The Journey from Berastagi to Lake Toba: and Samosir Island (photo to add)

Fruity

We had a travelling day as we moved from to Lake Toba and our hotel on Samosir Island.

The day started with a visit to the fruit market in Berastagi, this was a massive place with a wide range of fruit and veg. So many I'd never seen before, one called snake skin fruit, which to us tasted like a mix of apple and pear but the skin looked as the name suggested. The market was an interesting place and nice being able to try the fruit before buying any.

Hitting the Road

The journey through the countryside was interesting and at times scary. There appears more road regulation here but drivers still seem to accept that other drivers don't keep to them. The worst is overtaking when other vehicles are approaching and assuming either the other driver will slow down or you can push your way back into your own lane. Somehow it seems to work with very little road rage. Our driver did almost run over a motorcyclist but fortunately we were a few inches and impeccable reaction times on his part away from disaster.

The local buses are really colourful often with people sitting on the roof and instead of greeting cards the roadside has billboards covered in flowers/petals spelling out messages such as Good Luck, Best Wishes. The area is a big coffee growing region so also lots of coffee shops all with different brands of coffee.

We stopped at Batak Caro village with some traditional houses. These were houses built on stilts and then shared between several families. The living area had no internal walls so you had to get on with your neighbours. There are 5 houses that have survived and although we were able to go in one, it did appear to be still lived in by 5 families.

We were pleased not to stop at a cafe with a big B1 on the front, as B1 means dog. The cafe also had the innards of a dog hung up. The guide had talked about B1, B2 and B3 explaining B1 is very much a country thing and dog is not really eaten very much any more so to see it on a relatively main road felt quite strange. The B1, 2, 3 relates to how many B's in the name in Indonesian so pork is B2 and Bitbang Beer is B3.

Getting to Lake Toba

After this we headed to Lake Toba , this lake was formed from the crater of a volcano that erupted 74000 years ago and it is believed wiped out 70% of the world's population at the time. This is one of the largest volcanic eruptions known to man. James had researched this and was able to impressively compete with the guides for facts. Including it created a volcanic winter that lasted between 6 and 10 years, which meant a temperature reduction of between 5C and 15C depending on the altitude. It also caused a genetic bottleneck which very nearly wiped out humanity, fortunately it didn't as 73,968 years later Norwich beat Bayern Munich away (thanks James!).

Samosir Lake

Getting towards the ferry we hit a queue of traffic around 400 metres long, luckily our guides had a plan B. We crossed on a local boat, initially I had thoughts of Sri Lanka and Delft Island but it was a decent boat and a calm lake. Unluckily for our driver there was no room for the van on our boat so he had to return to the queue waiting for the ferry. He arrived five hours after us after finally making to the island.