After a sleepy but educational week, things started to unfold at an unexpected paste. Realising that I have not much time left in Indonesia we set up a tight kayaking plan. But first Toto Rusmanto got us invited to a monthly Purbalingga culture night with live traditional Javanese music. I guess we arose some attention bringing all the camera gear with us as we were soon invited to sit with Central Javanese chief of regency Drs. Heru Sudjatmoko alongside other important persons. We had a short chat, a lovely meal and I even got introduced to the rest of the public. Then I got back to filming and taking pictures as this colourful and authentic night felt just right to make it into the movie I’m filming.
Meeting the Vice and Chief of Riegency, Mr. Sukento and Mr. Sudjatmoko
I’ll jump two days ahead here and write about the rest of activities we did in a following weak. We visited an English club leaded by Toto’s big sister, an English teacher herself. It was really an enjoyable experience as students were eager to ask me questions to practice their English skills with me.
We also went back to Cahyana for a day of exhibition paddling for a national news agency:
Getting interviewed at Cahyana
Remember the two days I left out of previous paragraph? Well, I’m not going to speak about them in this blog post just yet as they deserve a post or an article of their own. Here are just some pictures from the village hosting us, the Kramat village.
At Kramat we were generously hosted by chief of village Mr. Fauzy and his family
The village is known by artists working with ceramic and just any kind of material:
Cutlery
And even a fully functional wooden bicycle
Not to be a complete mood killer I must humbly commend myself for finally making a first descent of Penisihan falls, a waterfall that I’m sure is going to see many more descents in future. The water is almost constantly too low to run it but just before every evening we usually have a thunder storm here. Water rises rapidly but before the morning everything is over. One day after having a slalom course on Klawing River, a big storm came about an hour early. I felt it was time to go and asked Toto and other guys to take me there. We came there just before nightfall and not even a (small) snake I almost stepped on just before the falls and me forgetting to close a drainage screw could stop me from running it in such rare high water. I can’t thank Tirtaseta guys enough for giving me this opportunity. A nice little solo run further down the Klawing at night just made my day. I must disappoint you though as no pictures were taken. Autofocus at evening is the “one” to blame. We filmed a nice video though. I will show a short teaser at my duemstuff blog next week. In the mean time you can also check some new photos at www.tywarp.com, my paddle supplier.
High water Penisihan