Danau Toba

We left Bukit Lawang on the 10th. Because we were on a tight schedule we decided to take the tourist bus to Parapat, the small town on the shore of  Lake Toba from where the ferry goes to Samosir island. It was still a long trip because we had to go via Medan and as I already mentioned the roads and the traffic there are BAD. We met a Dutch couple who generously shared their snacks with us and we arrived at the lake at about 3.30pm. The view onto the lake is amazing when you drive down to Parapat. Lake Toba is the biggest volcanic lake in Asia and by far too big to imagine that being a volcano-crater. Samosir, which is an island in the lake has the size of Singapore and when you drive towards it it is hard to think of the lake going around it. On one side of Samosir is a small peninsular called Tuk Tuk. It is the central tourist spot at lake Toba and it is packed with hotels, hostels, losmen, guesthouses and home-stays, that it seems very hard to decide to which one you should go. But if you go there, then go to Liberta Homestay, a very cheap but lovely place run by Mr.Moon, one of the nicest people in Sumatra. The whole place has a great atmosphere, some good advice and good and cheap food.
It seemed to be full of German travelers and we met a couple from Munich who were on their stopover to New Zealand and had been at Liberta for almost a week because they loved the place and especially the avocado-salad. It was great to have a conversation in German after all the English and we spent a lot of time together. On our first day we rented a motorbike with Luci&Lorenz and cruised north on the island.It was great fun. We stopped at a little local market to buy a pineapple and some fruits we didn't know for lunch. It turned out that we didn't have a knife to cut the pineapple so we had the other fruits which were delicious. It was hot and the sun was burning down from a clear sky but the water of the lake had the perfect temperature to refresh ourselves and cool us down a bit. We continued our trip until some clouds came up and we decided to get more to eat. After a portion of mie goreng and a beautiful sight of the sun shining through a very low cloud on to the lake we headed back because it got dark and it usually rains here in the afternoon. And it did. About 5km from Liberta we got drenched with rain. It started of with a light shower, stopped and came back as very strong rain. Luckily it didn't take very long to get home so that the bags didn't get too wet.
The next day we wanted to hike to a waterfall not far from Tuk Tuk for a shower. It was really warm and the path (we were not sure it was the right one) led us through a jungle-like terrain. Again we shared the friendly company of Luci&Lorenz and followed the directions we got towards the cliff. Our way turned out to be a dead end, at least we could see the waterfall from there, but we decided to return to Tuk Tuk and go for a swim at Carolinas, the hotel with the best swimming area on the island. Even without the waterfall we had another great day and started to think about staying there for longer. It really is such a beautiful place with scenic views, cheap accommodation and nice people.

Anyhow we decided to follow our plans and leave for Berastagi the next day. If we had known about what happened there we would never have left.