Enjoying Lake Toba

On Saturday we were excited to have Dean Tagor, Mam’Reina and Esra take us to Parapet to enjoy Lake Toba. As usual, we didn’t really understand the program and schedule until it happened. Since this was Craig’s first full day in Indonesia we hoped it wouldn’t be too exhausting of a day. The night before we stopped by to viist Reina and Esra to introduce Craig and find out about the schedule. While we were there it started pouring rain, with a great deal of thunder and lightning. We waiting it out for over 30 minutes, and then during a lull in the lightning we splashed our way back to the house. The puddles were deep. Though the rain had come into their house, dripping from the ceiling down onto Reina, it was dry inside our house.

The next morning we left around 9:30 and drove straight to Parapet without any stops. We drove through town, took a few wrong turns, got stuck in a few jams, bought a large number of mangos from the best vendor in the city (the others sell rotten fruit with bacteria, we are told!) and then thankfully drove past the long line of cars waiting for the ferry. 


We have learned that if you take the car ferry to Samosir Island, it takes a long long time. We pulled up to a small series of cabanas by the lake and Dean Tagor declared that this was the spot we would be staying.

This was good, since last time we swam in Lake Toba (last year) we have driven all the way around the southern tip of Toba past Balige to a very picturesque spot…but it took forever to get there.

Those who were swimming braved the toilet/changing stalls to put on their suits, and before you knew it Jacob was in the water. Everyone grabbed an inner tube, and Craig, Jacob and Esra soon were paddling along the shore in an animal character paddleboat.

The Dean and I remained under the thatched roof of the cabana, drank coffee, discussed world politics, and watched as several girls from the youth group who were sharing the facility worked to get their charcoal grill lit. Dean Tagor arranged for the proprietors to grill fish from Lake Toba for us, too, and soon there were two grills smoldering. 

The grill master had a special secret for lighting his…Styrofoam cups….the containers for the instant noodles. It worked! The coals were burning and he brought out the fish, which were split down the middle and gutted.

Dinner was quite simple: fish, rice with lots of chili sauce, and some basic greens. Oh yes, Reina skinned and sliced dozens of mangos and we ate and ate and ate them until we could hold no more.

We sat on the mat inside the cabana to eat our meal. We are not yet fully Indonesian as we used forks and spoons to eat rather than just our fingers.

On the way home we stopped at the tacky tourist part of town where you buy souvenirs. Of course there were no t-shirts in my size (same as Brastagi) and all we ended up getting were some shorts for Jacob and a carved mask for Craig. Nancy bought one other thing but it may be a present so we will keep it a secret.

What a view! And this is just a small bit of it.

Just outside of Parapet we gawked through the closed windows of the car at dozens of monkeys perched on the guard rail. Then we stopped at a roadside / cliff side snack shop to enjoy the view. Lake Toba is gorgeous from high above, and we also marveled at the construction of the snack shops, basically nailed on the edge of the cliff.

Dean Tagor has a new friend!

The road home was filled with slow trucks, heavily weighed down with many logs. As the road climbed out of Parapet there was a curve where there were many logs stuck in the hillside, as if someone had thrown them into the dirt, like a javelin. One of the trucks had overturned recently, losing the load. Dean Tagor was driving slowly the whole way, I believe to protect us and his family but also because recently a van-load of Malaysian tourists went over the cliff above Lake Toba and died.

We returned home and set out for the graduate office to connect on the internet. Connection from the campus is spotty at times, and this was one of those times. I was the only one who could connected, and at that it was running so slowly that I couldn’t even upload a picture to Facebook.

Craig and Jacob left before we did. As Nancy and I returned home we noticed that the porch was turned off (even though we make a point of turning it on before we left). Then we saw a large number of flying insects, swirling around near the front door. Craig and Jacob said that the swarm was so thick they could barely see the front door when they came home.

We swept up what seemed like hundreds of the bugs.

We rushed into the house and it was like a bug zoo, with dozens of these large insects fluttering about. Craig and I went to work swatting and stepping on them. I grabbed the broom and swept the carcasses toward the door. Several times we thought we had taken care of all of them, when five or six more would appear. We realized they were climbing under the doors, at the front and the side of the house. We plugged those gaps and then finally after killing a dozen or more, the fluttering subsided and they were all gone.

Sunday morning our porch was covered with the wings from these insects. 

The wings left behind by the insects filled the ground just off
our porch.

Evidently they fly around for awhile and then shed the wings. I recall from my stomping of them the night before that they were some without wings, just a large ant-like bug. We saw piles of these wings by our Indomarket (convenience store) so we assume the “invasion” was widespread. We have asked several people around here about the bugs, as we want to know if they will appear again or if this was a one time event, but of course we have not gotten a clear answer.

So that was our relaxing evening. There is never a dull moment around here!