August 10, Friday

August 10, Friday

Lazy day today…. Thank God, Buddha, Allah and my Guardian Angels.  

 My room at the Margo Utomo Resort

The cottage I'm is is hidden behind all these flowering bushes

I had a leisurely breakfast and met my neighbour in the cottage next to mine.  Pamela, who is close to my age, is from New Jersey and we spent a good part of the day yacking away.  I told her about my excursion to a plantation this afternoon and she asked if she could come along.  I told her I would have to check with my guide and driver, but did not think it would be a problem.  At 3 pm we took off for a neighbouring factory where we were taken on a tour, even though the plant was not really operational that afternoon. 

 I did not know at the time I took this picture that it was Mount Ijen.  Another active volcano, and the one I will be climbing tomorrow.

 This guy carries his tool box with him on his motorcycle.... but what a tool box !

 I think these are some type of  pine trees and they have been tapped to collect "turpentine".  See the long white lashings on them?

We arrive at the latex processing plant to find out that they aren't processing today, but the nice man is still willing to give Pamela a tour.

These are the big vats where the latex is dried.  There is actually some left in the container at the right.

 And there is a big clump of it left in this long trough.

Once it is processed and pressed out into long wide strands, it is placed in this room for curing.  There is a kiln or oven below the wood floor where a fire is burning.  The heat and smoke "cure" the latex into rubber. 

I wanted to know if there were additives put in with the latex.  The man giving us the tour only spoke Indonesian, so Daniel translated the information for us and tried to translate our questions back to the man giving the tour. It was quite hilarious because the answers we were given sometimes had nothing to do with what we had asked. LOST IN TRANSLATION ONCE AGAIN !

I did find out today that Daniel speaks some Spanish, and at some point I tried asking the question in Spanish instead of English, hoping that he would finally understand what we wanted to know. It was really funny !

 

They pass the latex through some rollers to flatten it out.   It looks like the rollers that were used in the old washing machines to wring out the water. (Sorry, photos did not turn out on these.)

This is the finished rubber product after it has cured.  They ship it like this out to different factories that produce rubber items.

But that wasn't all.  Turns out this plant is also used to process cloves and cacao!

 These are the cloves:  on the left is the green husk, which they use as an additive in their tobacco.
On the right are the cloves

 
 This is the clove before it is husked

 Dad and his two sons are husking cloves... BY HAND !   And you wondered why they were so expensive?   I did not ask how much they were payed since that would be considered insulting.

 And here is the cacao beans, drying out beside the cloves.

AH ! The aroma in the open air building was incredible  (cocoa and cloves).  It really made me hungry!

We toured the plant where they cleaned and processed the cacao, but it was just a lot of machinery sitting idle.

On the way back to the hotel we stopped at an area where they sell cattle once a week.

 Some of them were quite big !

It was almost 5 pm when we got back to the hotel. Pamela went for a swim and I went back to my room after walking around the resort and taking pictures

 The pool area at Margo Utomo

The garden paths are like a botanical garden.  The sun was setting and the lamps were lit.   Quite a beautiful resort, even if the rooms are very basic.

I went for dinner at about 6 pm and had another early night.  Daniel had just advised me that we had to be on the road by 2 am the next morning.   NO, that’s not a typo!   2 AM !   And I had thought that 3:30 had been bad. 

When I booked the excursion across Java, I was scheduled to spend 1 night in Kalibari at Margo Utomo and 2 nights in Banyuwangi; however the guy who did the booking for me advised me (via Daniel) that they could not get the 2 nights at Banyuwangi so I would be staying 2 nights in Kalibari and only 1 night in Banyuwangi.  No big deal, so I agreed.  What he failed to tell me however is that by staying a second night in Kalibari, I was 2 hours away from Banyuwangi where, on the morning of August 11^th, I was scheduled to climb up Mount Ijen.   Oh, did I forget to mention that they advised me yesterday that this excursion normally leaves Banyuwangi at 4 am for the drive up the mountain.  And I was 2 hours away from Banyuwangi!  I have to get up and be ready to leave Kalibari at 2 am tomorrow morning. 
THE THINGS I'M READY TO DO WHEN I'M TRAVELLING NEVER CEASE TO AMAZE ME !