Sumantri

Tuesday, November 15th, 2022 – Travel Time

Just landed in Jakarta! It was a 16 hour flight followed by a 4 1/2 hour flight. Both planes left late and landed late. Huge headwind and delays at the airports. 

I would not recommend Philippine airlines. They ran out of food on the plane, didn’t have the remotes working for the computer screens, and aside from ice cream – food was foreign which I was not ready to click over just yet to. Apparently that didn’t bother others as much because I watched someone eat the butter balls as is. Stuck a fork in them, started chewing, and gave me a wink when they caught me staring.  But all is well. It’s 1 am here in Jakarta and hot! Like high 80s.  Getting to the hotel soon and fingers crossed all is well there. More to come later!

It was a long day of waiting in humid, hot, weather. With the same simple things for food.  

No permits yet. Once we get a permit we need to go to the police station and the immigration office for signatures. Until then we are in a holding pattern and can’t fly to the mountain.

They can only fly the helicopter 3x per day. So I am on the 2nd day of getting to the mountain as well. Last helicopter to go. Today is Saturday so we either get a permit today or we wait till Monday and hope one comes by then. We had contingency days built into our itinerary for acclimatizing. This delay is eating into those. 

We are at sea level right now and get dropped off at 14,000 feet which is a big jump.  So hopefully things come together soon. 

We are in the jungle waiting, there are no attractions to see, places to go, or things to visit. We are supposed to keep our presence here unknown so not really anywhere we could go if we wanted.

I did convince the driver of the hotel to allow us to go to a mini market, that was the big adventure. Randomly there is a Pizza Hut on the island. Which is the only real restaurant, everything else is more like a farmers market. So we did have pizza for lunch yesterday.

It is 3 hours to a nice beach which we are not allowed to go to because we need to do things with the permits once we get them. Maybe that will change if we don’t have them on Sunday. Lots of unknowns. 

The team is a great group of people that have been looking at Sumantri with me and helping me download topo maps, figure out routes and trying to plan the best way up. Some want to do the summit with me. 

Missing home and longing for things to do. Much easier to be busy than idle. Fingers and toes crossed for permits today!

Well we found out today that we have zero chance of getting a permit over the weekend. So all the things are crossed hoping for Monday – which has everyone extremely frustrated.

To try and make up for the frustration they took us on a boat ride to get a bit of breeze maybe from driving on a boat. The air here is so hot, humid and sticky you can be doing nothing and just dripping sweat. I like alpine environments for a reason – they lack the heat, humidity and bugs that this environment has in abundance.

Our guide got malaria in the last few days so now we are even more conscious about going outside. Supposedly we are in a non-malaria zone. So maybe it needs to be reclassified.

The people definitely live off the land, I have no clue how their immune systems can handle what they can handle. Robust people.  The houses by the water are built on stilts to keep them from flooding.  The tribes live together and feed off the fish. White rice and fish is the staple diet. 

I did find a new hotel that is a government hotel so I moved there for the next two nights. It is much nicer. Photos and videos coming soon. Too dark to take them right now.

Fingers crossed that we have permits Monday 🤞. Not sure of the back up plan.

Boring, long day.

After our field trip on Saturday to see some of the Papuan villages, we learned of a van driver that hit a small child on the road.  Based on what I have seen it could have been easily both parties’ faults. Roads here are filled with cars driving in both directions at crazy speeds and will go two cars wide on each side of the lined road that is only designed for 1.5 cars wide. So the van pulled over and the village people killed everyone on the van because of the child being killed by the accident.  Since this is something entirely out of all of our controls we decided it was best to not travel on the crazy roads with people seeming to play real-life frogger on a regular basis. 

So it was a day at the hotel.  I worked on my book, got to check in on my Vertical 40 people, the kids and went through a long easy gratitude list.  These environments make gratitude extremely easy. I am grateful for consistent power, for air conditioning, for stores that sell choices of items, for friendly faces, seasons in the weather, easy access to healthcare, and drinkable running water.  The sink water here is not drinkable for the locals either. Everything anyone wants to drink has to come out of the containers you buy at the store. 

I have been carb loading since we got here. I would have expected more greens and fruits in the diets here but it is mainly rice and fish, with some chicken.  Almost everything is served fried in some kind of breading.  Peanut Butter and Jelly is a solid staple.  Along with donuts. 

Missing all the things about home.  Today is a Monday so hopefully we get a permit today! If we did we will go to the police station and immigration office to stamp it and start flying to the mountain tomorrow. 

Love to all,

Jenn

The expedition was cancelled late last night. There was an earthquake that has caused tons of devastation in Indonesia.  There are also very real security threats in Western Papua where I was. We were barely allowed to leave our hotel and then after the earthquake not allowed to leave at all.

I am quite confident based on the conditions here that we were not ever going to get a permit which unfortunately proved to be true. I did get to make some great ground connections with true mountaineers in this area though.  Sumantri is on the rebel side of things and not safe to climb, and might not be for a while. There is a pass that goes through from New Zealand to Western Papua right by Sumantri and is a path that the rebels take to try and get gold from mining efforts.  Carstensz Pyramid is not too far from Sumantri, but far enough from this pass to be deemed quite a bit safer. Even still, Carstensz Pyramid has been closed since October of 2019 due to internal conflict amongst the tribes in the area.

The ropes on Sumantri are not safe either and the conditions of things are not good.  There is a mountain association that is trying to make things safe again but it will be a while there is a lot they are contending with.  December 1st is a national holiday for the rebels.  Around this time of year it gets even more extreme with danger due to this holiday. It’s a very different culture from anything I have experienced.  There is a true warrior spirit that is alive there and even people from Indonesia do not feel safe in this part of their country.  

When the mountain association gets a chance to get the mountain safely open and the internal turmoil is less of a threat, they will open the mountain.  The people into mountaineering know how bad the world wants it open and they would love the tourism back into the area when it is safe for all parties.

Wifi and all the things have been very limited while in Papua, but hopefully today that changes.  I ate a dehydrated meal I planned for the mountain because the food has been a real struggle.  Something about fish heads mixed in with the fish in the serving trays just kills it for me.  And you would think veggies and fruit would be in abundance but that does not seem to be the case or at least not in the areas I have been.  Again another thing that I hope changes.

I have not been sleeping well here so I am up most days at 4am.  I had breakfast at 6am and at 8am was informed we needed to be at the airport immediately to work towards getting to Bali for the first of two flights which was leaving at 10:45am. 

Got to the airport, had endless travel delays, and spent the entire day there before we finally headed to Bali.  The airports are not air conditioned unless you pay for lounge access (which is the only real perk the lounge offers), but worth it. 

Finally got into Bali and the hotel around 1:00am.  I am exhausted mentally.  Living conditions were sub par for the most part, and just the constant waiting to see what was happening and staying on alert is more draining than you would think.  It’s like now that I am out of that environment my nervous system knows it is safe and is finally letting go of all the things I didn’t even know it was holding onto.  

I will be here for at least 48 hours before I make another move.  I tried to look up some options yesterday and realized that I just needed to not have a plan and just “be” for a few days to make the next best decision. I am about 10 hours of travel from Sydney Australia, which then is about 6 hours of travel from Mt. Townsend (one way).  Mt. Townsend is the second highest point in Australia and on my list, so there’s a part of me that wants to go there and get that mountain done while I am on this side of the world. For now it’s time to rest and recharge.

xoxo,

Jenn