Up close and far away

Merapi is kind of a lumpy mountain with a gentle run-up and a steep cone, so even if you're standing on its slopes you feel like the volcano is far away. After the story, we hiked up to this lookout point to look at the cone. You can't see the lava during the day, but the low trail of smoke on the right side of the cone marks a trail of the hot stuff snaking its way down.

Everything went black

Isa gave us a pretty amazing description of being at this spot during an eruption: how everything went black for an hour, and he could smell smoke and gases and hear the forest burning, and he could only crouch there and hope the fire wouldn't surround him and cut off his escape route.

We found his proclaimed ability to predict eruptions dubious, though.

We were sleepy and hungry and full of volcano, so we were happy to make our way down through a really lovely evergreen forest to the hostel, where pancakes and coffee were waiting.