faraway

Last Sunday, our friends Angela and Dan invited us to visit them at Canada House, the villa maintained by the embassy in the Puncak. It’s a beautiful property with an expansive view of the Puncak valley framed between the massive triangular shapes of two volcanoes. Red is the predominant colour of the villa and decorative maple leaves are everywhere. Kitchy, but for Canadians away from home, it's nice.

Angela arranged for a pony-ride for our kids. She has two kids, Kai and Takeo. The horses and their handlers came to the villa to pick us up. Angela, Court and I came along. Zach was very excited.

The handlers suggested we make the trek to a nearby waterfall. It was an hour and a half walk there. Okay, we decided to be ambitious. I suppose it ended up being more like a two hour walk almost entirely uphill and an hour back. The kids had fun on their horse while the adults laboured up the hill in the hot sun. What parents won’t do for their kids! Actually, despite the sweat and sore feet, it was great hike. The road to the waterfall, Curug Panjang is beautiful. We passed many beautiful villas, several villages with curious onlookers, forests, fields, look-out points over the valley, and even a Police Training Center. Outside of the occasional motorcycle and the clip-clop of the pony hooves, the road was quiet. Why can't Jakarta be like that?

We finally arrived at the waterfall; paid the "foreign entry" fee (the kids, horses and handlers got in free) with a bit of grumbling. Just past the gate, we parked the ponies. The kids ran down a narrow dirt path, forded a brook that ran down a cliff and across then path, and across a bamboo foot bridge. Past the bridge was a green valley with a short waterfall that tumbled into rapids over big round rocks. Some families were having a picnic and a group of youths were camped out along the side of the rapids. The three kids hopped down to the water and Kai and Zach immediately wanted to jump in. Being the protective Dad, I fluttered nervously around Zach as he hopped around in the shallow water. Court was splashing his head in the cool water and Zach vaguely imitated.

The walk back was much more pleasant since it was all downhill. Angela, Court and I munched on pathetic skinny peanuts that I had picked up at a roadside kios. It began to rain and I didn’t mind getting wet since I was so hot. The kids were real troopers and they didn’t seem to mind the rain either. I put on Zach's red Roots vest that Galuh had teased me about bringing: "you bring so much stuff!" To which I had responded as the erstwhile boyscout: "It's better to be prepared!" She grew up in the topics, I in the temporates. That's our difference.

Anyways, the rain changed the colour of everything; all the greens were darker. It almost seemed like a different road on the way back. Takeo became very sleepy making his handler very nervous. Occasionally I would call out to him, “Takeo, keep a lookout for ice cream!” He would suddenly straighten up, his eyes would grow very large and he would make a valiant attempt to fight off the drowsiness, before drooping again into sleepiness. It was very cute and he made it back without falling off his horse.

We made it back and Dan had a great lunch prepared which we devoured on the patio overlooking the Puncak valley. Zach was pleased with the pony-ride and was asking when he could do it again.

Jerome