I guess I finally got accustomed to the local time as I’ve been sleeping well for the last few days. Maybe too well. I slept long into 9.00 a.m. today, but what a wake-up it was. After having some usual strange dreams I was woken up by an unusual noise outside my room. I opened a room and surprise, surprise, there was a snake inside our house. Nobody knew if it was poisonous but it sure looked green & mean enough to me. Sigit took care of it in no time. From now on I’m always going to check under my bed before I go to sleep.
Snakes seem to be a bonus you get when living beside a rice field. This was a second snake that came into our house in the last week. First time it was just a baby snake or a small snake, I don’t know, but it came charging through the door as if it was really mad at something and as soon as I heard the word poisonous… …well, did you ever see a grown men fly? Tirtaseta guys saw me get up their bench unusually fast.
Whitewater rescue course
I was trying to show them a rescue jump but Sigit outdid me in every way:
Rope systems
Besides some fun time with snakes and other domesticated animals like lizards, frogs, mice and mosquitoes, we already made a lot of progress in our courses. We finished a kayak instructing and trip guiding courses during weekend and we are just finishing a river rescue course today. We had a lot of fun swimming in Klawing River yesterday and we did a rope systems course today.
Klawing
We also did a freestyle session in a smallest and flushiest wave I had ever freestyled in (ok, maybe since Tacen) and we had a lot of laughs getting flushed out attempting even the simplest moves. Puji landed his first flatwater loop and it cheered us all up even more.
Klawing wave (by Puji & Tomo):
Puji just before his first FW loop
One afternoon guys took me to the center of Purbalingga – just to hang around. A great opportunity for some picture taking:
Purbalingga kids
Purbalingga central park
A massive bird from Irian Jaya
In the next days we will continue with some easier level kayaking, training newly gained skills and sightseeing. I will also hold some junior high school presentations on kayaking, cultural differences and ecology. After that the plan is to go big and creek. Some still to be run rapids and waterfalls are waiting for us, while I’m most looking forward to the first descent mission to Tambra creek. Tirtaseta already ran about 1 km on their own, while they left many more kilometres of gorges and steep rapids for us to run together. Here is the report from their mission: www.tirtasetakayakcommunity.blogspot.com.
PS: This blog entry is a few days old. A new one will follow shortly. Tomorrow I will post some pictures from our first and amazing “first descent” mission at Tungtung Gunung creek that we did today on my Duemstuff blog: http://blog.duemstuff.com/?author=5
Some more pictures:
There isn’t much going on in Purbalingga at night though so I might as well start improving my lame guitar skills