On March 12 of 2021, Blogger friend Helen wrote:
Mountains To Climb on which I left her a comment about our Indonesian experience...
Well, on July 2nd of 1990 we were driving up to the Dieng Plateau at our usual time at 6:00 AM but half way we got stuck...
Frequently after heavy tropical rains during the wet monsoon, entire parts of the mountain got washed away by HUGE landslides. Mud and rocks covering the little villages and destroying everything in its path.
At Dieng there also was a Geothermal Field and one of the Pertamina trucks had to hook off its defect trailer and that was now blocking the road.
Half way up the mountain, you can see the sharp curve of this hairpin bent and up it goes...
It is me, standing with the driver behind our Toyota Super Kijang.
There were NO guard rails and at some spots you could look straight down into a deep chasm with villages below in the valley. Talking about some 8,000 ft high or over 2,400 m.
When we finally got beside the stuck Pertamina trailer, Pieter said, should we not get out of the car...?
There was a huge hole in the mountain and part of the road was washed down... I was on the chasm side and looking down into a HOLE that would fit my entire home town of Horst in The Netherlands!
OR we had to step over the seat's back and exit through the back door... we both sat in the back of the car.
All of a sudden I said firmly: 'Don't MOVE!' As I saw an idiot making gestures with his hands to our driver who sat in front of me on the right side of the car (driving left!)... Come slowly forward, bend a bit to the other side and sure enough we were moving over some planks they'd placed over the gaping hole!!!
We miraculously made it across that gaping hole, the planks held us.
One thing I know for sure that we both have a Guardian Angel and one that has worked overtime during several of our adventurous years!
Here is such a mini landslide... and not into the deepest chasm but still dangerous!
The Toyota Super Kijang is going to pass over that bridge you see to the right...
Pieter took this photo from a height, he always loved to hike up for a better vantage point.
Would you trust the structure of that bridge...?!
On December 18, 1991 one of the trucks that transported the casing soil bags up to the Dieng area's mushroom farms, got off the road. That caused one person his death and three others injured.
How in the world would they manage to remove that truck... and look at all the soil it scraped off from those terraces.
Once we saw a mini bus in a ravine and that caused like 18 death and a baby got thrown out and did not get found... Tragedy and it makes one shiver!
People over there, live such hard lives and who is looking out for them?
Here you can see the back door of the Toyota Super Kijang, as we approach another location at Lake Merdada, with some 300 mushroom growing sheds and little homes where the families lived.
It is actually a caldera... filled by water over time.
Again, all those terraces on the mountain side.
That also causes lots of erosion as the trees are gone.
Some technical problem, and our driver is sitting behind the car...
Me in my seat and this very Toyota Super Kijang does not even have a door on the right passenger sight.
On July 10, 1991 when I wanted to come down with my driver (Pieter had been working on the construction of a certain Unit and did not join me going up) there was an accident and the road got blocked by a truck; 2 deaths... So we had to go all the way around via little villages (dessas) over unpaved roads. My driver Ribut found it amusing that in those dessas, people came running up to our car while calling: Ibu Vedder! (Mrs. Vedder). Do they know you, he asked, to which I replied they have to be some of my over one thousand harvesters that know me...
If you want to have a feeling of how climbing up to that height with deep 'open' chasms, this is a good video. Keep in mind that over the years lots of guard rail has been placed...
