazing, and our guide, Lethi, and our two porters, Eddie and Senja, were 2nd to non, especially under the circumstances of me on Day 1 and Sandra coming down yesterday! Great guys!

The following day (aka today), both our legs are hurting, but all is good really. Just been chilling out. But it was great to catch up with some of our friends at our favourite dive shop (I still dunno if I can mention names). We have known for about a week now about their troubles with immigration due to work visa with foreign workers. And as a result a few of them were locked up behind bars over the weekend (although from speaking with some of them today it sounds like they could have had it a lot worse). It's good to see that they're all good, but we really dunno what this means for the dive shop, non of the foreign workers are able to work for them at the moment, and are not sure if/when they will be able to again. Immigration have been sniffing around them for a long while now, and the problem with immigration is, you never know when they will strike again...just when they want some more money really, that's how it works over here!

But we still wanna work on our Diving certificate whilst we're here, whether it be PADI or SSI. And the beard is still getting longer...all for a great cause! http://itsmrsheensworldnow.blogspot.com/2014/05/please-help-me-to-raise-money-for-such.html if you wanna sponsor it!

And my batteries about to die, so no time to porof read yet again...I got half way through though.