Jogja: Caving and pizza... Can life get any better? (I submit that it CANNOT!)

There was a caving/tubing excursion advertised at Edu that I wanted to do, but it required a minimum of two people. The dentists were the ones to recommend it otherwise I would have asked them to go with me. Instead I wandered around Jogjakarta for the day. I had plans on going to the palace, but it was closed to visitors in the days leading up to Ramadan.

As I was examining my map in the shade, an ojek driver sat down next to me and we got to chatting. I told Rudi (the driver) about the cave that I wanted to see, but didn't know what it was called. He said he knew where it was and could take me there. We went back to Edu so I could change, then we went to Cerme Cave. Only it turns out that Cerme Cave is not the cave that has innertubing. There is water, but you just wade through it. Rudi set me up with a cave guide and the guide and me went into the cave.

My cave guide. I couldn't learn his name.

Being a cave and all, it was dark inside. My cave guide gave me a headlamp, took my hand, and led me through the water. The guide only knew four words in English, but they were important words: careful, head, rock, and photo. I tried to ask him what his name was, but "name" did not fall in his four word vocabulary. We saw stalactites and stalagmites. He somehow conveyed to me that monks come to the mountain cave to meditate. The whole cave tour took about forty-five minutes. It was all quite bizarre, really, but it was interesting and I'm glad I went.

The cave is a good place for meditation

That night I met some English girls, Imogene and Lottie (how British are those names?) and we decided to book the proper cave excursion. A Canadian named Tom tagged along. Tom had a motorcycle, so he saved some money by following the van Imo, Lottie, and I had hired.

At the cave site we were matched up with a really cheerful guide who spoke English. He kept asking us if we had cameras, but none of us had brought ours because we were worried about them getting wet. The guide probably asked us each about a dozen times, "You have camera?" Or later after he learned we weren't holding out on him, "Next time you bring camera." It got to be a little irritating, but it was funny too.

First we hooked together to form a chain and floated lazily through a cave and looked at stalactites and stalagmites. We saw some bats, too. We stopped and jumped off of a ledge into the water. Then we piled into the bed of a pickup truck with our tubes and a Chinese family and went to the mouth of a small river. Here the water was moving faster and we didn't need to hold on to stick together. The river widened and slowed at one point and there were a couple cliffs to jump off of. One was five meters high and the other was ten. Tom and the English girls jumped off the five meter cliff no problem, but for some reason I had problems. I've cliff-jumped from higher before, but it took me a while to get the nerve to do it here. I don't know why. I did jump in the end. However, when they moved on to the ten meter cliff I knew we'd be there all day waiting for me to jump, so I declined. It was clear the guide really wanted to jump, but felt bad leaving me in the water alone. It was cute how visibly relieved he was when I told him I was fine and he should go jump. Everyone jumped off the ten meter cliff twice. I think the guide even went thrice. There were lots of other people jumping off of the cliffs, including a few Muslim women. I found it interesting that even when they are swimming they are expected to be covered from head to toe. They were swimming in ankle-length long sleeve dresses. It looked heavy and uncomfortable, but either I'm mistaken or they are just used to it because the women were all laughing away and having a grand ol' time.

After the tubing I was wearing my Pizza Rita t-shirt and the English girls and I wanted pizza. We asked our driver if he could take us to get pizza, but he said no. He did recommend a place called Papa Ron's, though. That evening I couldn't get pizza off the brain, so I searched for Papa Ron's and discovered everything about their site to be a total ripoff of a certain American chain that rhymes with Papa Ron's. Seriously, check it out. Thankfully the pizza looked much tastier than you-know-what. I got Tom thinking about pizza too. We tried to call and order, but my phone wouldn't work. Tom took his motorbike to Papa Ron's, placed the order, and got them to deliver it (he didn't have one of those fancy pizza carriers on his bike). We devoured the pizza.

Even the slogan is the same... I love it!