While me and Marina planning the trip, I said to her “dont worry we do it Indonesian style” which is very unprepared. I dont have a schedule ready months before like a German that she is, I just make the plan like 1 week before the trip and I realized in Bajawa there is a volcano mountain called Inerie and you can see the sunrise from the peak. And I was ok cool! Lets do it! without checking the fact that I dont even have a trekking shoes! I need to borrow it from Nago, thanks God shes my size so her shoes fits perfectly!
Marina found the guide that has a good review about Inerie trekking named Santos +62822-4774-2528 and I contacted him and we texted each other through WA to set everything and here we are ready with the plan like few days before the trip 🙂
As I told him that I hiked slow so we started at 1AM while usually other people will start at 2AM and I also said that I need 2 guides, one for me and the other for Thorben because he walks fast and I dont want him to wait for me. My goal was just to make it to the top, I dont care if I miss the sunrise on the top then be it, I just want to arrive at the peak.
Santos and Maggie (our driver because Santos cannot drive) picked us up and the other guide that went with Thorben named Mirei, we did a bit of a warm up and we started the hike at 1:40 AM.
There are 4 stops, 1st is where they put food to the ancestors and make the prayer in Bajawa language, from the half of the 2nd stop to the 3rd stop where we need to be silence, 4th stop is where the crater is and then 10more mins to the peak.
There wasnt really a trail but it was pitch black anyway so headlights really a must! Its also a blessing that it was pitch black and the visibility was nothing because if you can see you know that one step wrong and bye bye adios amigos!
I think when I was just passed 2nd stop we could see that there were motorcycles coming at the bottom and Santos knew another climber is coming up and he told me “dont let them overtake” and I got nervous “woah! Ok go!”
Climbing until the 3rd stop is not really hard, of course its slippery and stones everywhere but still do able. From the 3rd until the peak this is where the situation changed, its all sands! So every-time you step on you will fall down again by 75% and this goes on and on and on and of course I fell on my butt many times on this because its really just slippery and the wind is quiet strong. I ended up walking up hand by hand with Santos as he was the one that pulling me up otherwise I wouldnt be able to make it to the top.
By the time I almost reached the 4th stop it was about 4:32AM Santos said “the sky is lighter now, hurry up” I couldnt see it with my eyes, for me its still pitch black.
By that time I knew I will made it to the peak before sunrise because sunrise is somewhere close to 6AM and in theory it wouldnt take me 1,5 hrs to go from 4th stop to the peak but I just want to hurry up. By the time it was 4:45 ish I reached the creater and I can see with my own eyes that the sky indeed was lighter and I got nervous again saying “lets go Santos!”
From the crater to the peak the wind was crazy, I think I was in the mission impossible kind of movie where the wind hits you really hard when you tried to climb up. I was wearing 2 jackets but I still feel cold!
In total it took me 3.5 hours to be at the peak, I arrived at 5:05. I could already see the red line on the sky while Thorben arrived 4:10 it was still pitch black so he was able to take pic of the milky way.
This is me and Thorben 
I was so happy, tired, hungry and cold when I arrived! and soon after, the French couple also arrived, they were fast! I was so happy that I could catch the sunrise there!
Because this is one of the lifetime kind of things, I need to take some more pics peps! especially when the sun is a bit high so the sky is getting clearer.
When the sun is really up we can see the shadow of Inerie is like a pyramid.
Then we went down to see the smoke that was “believed” it was the husband of Mount Inerie named Jaramasi.
The way down is sooo sooo soooo much worse! I gave my phone to Santos and he was trying to took away my attention by asking me to stop here and there to take pics of me hahaha thanks Santos now I have a documentation of how the way down was 🙂 and it also gave me some time to rest a bit to pose 😉
But at some point my knee and toes started to not so cooperate because its all sands and soo slippery! Idk how many times I fell down, for sure it was more than 10 times. And the sun is getting strong aarrghhhh its horrible! And I was really agitated!
This is exactly how the way down! one step and then avalanche of sands
I have to sit down because the stones get in into my shoes or Nago’s shoes 😉 so I need to take it out but my ass kept sliding down
It took me 4.5 hours to go down! I arrived at 9:30 AM. Thorben already there 1.5hrs before me and after so many avalanche sands moment I still fell down on the flat ground and I could hear Thorben said “do not break your ankle on the last meter”
We had a simple food at Mama Kristin’s house (shes a relative of Santos) and we met the beautiful Anjani and Luis Nazariel Ronaldo that was wearing Messi’s shirt hahaha
Overall, it was my sportiest day every, 18k steps for 8 hours! Woke up at 00:40, started trekking at 01:40, reached the peak at 05:05 and arrived to the bottom at 09:30 #im tired!
Inerie means beautiful mother and indeed its beautiful and Im glad I made it to the top! Does it mean that I will climb another volcano again? meh…probably no haha at least I ticked my checklist! 😉
