Puncak tea plantations

The local economy bus is an adventure and introduction to the culture. It gets unbelievably hot in the bus as for the money you pay air conditioning is not an option and having all the windows opened doesn't help much. They don't have many bus stops here in Indonesia although the bus stops a lot. You just have to raise your hand up and whilst the bus is slowing down jump in or out. There are also a lot of people coming in the bus trying to sell water and snacks, and musicians singing a few songs and then asking for money. So the journey can be bit more expensive, even the poor local people give money to people who ask.  The 80 km journey took us around 3 hours in the end.

We got chucked out of the bus in the middle of nowhere at the top of a mountain surrounded by tea plantations. They said it was called Puncak, the place we wanted to go. As we hadn't done any research we then realized that Puncak was going to be a little village not a town. Seemingly the locals there hadn't seen many white people and it took us about 10 minutes shaking their hands and being asked for pictures with them. We started walking in hope to find a cheap place to stay but unfortunately due to heavy sudden rain ended up in a bit overpriced hotel. In the end it wasn't too bad, it included breakfast and even a pool.

Quite a nice hotel in the end

In the morning we had a lovely walk around the tea plantations which were just on the side of the road. Lucky people who can have this view from their bedroom windows. After we had checked out of the hotel and waited till yet another sudden hour long rain had stopped, we took a local minibus to the next village around 8 km away called Cibodas. Cibodas has 85 hectares of natural botanical gardens and again we had no idea it was this big as we had done no research before arriving. A very helpful local guy nodded us to follow him after asking directions to a guesthouse. We walked with him about an hour up and down the mountain roads. After the first guesthouse being full he took us to Freddy's home stay and funnily enough Freddy happened to be his dad. Freddy was a very kind and helpful old man who did everything possible to make sure his only guests enjoyed their stay.

Tea

If one person asks to take a picture with us, then there are always more

We planned to trek up to the hotsprings in the botanical garden however when we arrived and found out the special tourist price was more than 10 euros we decided against it. This may not sound like much but in Indonesia it is a lot of money and more than we even had on us at that time. When we told Freddy he agreed and told us "better in Bandung" so that became our next destination.