A trip to Jogyakarta

Rose and I took a trip to Jogyakarta to visit Diah and Gerry. They have built a house outside the town which has some great views of the countryside. We had a particularly good view of the nearby volcano from our bedroom.

Monsoons

After a lot of false starts we have at last had some serious rain in Surabaya. It has rained almost continuously during Christmas Day and Boxing Day. Prior to that we have had a few storms lasting one to three hours. These have been very localised, but the last couple of days the weather has been the same across the whole area.

A trip to the forest

We all piled into the Kia Carnival to drive to the mountains above Jember. We were taking our maid Echa home to visit her family. They are from Madura but have been working in a government forestry project for many years.


As soon as we left the main road we were travelling on a track which varied from mud to rock.













As we drove we passed trees being tapped for rubber.













There were also plantations of cocoa trees.












There were also coffee trees.



The village, one of several is perched on the hillside in a cleared area. The houses are in rows very standardised and each has a small garden area.



Here are the children of the village Echa's father and me.



There were several of these home made hydro-electric generators in the river. A simple water wheel geared via a bicyle wheel. A copper wire up through the trees to the nearest house.