Going from one town to another can become quite challenging in Indonesia. This is how we went from Cipanas to Pangandaran, but it's also a typical travelling day, with great highs when you meet nice locals and look outside the bus window to see green rice fields and foggy mountains, and great lows when you get overcharged for fares and get stuck in traffic for hours.
- 7:00 am, check out of Cipanas hotel. We have to hire a horse and cart as there is no other mode of transportation available. We have to bargain heavily for the price. We go to Garut terminal.
- 8:30 am, take a local mini bus (angkot) to Tasik, where 15 seats fit 24 people and 4 babies. This was quite unbelievable, but it turned out to be somewhat pleasant with cute kids keeping us entertained.
- 11:30 am, we jump on a big bus to Pangandaran. It seems spacious so we enjoy stretching our legs.
- 12:30 pm, they come to collect ticket money and try to charge us 100 000 rupiahs each (local woman said it should only be 40 000). We try to get the price down – no success.
- 13:30 pm, we have get out of the scam bus because they won't put the price down for us. We have to wait for a new bus, but the driver made sure to tell everyone what happened so the next 2 buses try to charge us the same.
- 14:00 pm, we finally settle in a bus towards Pangandaran for 50 000 rupiahs (still too much but there’s only so much arguing you can do!)
- 16:00 pm, we arrive in Pangandaran. We walk about 1km to reach our guesthouse.
- 16:30 pm, we can finally relax!
Backpacking can be tough! After a shower, we went in search of food, then had a peak at the
beach: it’s a complete mess. Hundreds of locals crowd the beach and the amount
of garbage is astounding. We could not believe our eyes… What a disaster! After a long day travelling, we were hoping for a reward at the end, but we certainly didn't get it today.
 |
| The state of Pangandaran beach is so bad |
No comments:
Post a Comment