Kerinci highest volcano of Indonesia

Here we go.. After all the discussion a night before with Bang Andi (our guide), we decided to go early morning at 07.00 am by ojek until park's gate. We crossed a large tea plantation (was belong to Dutch colonial) to reach the park's gate. We found no office for the national park at the gate, but there was an abandoned building. Maybe it was the office. So my conclusion is, you do not need any special permit to climb up Kerinci.

The typical of tropical rain forest was wetly welcoming us, right after we entered the gate. Seriously it was wet, although it wasn't raining. Whatever you touch, it was moist and wet. But they have much of flowers here, especially orchid. Very beautiful and i love to see them.

And one more thing, although there are quite dense canopy and big trees, but i still got cell phone signal even after almost 1 km i walk into the forest. My mom called me.

We only met 2 Spanish tourist with their guides and porters climb down to Kersiktuo, when we climbed up.
 We arrived at basecamp around 02.00 pm. This basecamp is located at 3100 m above the sea level. The basecamp is quite flat with space enough for about 3 tents. There was no water source during our trip to this basecamp. Our guide said the only water source is about before the summit.

We started for summit climbing at 03.00 am. It was steeper today, compare to our climbing yesterday. After leaving the vegetated zone, it was only gravelly rocks there. They are volcanic deposit, product of Kerinci's eruptions. It's getting more sandy near the summit. But the sand here is more coarse compare to Semeru.
The sunrise came before we reach the summit, too bad. But it's okay. It was amazing and beautiful though. We saw the orange horizon was starting to open the eye of day (sun in bahasa is matahari, it means "eye of the day").
We reached the summit at about 06.00 am. I had no words to say. It was so beautiful. I was the highest person in Sumatra at that time. The sky was clear, i could see Gunung Tujuh with its seven peaks. But its crater lake was covered by clouds. Kerinci crater is quite small, maybe it's just about one third of Gunung Gede crater. But the pyroclastic layers is quite obvious.

We spend about one hour at the summit. It would be more danger around the summit if we spent more time there. Because poisonous gas would be spread from the crater.

 
Band Andi took water at around the vegetation boundary. Taufan and me didn't follow him, we were waiting for him. So we didn't know exactly whre the water source is. We were only rest for having early lunch at basecamp, then went right away to Kersiktuo.
We met one whole family from France were climbing, when we climbed down. So, the Spanish guys and France family were the only tourist we met during our climbing. No other tourist.  I think it was a nice thing. Because I only found the pure nature sound and atmosphere here, without poluted by people crowd. :)

I took more flower pictures today, mostly orchid. They are colourful with very uniqe patterns. I really wanted to bring them home. :)

We arrived at park's gate afternoon. And ojek took us from there to Bu Paiman house, through  tea plantation covered by the golden array of evening sky