Day 58: Waterfall Hunting

I set out in the morning with the goal of seeing most of the north coast of Lombok and cutting into the mountains once I was on the other side of Mount Rinjani during the hottest part of the day to find cooler climes. I ended up only making it about halfway there, but I saw enough. My first stop was Tiu Pupus, not because there's anything spectacular about it, but because it was the first sign I saw with "water fall" written on it.

A 10-minute ride off the main road and a 5-minute walk gets you to the falls.

Tiu Pupus

Next I stopped at Tiu Teja.

This one is 7 km off the main road and a little harder to find once the pavement ends. Without a guide, expect a 30-minute hike. But, seeing as the guides practically throw themselves onto you, you can expect a 10-minute scooter shuttle to the actual trailhead, then a steep, 10-minute descent to the falls.

Tiu Teja

Hi Mom. I'm still alive.

To be honest, there are waterfalls all over this island, and seeing two was more than enough for me. Despite these waterfalls being not very well-known by tourists, the people of Indonesia have ample free time to be your "guide" and point you in the right direction (or be more useful and shuttle you to the trailhead, take your photo, and save your sandal from certain doom after it slips off your foot underwater). They ask for a surprisingly fair price, usually about 15,000 IDR ($1), but -- being a tourist -- I have an overwhelming lack of denominations less than what the ATM dispenses (50,000 rupiah notes if lucky, 100,000 if not). And in general, the more informal and cheaper the service -- like a random teenager picking you up on his motorbike to take you to the trailhead -- the less likely they're going to carry any change. What this means in practice is if all you have are 50k IDR notes, that's the price you pay. And if you stop at a roadside food stand and try to pay for your 15k IDR meal with a 50k note, they'll ask first if you have any "small bills" before digging into their lunchbox full of small bills to break you change. As an American, it can be hard to believe that anyone anywhere would find making change on a $3.75 note inconvenient, but that's the way things seem to be around here. (This is perhaps more prominent in relatively poor areas where surplus cash is short in general and in touristy areas, at the rare restaurant or common convenience store that charges non-tourist prices, where tourists are constantly trying to pay for meals and services with 50k and 100k notes).

The paltry point of that wild discursion being: I countered the 15k offer of my guide at Tiu Teja with an offer of 50k if he were to show me a restaurant to eat at since I was just about running on fumes. After some confusion as to the term "restaurant", I was eventually taken to a roadside stall where I was served a meal "free" of charge. Afterwards my guide invited me to his home down the road. I accepted, and was taken to a small house containing a woman, a man, and about 8 boys between the ages of 10-15 (friends, I presume). They served me a cup of delicious coffee and one of the boys climbed up the tree in the front yard to grab us some rambutan to snack on.

Rambutan, the hairy grape of the tropics

I'm lucky to have gotten such an offer, because soon afterward there was a heavy downpour for the next 20 minutes. We exchanged the usual Q&A and I showed them my photos from the other cities and places I had been to. A few of them were returning to Mataram that afternoon so I rode with them as far as Pamenang before parting our separate ways.