Rural trek takes in hustle and bustle

Hiring a car at a reasonable price at Jakarta International Airport to take me to Cibodas in West Java, about 100 kilometers away, proved to be a little tricky.

Two car hire companies have offices in the baggage claim area. One offered a return trip to Cibodas for 2.1 million rupiah ($155), which I thought was outlandish. The other company wanted 1 million rupiah for a one-way trip.

However, I soon realized that the woman with the second company misunderstood me, thinking my destination was a hotel near the airport where I would stay the night before flying back to China, and she needlessly arranged a limousine for me.

I eventually managed to get out of the aiport and heading towards my destination for only 900,000 rupiah after receiving an offer from a man at the taxi service counter. While sitting in the car waiting to go the driver handed 100,000 rupiah to the middleman.

Later I realized I had done quite well out of this deal because the journey to Cibodas took almost five hours.

Even though the distance is about 100 km, once the taxi left expressways and was on a road climbing from Bogor to Bandung, traffic jams began to appear.

It was noon on a Thursday, so certainly not the rush hour. But the two-lane road was so narrow and crammed with vehicles that any car trying to cross the road or temporarily stop would clog the traffic flow for a while. Peddlers hawked their wares on the road, selling mineral water and snacks to drivers stuck in the traffic.

We were in the countryside, but it was the most populous rural setting I have ever encountered, making comparable areas near Beijing and Shanghai seem underpopulated by comparison. Houses, motels, restaurants, grocery shops and fruit stalls lined the road, which were a non-stop stream of hustle and bustle.

On either side of the road??, especially when it wound through the 1,500-meter-high Puncak Pass area, green terraced fields and tea plantations stretched along the slopes behind houses and shops.

Apart from taking all this in I was preoccupied with being stuck in the traffic so dared not ask the driver to pull up somewhere along the way so I could take photos.

Eventually we turned off the main road, and it was difficult to believe that the narrow artery we entered was the main road leading to one of the region's major tourist attractions. The five-hour trek done, we reached the gate of Cibodas.

Soon after paying an entrance fee of 2,000 rupiah we were on a road lined with restaurants, souvenir shops and vendors selling pot plants that stretches to the entrances of the Gede-Pangrango National Park and Kebun Raya Cibodas (Cibodas Botanical Garden), which stand side by side.

I later figured out that the area inside the gate is the service area for the two scenic sites.

The guesthouse in which I booked a room, Freddy's Homestay, is just outside Cibodas' gate. In and around Cibodas there is a wide choice of accommodation, and Freddy's Homestay seems to popular.

Because my flight home was on the Sunday morning, I only needed to return to Jakarta on Saturday evening. But Freddy advised me to leave before 7 am on Saturday because the road back to Jakarta is prone to heavy congestion - something I was by now only too well aware of.

"It can sometimes take eight or nine hours to get to Jakarta," he said.

Freddy helped me find a ride to Jakarta, which cost 750,000 rupiah. I left Cibodas at 6 am and the route was already very busy, most of the shops along the way already being open, and before we reached the expressways about 7 am lines of traffic stretched for miles.

Freddy's advice was wise. My own advice is: Forget about visitng the area during weekends or local holidays.