Epic Hikes of the World ( PDFDrive )

We spent the first night of our trek in a banua sura a short walk from Mamasa
town, and there we discovered the reality of what we were in for. Thick quilts on the
floor were our mattresses and we only had thin, synthetic blankets to keep us warm.
A few hours into the night, Emre and I ended up under our ‘mattresses’ to keep
warm. Dinner was noodle soup with floating chunks of pungent, home-butchered
pork. Emre puked hers up in the middle of the night. Dogs howled and a mosquito
kept buzzing in my ear.
But rest or no rest, we were up by six and breakfasted on sugary tea and
omelettes. We said goodbye to our smiling hosts, assuring them we had slept
marvelously, and began to walk uphill, past rice fields, through a summer-dry jungle
and into cooler coffee and cacao plantations. After a few hours, we reached a high
pass where we could see the green, misty Mamasa Valley in one direction and
layers of dark ridges to the other, behind which lay the highland region of Tana
Toraja.
“We walked past rice fields, through a jungle and into coffee
plantations”
The path descended over the next few miles through more coffee and cacao
plantations and wilder regions where the grass reached our shoulders and almost
engulfed the trail. It began to rain slow, heavy droplets, so our guide picked giant,
multi-fingered leaves that we used as umbrellas. Shortly after the sun came back
out we came to the village in the clearing and the five friendly children calling us
‘Belanda’.
Kids came from all around as we arrived at the homestay. Taking our hands, they
led us to pools fed by the river where the community raised goldfish. A few children
were already plunking pancake-sized fish into buckets for their family’s dinner. The
children walked to show us the toilet, a bamboo perch over the river, and the
shower, which was a small bamboo stall a few feet away. When I went to shower
before dark, the kids all followed me and watched as I tried to demurely get clean
wearing a sarong.
That night we stayed up till the ungodly hour of 10pm in our one-room shack lit
with a hurricane lantern and drank sour-sweet palm wine with Domingus, our
horseman, and the smiling couple who owned the house. Then to bed on the same
quilt mattresses as the night before but, fortunately, with warmer blankets. We
slept well.