So we’ve been offline for a few days. No phone, no internet and no electricity. Here is what we’ve been doing:

Long before our departure from Norway was it decided that we wold trek Mt. Rinjani the second week of the tour. We looked up different companies that offer services for this. TripAdvisor was once more an
Important tool for deciding which one to choose. I read a lot of reviews and we fell down on John’s Adventure –rinjanimaster.com.
And it all started with the trip from Bali to Lombok…
We had made arrangement with John for pickup at the harbor where our boat came in, but things are not always on schedule in Indonesia. We had booked tickets for the 8:30 ferry from Padang Bai with pickup at Puri Santrian Hotel at 6:45. It’s an hour drive from the hotel to Padang Bai. When the clock was 7:00 we called the. Ferry Company about the pickup. “Right there. Only five minutes away”
Yeah, right!
We got picked up at 7:30, but we were not the only stop on the way. Four more people were to be picked up, and the driver had no idea about where the hotels where. We drove around and around and when we finally left Sanur area our boat left the harbor.
The drive, as I wrote , was to take one hour. We used a little more than two. So we had 20 minutes to get on the boat that left at 10:30. The boat ride was OK. Pretty new boat and we left on time. But the ride didn’t take 1:05 hours as described, it took a little over 2 houses. Do you begin to see the pattern?

We got ashore on Lombok at Taluk Nare. There we were to be picked up- 3 hours ago.
They guys at the harbor all offered their services but a call to John and pickup was again on the road to us. Since we were up early and had an early breakfast we were getting cranky and needed food, but there were no food stalls in sight. But making new friends is always positive. We ended up with the local guys who waited to attack the next batch of passengers coming ashore and ate with them. For NOK 4,- (0,50 €) we got a great meal of rice, noodles, chicken, sambal and veggies. It tasted great. And we waited. But we had great entertainment. We talked to the local guys about martial arts, Guns ‘n Roses, Steven Segal and prostitution (no money, no honey, no hanhu, no hehe) I think you all can guess the meaning of the last to phrases without seeing the faces on these guys. 😉
But John delivered and we got our transport to Senaru village.

We paid our dues to John and got a hotel room. Quite descent and spacious. And with hot water in the shower. A briefing on the next days adventure and off to bed.
Back up at 5:45 and taking a shower. Then we had pancakes 🙂 for breakfast. And the off with our guide Ahmman and our two porters Alex and the other guy. 🙂
We started our climb at 1100 meters and ended today’s trek on 2600 meters. It took us 6 hours and 20 minutes including the long lunch (close to 2 hours). And it was steep and dusty. Really really dusty. We are here in the dry season and they has not been rain for ages. It’s so dry we had dust all over our bodies. All openings and basically all skin.

Right now we are chilling in chairs, sipping tea and eating fried bananas outside the tent and will soon be served dinner. The tent is up, sleeping bags laid out and we have bearly lifted a finger for this to happen. We even got ourselves a Privat toilet tent. Yup, hole in the ground toilet- with style. Hours in the gym with squats, lounges, dead lift and boxjump really paid off today!
We will turn in early as we will be woken at 2. We will start trekking again at 2:30 to reach the sunrise at 6:15 on the summit. We will climb 1100 more meters tomorrow.