Sibayak Volcano

There are two active volcanoes in the town of Berastagi in North Sumatra. One is apparently quite difficult to climb and is called Sinabung. The other, named Sibayak, is supposedly a lot easier. It was by no means difficult, but it wasn’t a walk in the park either. I arrived in Berastagi in the late afternoon, cold and tired after a series of long bus trips from Lake Toba. I almost decided to bus it all the way back to Medan and skip the climb entirely after seeing the shitty weather conditions. But I gave it a chance and I’m glad I did.

The weather cleared in the morning and the sun was shining as it does there apparently. I left the guest house with Gavin, from England and his girlfriend Ana, from Spain. It was 8am. We walked to the park entrance gathering provisions along the way and declined multiple local bus offers to take us to the start of the hike. We wanted to walk and besides, could get a better view of what lied ahead.

It was practically a paved road the majority of the way up, past a decent sized landslide and then up some stairs that were relatively hidden at the end of the road. We almost got lost and headed down a small trail through the jungle until thankfully Ana intervened and suggested we ought to look more carefully for another trail before we just assumed this was it. Being men, we were hesitant to agree, but I’m so glad we did as the real trail, once we found it, was way easier.

We got to the top fairly quickly, only passing two locals on their way down, who must have ascended from the other side of the mountain. The views were good, the smell was sulfurous and the noise from the relatively abundant fumaroles was quite loud. I think it was about 11:30 when we got to the top. We walked around the top for a bit, admired the views in all directions, took pictures and we could see that soon it would get covered in clouds and be potentially difficult to find our way to the bottom if that was the case.

So we looked for the ‘stairs’ and eventually found the path that took us to the hot springs at the bottom. We enjoyed a soak in them just past the geothermal plant, which seemed to be big business located just at the base of the hill. About the time we left the hot springs and back into our dirty sweaty clothes, it started to rain and we knew we had timed it right, if not left a little bit late. It was a long walk back to the main road and at this point, it was raining pretty heavily and we hoped to catch a bus back to town.

What we didn’t realize was that we were roughly 10-15 kilometers away from town, we were walking on the main highway and there were no buses coming. Fortunately, we all managed to cram into the front of a truck whose driver ever so nicely pulled over when he saw our desperate thumbs. That made the journey a good one, a memorable one, not having to walk those last kilometers in the pouring rain.